The gold rush seems like a romantic time, full of everyday people following a dream to California and striking it rich. The reality was that most people lived in poor conditions, ate bad food, and found just about nothing. In this book, readers find out what life was like for the forty-niners and immigrants that headed to California to seek their fortune as well as the causes and effects of the gold rush.

The first book in history that documents Waltz from birth to the grave. This landmark text offers historical proof, such as ship manifests and German translations of his infamous directions to the mine, and all major speculations that have occurred in the hundreds of books published in the 111 years following Waltz's death.

An engrossing, adventure-filled account of the rush to discover and save Vietnam's most extraordinary animals Deep in the jungle where the borders of Vietnam meet those of Laos and Cambodia is a region known as "the lost world." Large mammals never seen before by Western science have popped up frequently in these mountains in the last decade, including a half-goat/half-ox, a deer that barks, and a close relative of the nearly extinct Javan rhino. In an age when scientists are excited by discovering a new kind of tube worm, the thought of finding and naming a new large terrestrial mammal is astonishing, and wildlife biologists from all over the world are flocking to this dangerous region. The result is a race between preservation and destruction. Containing research gathered from famous biologists, conservationists, indigenous peoples, former POWs, ex-Viet Cong, and the first U.S. ambassador to Vietnam since the war's end, Gold Rush in the Jungle goes deep into the valleys, hills, and hollows of Vietnam to explore the research, the international trade in endangered species, the lingering effects of Agent Orange, and the effort of a handful of biologists to save the world's rarest animals.

When young Jim Richards left the army to make to chase a dream, he had no language skills, no money and no idea, just the kind of gold lust that has driven fortune hunters throughout history. And when he struck gold and diamonds in the remote rivers of Guyana, his problems and his success grew in equal measure. Jim Richards has done it all: dived for diamonds in the piranha-infested rivers of South America; discovered a fabulously rich goldmine in the Australian outback; got caught up in the world's biggest mining scam in Indonesia; and even started a gold rush in the war-torn jungles of Laos. Jim Richards has gone on to found a string of successful mining businesses. Today he is one of the industry's most respected executives – although his many enemies would disagree.

The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta (1854) is a novel by John Rollin Ridge. Published under his birth name Yellow Bird, from Cheesquatalawny in Cherokee, The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta was the first novel from a Native American author. Despite its popular success worldwide—the novel was translated into French and Spanish—Ridge’s work was a financial failure due to bootleg copies and widespread plagiarism. Recognized today as a groundbreaking work of nineteenth century fiction, The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta is a powerful novel that investigates American racism, illustrates the struggle for financial independence among marginalized communities, and dramatizes the lives of outlaws seeking fame, fortune, and vigilante justice. Born in Mexico, Joaquin Murieta came to California in search of gold. Despite his belief in the American Dream, he soon faces violence and racism from white settlers who see his success as a miner as a personal affront. When his wife is raped by a mob of white men and after Joaquin is beaten by a group of horse thieves, he loses all hope of living alongside Americans and turns to a life of vigilantism. Joined by a posse of similarly enraged Mexican-American men, Joaquin becomes a fearsome bandit with a reputation for brutality and stealth. Based on the life of Joaquin Murrieta Carrillo, also known as The Robin Hood of the West, The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta would serve as inspiration for Johnston McCulley’s beloved pulp novel hero Zorro. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of John Rollin Ridge’s The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta is a classic work of Native American literature reimagined for modern readers.

Did you know that an estimated 5,000 blacks were an early and integral part of the California Gold Rush? Did you know that black history in California precedes Gold Rush history by some 300 years? Did you know that in California during the Gold Rush, blacks created one of the wealthiest, most culturally advanced, most politically active communities in the nation? Few people are aware of the intriguing, dynamic often wholly inspirational stories of African American argonauts, from backgrounds as diverse as those of their less sturdy- complexioned peers. Defying strict California fugitive slave laws and an unforgiving court testimony ban in a state that declared itself free, black men and women combined skill, ambition and courage and rose to meet that daunting challenge with dignity, determination and even a certain elan, leaving behind a legacy that has gone starkly under-reported. Mainstream history tends to contribute to the illusion that African Americans were all but absent from the California Gold Rush experience. This remarkable book, illustrated with dozens of photos, offers definitive contradiction to that illusion and opens a door that leads the reader into a forgotten world long shrouded behind the shadowy curtains of time."

From the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, bestselling historian, and author of Our First Civil War—the epic story of the California Gold Rush, “a fine, robust telling of one of the greatest adventure stories in history" (David McCullough, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of John Adams). The California Gold Rush inspired a new American dream—the “dream of instant wealth, won by audacity and good luck.” The discovery of gold on the American River in 1848 triggered the most astonishing mass movement of peoples since the Crusades. It drew fortune-seekers from the ends of the earth, accelerated America’s imperial expansion, and exacerbated the tensions that exploded in the Civil War. H.W. Brands tells his epic story from multiple perspectives: of adventurers John and Jessie Fremont, entrepreneur Leland Stanford, and the wry observer Samuel Clemens—side by side with prospectors, soldiers, and scoundrels. He imparts a visceral sense of the distances they traveled, the suffering they endured, and the fortunes they made and lost. Impressive in its scholarship and overflowing with life, The Age of Gold is history in the grand traditions of Stephen Ambrose and David McCullough.

From the author of Hellacious California!, deeply human stories of the California Gold Rush generation, full of brutality, tragedy, humor, and prosperity. In less than ten years, more than 300,000 people made the journey to California, some from as far away as Chile and China. Many of them were dreamers seeking a better life, like Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, who eventually became the first African American judge, and Eliza Farnham, an early feminist who founded California's first association to advocate for women's civil rights. Still others were eccentrics—perhaps none more so than San Francisco's self-styled king, Norton I, Emperor of the United States. As Gold Rush Stories relates the social tumult of the world rushing in, so too does it unearth the environmental consequences of the influx, including the destructive flood of yellow ooze (known as “slickens”) produced by the widespread and relentless practice of hydraulic mining. In the hands of a native son of the Sierra, these stories and dozens more reveal the surprising and untold complexities of the Gold Rush. “Seamlessly fuses academic rigor, original reporting and emotional intensity into one meditation on an era.... If the task of the historian is to be faithful to lost truths, then Noy's latest exploration succeeds on every level, and does so in a way that will keep readers wanting to dig deeper into the past.”—Scott Thomas Anderson, Sierra Lodestar “An original and lively look at all the usual suspects, plus bears, weather, women, Joaquín, disappointment and dissipation…. Exhaustively researched and highly entertaining.”—JoAnn Levy, author of They Saw the Elephant: Women in the California Gold Rush

Slumach’s Gold chronicles what is possibly Canada’s greatest lost-mine story. It searches out the truth behind a Salish man’s hanging for murder in 1891 and tracks the intriguing legend about him that grew after his death. It was a legend that turned into a drama of international fascination when Slumach—the hanged criminal—was mysteriously linked to gold nuggets “the size of walnuts.” The stories claimed that Slumach had placed a curse on a hidden motherlode to protect it from interlopers and trespassers just before he plunged to his death “at the wrong end of a five-strand rope.” Although many have attempted to find Slumach’s gold over the past 100 years, following tantalizing clues that are part of the legend itself, none have succeeded—or have they? Rick Antonson, Mary Trainer and Brian Antonson have diligently sifted through history and myth, separating fact from fiction, but leaving the legend intact—along with the promise of gold yet to be found by some future gold seeker.