Folio Society Published Works Number 3307
Brands, H W - The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream
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Brands, H W - The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream (Published in by The Folio Society in 2015. Utilising the stories of the men and women caught up in a period of extraordinary change, H. W. Brands has created an epic portrait of the Gold Rush, illustrated in this edition with rare contemporary photography. On 24 January 1848, the carpenter James Marshall noticed some sparkling flecks in a dry riverbed at Coloma, California. Having discovered, to his excited disbelief, that the shining nuggets were malleable, but not breakable, he approached his colleagues and uttered four words which would go down in history: 'I have found it'. Marshall's discovery of gold at Coloma on the American River, writes the distinguished historian H. W. Brands, was 'one of those rare moments that divide human existence into before and after'. It triggered 'the most astonishing mass movement of peoples since the Crusades', as fortune-seekers from all over the world flocked to California; their journey 'was the epic of the age, a saga of world history, an adventure on the largest scale'. The new state's population boomed from 15,000 in 1848 to 250,000 four years later, while the Gold Rush inspired a new American dream: the 'dream of instant wealth, won by audacity and good luck'. )
