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The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War
- Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
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Publisher's summary
Richards explains that Southerners envisioned California as a new market for slaves who could dig for gold, schemed to tie California to the South via railroad, and imagined splitting off the state's southern half as a slave state. We learn how the Gold Rush influenced other regional and national squabbles, and we meet renegade New York Democrat David Broderick, who became a force in San Francisco politics in 1849, and his archrival, William Gwin, a major Mississippi slaveholder. Richards recounts the political battles and the fiery California feuds, duels, and, perhaps, outright murders as the state came shockingly close to being divided in two.
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A Disease in the Public Mind
- A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War
- By: Thomas Fleming
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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By the time his body hung from the gallows for his crimes at Harper’s Ferry, abolitionists had made John Brown a "holy martyr" in the fight against Southern slave owners. But Northern hatred for Southerners had been long in the making. Northern rage was born of the conviction that New England, whose spokesmen and militia had begun the American Revolution, should have been the leader of the new nation. Instead, they had been displaced by Southern "slavocrats" like Thomas Jefferson. And Northern envy only exacerbated the South’s greatest fear: race war.
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Listen skeptically, but still listen
- By David on 04-01-21
By: Thomas Fleming
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James Madison
- By: Richard Brookhiser
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Eminent historian Richard Brookhiser presents a vivid portrait of James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution” and one of America's greatest statesmen.
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OK book but not a biography
- By Joel Mayer on 08-05-12
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The New York Times: Disunion
- Modern Historians Revisit and Reconsider the Civil War from Lincoln's Election to the Emancipation Proclamation
- By: Ted Widmer - editor
- Narrated by: Jennifer Van Dyck, Mark Boyett, Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 19 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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A major new collection of modern commentary - from scholars, historians, and Civil War buffs - on the significant events of the Civil War, culled from The New York Times' popular Disunion online journal.
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Excellent audiobook! Love this format!
- By BVerité on 03-17-15
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Separate
- The Story of Plessy V. Ferguson, and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation
- By: Steve Luxenberg
- Narrated by: Donald Corren
- Length: 19 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court case synonymous with "separate but equal", created remarkably little stir when the justices announced their near-unanimous decision on May 18, 1896. Yet it is one of the most compelling and dramatic stories of the 19th century, whose outcome embraced and protected segregation, and whose reverberations are still felt into the 21st. Separate spans a striking range of characters and landscapes, bound together by the defining issue of their time and ours - race and equality.
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Black and White in shades of grey
- By JKC on 03-15-19
By: Steve Luxenberg
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Polk
- The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America
- By: Walter R. Borneman
- Narrated by: Alan Nebelthau
- Length: 13 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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This is a major political biography of a great American president - who won a war, transformed the government, and doubled the size of the United States...in four years. When Polk was sworn in as the 11th president, what followed was one of the most consequential presidencies in history.
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Polk: One of our most important Preidents
- By Rik GNV on 10-12-08
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Fateful Lightning
- A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction
- By: Allen C. Guelzo
- Narrated by: Brian Holsopple
- Length: 26 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In Fateful Lightning, two-time Lincoln Prize-winning historian Allen C. Guelzo offers a marvelous portrait of the Civil War and its era, covering not only the major figures and epic battles, but also politics, religion, gender, race, diplomacy, and technology. He examines the strategy, the tactics, and the logistics of the Civil War and brings the most recent historical thinking to bear on emancipation, the presidency and the war powers, the blockade and international law, and the role of intellectuals, North and South.
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The worst part of this book is it's title
- By Rodney on 11-19-13
By: Allen C. Guelzo
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American Heritage History of the Presidents
- By: Michael R. Beschloss
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 25 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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From George Washington's reluctant oath-taking through George W. Bush's leadership challenges after September 11, 2001, we view ambitious and fallible men through the new lens of the 21st century. Where did they succeed? Where did they fail? And what do we know now that we could not have known at the time?
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Good but Far from Great
- By Michael on 07-11-20
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Redemption
- The Last Battle of the Civil War
- By: Nicholas Lemann
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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A century after Appomattox, the civil rights movement won full citizenship for black Americans in the South. It should not have been necessary: by 1870 those rights were set in the Constitution. This is the story of the terrorist campaign that took them away.
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A good accouting of the post Civil War suffering
- By KMB Consumer on 08-10-07
By: Nicholas Lemann
What listeners say about The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Charlie Morton
- 04-10-08
A Must For Civil War Buffs
If you think you have read everything about the Civil War this book will probably give you a new point of view. Serious students of the Civil War realize that the Gordian Knot of Antebellum politics was not slavery, only a handful of extremist questioned the right of southerners to own slaves, but the expansion of slaves into the territories, however this is the first book that I know of that looks at the question through the eyes of westerners. That is really what makes this book worth reading, because it makes it clear just how complicated the problem really was.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall
- John M
- 02-21-07
Not typically covered in history class...
This was an extremely interesting book that discusses a time period (between the Gold Rush and the outbreak of the Civil War) in California history that is typically not covered in any depth.
The book opens with a 1859 dual in San Francisco between David Broderick, California's US Senator, and David Terry, a former Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court over slavery-related politics in which Broderick was mortally wounded. It then moves back in time to the discovery of Gold in the Mother Lode and the increasing value of California to the nation. From that point, Richards then demonstrates how political and social tensions became so fierce in California in the 1850's.
The book provides an nice overview of the history of the Gold Rush and then illustrates the surpising number of cross-influences between California and the growing sectional conflict in the nation. It discusses in some detail early California politics in the 1850's and how much it was affected by activist pro-slavery and abolitionist forces.
For example, I was quite surprised the number of times that they proposed dividing California in two - a free Northern half and a pro-slavery Southern half. In fact, a proposal to do just that was approved by both the California Assembly and Senate and signed by the Governor in the late 1850's. Only James Buchanan's relcutance to push it forward to avoid antagonizing an increasingly polarized congress stopped it for good.
This is a great book for people interested in California history or people interested in the build up to the Civil War on a national stage. Readers interested in both topics will be especially delighted. The narrator was very good and the pacing was quick.
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13 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Rob
- 10-08-08
Should have read the Publishers Summary.
It took me awhile to get through this book. I was not expecting a "who's who" of early California political players, but that's what this selection is.
All in all, a fairly interesting listen. Definitely well researched.
The reader did a decent job, as good as historical accounts can be read.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- HC-2 NAS Norfolk '92
- 10-12-16
Unbalanced
Hardly a paragraph seemed to go be without the mention of slavery. it got to where I dreaded the next slavery topic. Simply put, there was just way too much talk about slavery. Part of the history, yes. Contextually , , the main subject, there is just too much of it.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Philip
- 09-08-07
Good book, lousy reading
Title says it all. The reader is dull and plodding. The contents of the book are okay but there's little spark of the excitement about the gold rush days. In any case, a bad reader makes it impossible to listen too.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Alan
- 12-10-17
Misleading title
What disappointed you about The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War?
Despite the title, five percent of the content was about the calif gold rush, ninety five percent about the coming of the civil war.
Any additional comments?
I was had not gotten it.
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