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Josh Sides tells the remarkable stories of the men and women who claimed homesteads in California and began a perilous quest to attain the American Dream at virtually any cost.
List of contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction
1. Not Much Else Beside
2. A Country of Plantations and Estates
3. Instant Relics
4. Hard-Bitten Country
5. Violent Paradise
6. Swindles and Salvation in the Antelope Valley
7. Mexican Lands in Mexican Hands
8. Floods and Utopias
9. Taming the Colorado Desert
10. Imperial Valley Dreams
11. Crashing the Orange Gates
12. Exacting Lives in the Breadbasket
13. The Rarified Bay Area
14. Among the Trees of the North Coast
15. Under the Shadow of Mount Lassen
Conclusion: Remembering Homesteading
Acknowledgments
Appendix: Number of Homesteads per County and Year
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Josh Sides is Whitsett Professor of California History, California State University at Northridge. He is the author of
L.A. City Limits: African American Los Angeles from the Great Depression to the Present and
Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco, winner of the Bullough Prize and the Lewis Mumford Prize.
Summary
Josh Sides tells the remarkable stories of the men and women who claimed homesteads in California and began a perilous quest to attain the American Dream at virtually any cost.
