“Teems with bittersweet compounds of 19th-century nefariousness, including . . . gambling, knife fights, the demon drink, con artistry, and prostitution.” —Los Angeles Review of Books In 1855 an ex-miner lamented that nineteenth-century California “can and does furnish the best bad things,” including “purer liquors . . . finer tobacco, truer guns and pistols, larger dirks and bowie knives, and prettier courtezans [sic]” than anywhere else in America. Lured by boons of gold and other exploitable resources, California’s settler population mushroomed under Mexican and early American control, and this period of rapid transformation gave rise to a freewheeling culture best epitomized by its entertainments. Hellacious California tours the rambunctious and occasionally appalling amusements of the Golden State: gambling, gun duels, knife fights, gracious dining and gluttony, prostitution, fandangos, cigars, con artistry, and the demon drink. Historian Gary Noy unearths myriad primary sources, many of which have never before been published, to spin his true tall tales that are by turns humorous and horrifying. Whether detailing the exploits of an inebriated stallion, gambling parlors as a reinforcement and subversion of racial norms, armed skirmishes over eggs, or the ins and outs of the “Spirit Lover” scam, Noy expertly situates these stories in the context of a live-for-the-moment society characterized by audacity, bigotry, and risk. “Confidently carries the reader into the everyday lives of early Californians. The focus on Californians’ popular pastimes . . . with an eye on vice, decadence, and scandal, makes this book a rowdy tour.” —Dr. Patrick Ettinger, Professor of History, California State University, Sacramento; Former Director of CSUS Public History Program and the Capital Campus Oral History Program

In 1855 an ex-miner lamented that nineteenth-century California "can and does furnish the best bad things," including "purer liquors...finer tobacco, truer guns and pistols, larger dirks and bowie knives, and prettier courtezans [sic]" than anywhere else in America. Lured by boons of gold and other exploitable resources, California's settler population mushroomed under Mexican and early American control, and this period of rapid transformation gave rise to a freewheeling culture best epitomized by its entertainments. Hellacious California tours the rambunctious and occasionally appalling amusements of the Golden State: gambling, gun duels, knife fights, gracious dining and gluttony, prostitution, fandangos, cigars, con artistry, and the demon drink. Historian Gary Noy unearths myriad primary sources, many of which have never before been published, to spin his true tall tales that are by turns humorous and horrifying. Whether detailing the exploits of an inebriated stallion, gambling parlors as a reinforcement and subversion of racial norms, armed skirmishes over eggs, or the ins and outs of the "Spirit Lover" scam, Noy expertly situates these stories in the context of a live-for-the-moment society characterized by audacity, bigotry, and risk. Published in collaboration with Sierra College Press.

Nature's Mountain Mansion is the first anthology on Yosemite that focuses exclusively on the nineteenth century, the critical period in which Yosemite was "discovered" by an expanding nation and transformed into one of the country's most visited national parks. While there are volumes that provide readings about Yosemite in the nineteenth century, few provide critical--sometimes even disparaging--eyewitness reflections on the Yosemite experience, and none include excerpts from the government documents that defined the future of the park, such as the Yosemite Valley Grant Act of 1864. This anthology collects selections from fiction, nonfiction, and government documents that demonstrate the glory, the brutality, and the controversies surrounding this extraordinary and much-loved landscape. Some selections have not appeared in print since their original publication, while others have not been republished or excerpted for decades.

The West has figured in the American imagination under many guises: as the last best place on earth, a refuge, an escape, a land of opportunity, but also as a place of conquest and failure. Where Lewis and Clark saw great possibilities, Native cultures found disappointment and loss. This collection presents the diverse and often contradictory accounts that make up the mosaic of the nineteenth-century American West. From Thomas Hart Benton?s famous speech in the Senate when he argued that non-white civilizations must fall before the western expansion of white Americans to Black Elk?s story of a way of life lost on the frozen ground at Wounded Knee, Gary Noy offers a representative sampling of the many Wests that historians have strug-gled to define for over a century. Distant Horizon chronicles the dusty world of the cowboy, the hard-scrabble existence of the farmer and the settler, and the miner?s vision of golden glory. It examines the independent nature of the explorer and mountain man and the sometimes heroic, sometimes cruel existence of the soldier. We hear the voices of those outside the mainstream of power?women and Westerners of color?and explore the most tragic element of Western history: the confinement, subjugation, and extermination of Native Americans. No other single volume provides as many readings on as many topics in the history of the American West.

