The Elusive Eden: A New History of California

The Elusive Eden charts the historical development of California, beginning with landscape and climate and the development of Native cultures, and continues through the census of 2010 and the election of Jerry Brown to his third term as governor. It portrays a land of remarkable richness and complexity, settled by waves of people with diverse cultures from around the world. Organized in ten parts, each part develops a major theme or issue in the chronological development of the state. The first chapter in Parts II through IX is an in-depth narrative spotlight of an individual or group at a critical moment of change. In Parts I and X, the first chapter helps to place California's whole story in context.

For additional resources, please see co-author, Mary Ann Irwin's site: http://www.TeachingElusiveEden.com.

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currently engaged in an investigation of the work of several nineteenth-century photographers of California for use as historical documents and assembling a selection of his own images for publication.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 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.

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).