In the spring of 1937, Daniel Fuchs, twenty-seven years old and the author of three acclaimed novels of Brooklyn tenement life, came to Hollywood to bang out a treatment of one of his short stories. His thirteen-week contract turned into a permanent residence-and a lifelong love affair. "Writing for the movies was fine," he would later recall, "the freedom and fun, the hard work," but even finer were the movies themselves-team-built, mass-market miracles, "brisk and full of urgent meaning." Finest of all were the people-hustling producers, inscrutable directors, cracker-jack screenwriters, and charismatic stars-their virtues and flaws and egos and disappointments all visible in high relief "because the sunlight over everything was so clear and brilliant." Fuchs worked with the best: Warners and Metro and RKO, Wilder and Huston and Joe Pasternak, William Faulkner and Irwin Shaw, Raft and Cagney and Doris Day. He spent his days crafting screenplays, but off the lot he continued to write prose, mainly stories for The New Yorker and Collier's and "Letters from Hollywood" for Commentary. The Golden West collects, for the first time, the best of Fuchs's writings about the movie business, from a novice screenwriter's anxious diaries (1937-38) to a fifty-year veteran's mellow memoirs (1989). The centerpiece of the book is "West of the Rockies," a haunting short novel, set in the late 1950s, about a half-mad woman, immature and incapable, who is, almost despite herself, a star, "a quantity indefinable, ephemeral, everlastingly elusive-Hollywood's chief stock in trade." It is also a bitter portrait of the star's agent, a grifter who is tempted to use her and her weaknesses to his own ends. Fuchs loved Hollywood, but his affection didn't blind him to the town's Babylon aspect: he never blinked when depicting the conniving and the treachery, the dysfunction and the waste. He saw life as it is, gold and tinsel both, and described it without falling into easy sentiment or condescending laughter. He is the Bellow of the Brown Derby, the Chekhov of the back lot. Book jacket.

An unrivaled collection features stories from the most famous masters of Western fiction, including Louis L'Amour's The Trail to Crazy, which was the basis for the movie of the same name, and Max Brand's Jargan, which contains never-before-published material.

A collection of western American art includes color plates depicting more than four hundred paintings and sculptures by such artists as Charles M. Russell, Alfred Jacob Miller, George Caleb Bingham, William Tylee, Charles Wimar, and many others

NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION 5 UNDER 35 PICK. FINALIST FOR THE VCU CABELL FIRST NOVELIST AWARD. LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION'S FIRST NOVEL PRIZE. Named one of the Best Books of 2018 by NPR, Bookforum and Bustle. One of Entertainment Weekly's 10 Best Debut Novels of 2018. An Amazon Best Book of the Month and named a fall read by Buzzfeed, Nylon, Entertainment Weekly, Elle, Vanity Fair, Vulture, Refinery29 and Mind Body Green A gorgeous, raw debut novel about a young woman braving the ups and downs of motherhood in a fractured America In Lydia Kiesling’s razor-sharp debut novel, The Golden State, we accompany Daphne, a young mother on the edge of a breakdown, as she flees her sensible but strained life in San Francisco for the high desert of Altavista with her toddler, Honey. Bucking under the weight of being a single parent—her Turkish husband is unable to return to the United States because of a “processing error”—Daphne takes refuge in a mobile home left to her by her grandparents in hopes that the quiet will bring clarity. But clarity proves elusive. Over the next ten days Daphne is anxious, she behaves a little erratically, she drinks too much. She wanders the town looking for anyone and anything to punctuate the long hours alone with the baby. Among others, she meets Cindy, a neighbor who is active in a secessionist movement, and befriends the elderly Alice, who has traveled to Altavista as she approaches the end of her life. When her relationships with these women culminate in a dangerous standoff, Daphne must reconcile her inner narrative with the reality of a deeply divided world. Keenly observed, bristling with humor, and set against the beauty of a little-known part of California, The Golden State is about class and cultural breakdowns, and desperate attempts to bridge old and new worlds. But more than anything, it is about motherhood: its voracious worry, frequent tedium, and enthralling, wondrous love.

The Girl of the Golden West is a theatrical play written, produced and directed by David Belasco, set in the California Gold Rush. The four-act melodrama opened at the old Belasco Theatre in New York on November 14, 1905 and ran for 224 performances. Blanche Bates originated the role of The Girl, Robert C. Hilliard played Dick Johnson, and Frank Keenan played Jack Rance. Bates was joined by Charles Millward and Cuyler Hastings for two-week Broadway runs in 1907 and 1908.[1] William Furst composed the play's incidental music. The play toured throughout the US for several years.

Incisive essays on Patty Hearst and Reagan, the Central Park jogger and the Santa Ana winds, from the New York Times–bestselling author of South and West. In these eleven essays covering the national scene from Washington, DC; California; and New York, the acclaimed author of Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album “capture[s] the mood of America” and confirms her reputation as one of our sharpest and most trustworthy cultural observers (The New York Times). Whether dissecting the 1988 presidential campaign, exploring the commercialization of a Hollywood murder, or reporting on the “sideshows” of foreign wars, Joan Didion proves that she is one of the premier essayists of the twentieth century, “an articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time” (Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times Book Review). Highlights include “In the Realm of the Fisher King,” a portrait of the White House under the stewardship of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, two “actors on location;” and “Girl of the Golden West,” a meditation on the Patty Hearst case that draws an unexpected and insightful parallel between the kidnapped heiress and the emigrants who settled California. “Sentimental Journeys” is a deeply felt study of New York media coverage of the brutal rape of a white investment banker in Central Park, a notorious crime that exposed the city’s racial and class fault lines. Dedicated to Henry Robbins, Didion’s friend and editor from 1966 until his death in 1979, After Henry is an indispensable collection of “superior reporting and criticism” from a writer on whom we have relied for more than fifty years “to get the story straight” (Los Angeles Times).

The first transcontinental railroads brought fashionable easterners to the American West. In the 1880s and 1890s they traveled in sumptuous “palace cars” and stayed at luxury hotels. Westerners with an eye on promotion turned to what they took to be their own traditions. After 1900 a wilder West became popular; the Indian was rediscovered, and the cowboy returned to the saddle, if only during fiestas and rodeos. Increasing numbers of tourists headed for “natural curiosities” such as the sequoias of Yosemite and the geysers of Yellowstone. Then mass-produced automobiles and cheap air, rail, and bus fares changed the face of western tourism forever. In Search of the Golden West offers splendid old-time photographs and descriptions of nabobs, hucksters, naturalists, dudes, realtors, and motorists—all those who sought the reality and created the myth of the Golden West.

Friendship. Loyalty. Charity. These are the values of the Native Sons of the Golden West, the organization that, since 1875, has dedicated itself to the mission of preserving the physical vestiges of California history. Through the years, this group has helped to save, memorialize, and restore such treasures as Sutter's Fort, the Monterey Custom House, the Vallejo Petaluma Adobe, and many of the California missions. Starting out in San Francisco, the Native Sons now has 75 "parlors," or chapters, statewide. With nearly 9,000 history-minded members, the Native Sons are known worldwide for their pageantry, pomp, and parades, as they keep alive the traditions of history.