The literary Sierra Nevada as seen by writers from Muir to Twain to Stegner and Snyder. Over 50 inspired pieces from Indian tale to modern story.

After fourteen years as the perfect suburban housewife, soccer mom, and political wife, Kate Connor secretly returns to her old profession as a demon hunter, fending off demon attacks, trying to keep an eye on a mysterious new high school teacher who looks strangely familiar, and dealing with her teenage daughter's infatuation with a surfer dude. Reprint.

In Ghosthunting Southern California author Sally Richards takes readers on an eerie journey through the region on a series of paranormal investigations to historic locations marred by tragedy and unfortunate happenstance that have caused the dead to rise. This collection brings well-known paranormal researchers, history, and evidence collected with state-of-the-art equipment together for chilling non-fiction accounts of haunted Southern California. The stories leave readers with a sense of deep interest to find out what lies in the murky darkness beyond. Sally Richards, historian, paranormal investigator, and spiritualist medium brings history alive as she investigates locations with high-profile paranormal experts using state-of-the-art equipment, historians, and people who share a similar curiosity of the paranormal to bring you the latest on "haunted" locations throughout Southern California. From the Mexican border to Santa Barbara, readers find chilling accounts of paranormal activity. Whether readers are veterans of ghost hunting, paranormal neophytes, or armchair travelers, this book offers fresh information and a style that puts readers right into the paranormal action.

Required reading for anyone who buys and enjoys wine, this newly revised seventh edition of the most comprehensive ratings guide includes prices and tasting notes for more than 30,000 wines produced in the United States and abroad.

Visit VirtualVenice.info Pat Hartman´s first book, Call Someplace Paradise, was concerned with the public face of Venice, California - the boardwalk and boutique Venice visited by between one and two hundred thousand tourists each weekend. Ghost Town is about the other Venice. There is a book genre described by Russ Rymer as "inspecting America´s racial trauma through the lens of private experience, as it plays out in the daily difficulties of particular persons in one or another microcosmic place." Here the microcosm is Oakwood, a hotbed of diversity and danger called Ghost Town by its own citizens. The particular persons are a white single mother, age 30, and her 11-year-old, half-black daughter, along with a stellar cast of roommates, boyfriends, and neighbors. Ghost Town: A Venice California Life is a psychological adventure story that takes place in a challenging environment where many people would never consider trying to live. Much has been said and written about racial dynamics by people who, however well-informed and well-intentioned, may talk the talk but haven´t walked the walk. Whether by lack of inclination or of opportunity, many experts on race relations have never actually lived in a racially mixed neighborhood, let alone where their own group is a minority. In an environment that forces thought about race issues every single day, it´s a different world. How are attitudes about race formed? Why is it that even the most willing participants of the melting pot sometimes can´t take the heat? These and other questions are precisely as relevant now as they were in the period covered here, 1978-84. Unfortunately the subject of race will probably continue to be relevant into the next millennium and beyond, given that the human race as a whole is still around that long. Despite being burglarized, mugged, vandalized, menaced, caught in the black/chicano crossfire, and visited by men in suits who travel in pairs, the author found existence in Oakwood rewarding and positive an many ways. (Film director Barbet Schroeder, who lived in Oakwood during the same time period, told an interviewer it was "the best year of my life so far.") Like the diary of Samuel Pepys in London, like Alexander King´s memoirs of Greenwich Village, Ghost Town is a record of a fascinating and frightening urban environment through the eyes of an articulate and meticulous observer. Visit VirtualVenice.info