The Elusive Eden: A New History of California - Hardcover

Richard B. Rice; William A. Bullough; Richard J. Orsi

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9780394341576: The Elusive Eden: A New History of California

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0394341570 ISBN 13: 9780394341576

Publisher: Knopf, 1988

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"The Elusive Eden" charts the historical development of California, beginning with the evolution of the landscape and climate and the arrival of the first inhabitants, the Indians, through social, political and environmental controversies of the present and the future. The book portrays a land of remarkable richness and complexity, settled by waves of people from diverse cultures. The text is organized chronologically into 10 parts, each developing a major theme or issue for a particular period in California's history. The first chapter of each part is a narrative that spotlights and dramatizes the personal responses of significant individuals at critical moments of historical change. The authors stress issues of current importance such as: ethnic groups, women, environmental history and social and cultural history.

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About the Author:

Richard B. Rice received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Berkeley. He was a Staff Assistant to the President and Assistant to the Vice President of the University of California before going to California State University, Hayward, where he also served as a Department Chairman, Division Head, and Dean. He taught United States and California history at Hayward from 1960 to 1995, part of that time as an Emeritus Professor on a faculty early retirement program. He is also an associate of the Winthrop Associates, a cultural research firm, and operates a 300-acre farm in northeastern California.

William A. Bullough is a Professor Emeritus of History at California State University, Hayward. In 1970, he received his Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara, after teaching in the state’s public schools for ten years. He is the author of Cities and Schools in the Gilded Age: The Evolution of an Urban Institution (1974), The Blind Boss and His City: Christopher Augustine Buckley and Nineteenth-Century San Francisco (1979), and articles in The San Francisco Irish, 1850-1976, (James P. Walsh, ed., 1978), The Historian, Pacific Historical Review, and California History. Professor Bullough is an accomplished photographer who has published and exhibited his prints and written articles for Darkroom Photography and similar journals. He is currently engaged in an investigation of the work of several nineteenth-century photographers of California for use as historical documents and assembling a selection of his own images for publication.

Richard J. Orsi is an Emeritus Professor of History at California State University, Hayward. A graduate of Occidental College in Los Angeles, he received his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has published articles and book reviews in California History, Pacific Historian, Agricultural History, and The Journal of American History. He is the author of A List of References for the History of Agriculture in California (1974) and is nearing completion of another book, “A Railroad and the Development of the American West: The Southern Pacific Company, 1860-1930.” HE has received fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Huntington Library, and the Newberry Library. He is currently editor of California History, the quarterly of the California Historical Society. He also edited (with Alfred A. Runtle and Marlene Smith-Baranzini) Yosemite and Sequoia: A Century of California National Parks (1993).

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