A concise and lively history of California, the most multicultural state in the nation“A masterful history.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)“Faragher takes the reader on a captivating journey through myriad twists and turns of California’s multicultural history, enlivened by stories of people who rarely penetrate our traditional state chronicles.”—Carlos E. Cortés, University of California, RiversideCalifornia is the most multicultural state in America. As John Mack Faragher explains in this new history, California’s natural variety has always supported such diversity, including Native peoples speaking dozens of distinct languages, Spanish and Mexican colonists, gold seekers from all corners of the globe, and successive migrant waves from the eastern United States and from Europe, Latin America, Asia, and the Pacific Islands.Faragher tells the stories of a colorful cast of characters—some famous, others mostly unknown—including African American Archy Lee, who sued for his freedom; Sinkyone Indian woman Sally Bell, who survived genocide; and Jewish schoolgirl Marilyn Greene, who spoke up for her Japanese friends after the attack on Pearl Harbor. California’s diversity has often led to conflict, turmoil, and violence but also to invention, improvisation, and a struggle to achieve multicultural democracy.

This anniversary edition concentrates on the origins of the names currently used for the cities, towns, settlements, mountains, and streams of California, with engrossing accounts of the history of their usage. The dictionary includes a glossary and a bibliography.

The latest groundbreaking tome from Tim Ferriss, the #1 New York Times best-selling author of The 4-Hour Workweek.From the author:“For the last two years, I’ve interviewed more than 200 world-class performers for my podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show. The guests range from super celebs (Jamie Foxx, Arnold Schwarzenegger, etc.) and athletes (icons of powerlifting, gymnastics, surfing, etc.) to legendary Special Operations commanders and black-market biochemists. For most of my guests, it’s the first time they’ve agreed to a two-to-three-hour interview. This unusual depth has helped make The Tim Ferriss Show the first business/interview podcast to pass 100 million downloads.“This book contains the distilled tools, tactics, and ‘inside baseball’ you won’t find anywhere else. It also includes new tips from past guests, and life lessons from new ‘guests’ you haven’t met.“What makes the show different is a relentless focus on actionable details. This is reflected in the questions. For example: What do these people do in the first sixty minutes of each morning? What do their workout routines look like, and why? What books have they gifted most to other people? What are the biggest wastes of time for novices in their field? What supplements do they take on a daily basis?“I don’t view myself as an interviewer. I view myself as an experimenter. If I can’t test something and replicate results in the messy reality of everyday life, I’m not interested.“Everything within these pages has been vetted, explored, and applied to my own life in some fashion. I’ve used dozens of the tactics and philosophies in high-stakes negotiations, high-risk environments, or large business dealings. The lessons have made me millions of dollars and saved me years of wasted effort and frustration.“I created this book, my ultimate notebook of high-leverage tools, for myself. It’s changed my life, and I hope the same for you.”

"In 1770 the political landscape of the San Francisco Bay region was a mosaic of tiny tribal territories, each some eight to twelve miles in diameter, each containing a population of some two hundred to four hundred individuals. By the year 1810, only forty years later, the tribal territories in all but the most northerly reaches of the San Francisco Bay region were empty. The change began when Spanish colonial explorers passed through the region in the year 1769. Soon after, in 1776 and 1777, the Spanish invaders founded the missions of San Francisco de Asis and Santa Clara, respectively."Over the succeeding decades people from one local tribe after another left their villages and moved to the missions. The story of tribal disintegration in the Bay Area is a complex one. No two tribal groups were confronted by the choice to join the missions under exactly the same set of circumstances. There was, however, a common experiential thread over the forty years; each tribe left its homeland for the missions when a significant portion of its members came to believe that the move was the only reasonable alternative in a transformed world. They were not marched to the baptismal font by soldiers with guns (cf. Cook 1943:74)."Although many tribal people came to view themselves as culturally inferior, not every tribal person was impressed by the Spanish invaders.... Most people held mixed feelings of hatred and admiration toward the missions. They struggled with those feelings in a terrible, internally destructive attempt to cope with changes that were beyond their control. Eventually even those people who clearly rejected the values of mission life capitulated, because of changes in their tribal lands, disease, depopulation, and the accompanying collapse of intergroup alliances...."This book is about the independent nations that once lived in the Bay Area and their reaction to the Spanish influence. It is not a study of the Spaniards, or of their motives and plans as agents of western expansion into the San Francisco Bay Area. Spanish behaviors are discussed insofar as they redefined the universe of the native peoples and limited their options for action. Spanish military power thwarted every tribal attempt to drive the Spaniards out or to negotiate with them as equals. So native groups had little to say about the shape of the new order, the location of alien settlements, the distribution of new tools, techniques, and foodstuffs, or the appropriate integration of new customs and religious practices."Day in and day out, throughout the mission era, ambivalent native villagers along the mission-tribal frontier struggled with a choice find a place in the new mission system, or resist its attractions. The decision to reject mission life could be made a thousand times, but the decision to join a mission could be made only once."

The story of the Spanish expedition to found San Diego is told through diary excerpts and the author's comments, taking the reader day-by-day on the journey through the unexplored, desolate wilderness of northern Baja California. Listed for the first time are the names of all Hispanic members of the expedition party. Full-color maps provide a graphic statement of the journey.

Since its release in 2009 The California Missions Source Book has become the definitive reference on the California missions. This third edition includes the 21 missions and San Antonio de Pala, the only mission-era asistencia (submission) which remains intact and continues to serve the descendants of its original Indian community.The Source Book is an indispensable guide to the missions, richly illustrated with images, charts, and maps. The hard cover, spiral bound format makes it extra sturdy for use by scholars in the field, as well as for mission docents and visitors. A valuable resource with a beautiful presentation, The California Mission Source Book is a fine addition to the library of anyone interested in the California Missions.

Franciscan missionary friar Junípero Serra (1713–1784), one of the most widely known and influential inhabitants of early California, embodied many of the ideas and practices that animated the Spanish presence in the Americas. In this definitive biography, translators and historians Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz bring this complex figure to life and illuminate the Spanish period of California and the American Southwest.In Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary, Beebe and Senkewicz focus on Serra’s religious identity and his relations with Native peoples. They intersperse their narrative with new and accessible translations of many of Serra’s letters and sermons, which allows his voice to be heard in a more direct and engaging fashion.Serra spent thirty-four years as a missionary to Indians in Mexico and California. He believed that paternalistic religious rule offered Indians a better life than their oppressive exploitation by colonial soldiers and settlers, which he deemed the only realistic alternative available to them at that time and place. Serra’s unswerving commitment to his vision embroiled him in frequent conflicts with California’s governors, soldiers, native peoples, and even his fellow missionaries. Yet because he prevailed often enough, he was able to place his unique stamp on the first years of California’s history.Beebe and Senkewicz interpret Junípero Serra neither as a saint nor as the personification of the Black Legend. They recount his life from his birth in a small farming village on Mallorca. They detail his experiences in central Mexico and Baja California, as well as the tumultuous fifteen years he spent as founder of the California missions. Serra’s Franciscan ideals are analyzed in their eighteenth-century context, which allows readers to understand more fully the differences and similarities between his world and ours. Combining history, culture, and linguistics, this new study conveys the power and nuance of Serra’s voice and, ultimately, his impact on history.

When in the early 1870s historian Hubert Howe Bancroft sent interviewers out to gather oral histories from the pre-statehood gentry of California, he didn’t count on one thing: the women. When the men weren’t available, the interviewers collected the stories of the women of the household—sometimes almost as an afterthought. These interviews were eventually archived at the University of California, though many were all but forgotten. Testimonios presents thirteen women’s firsthand accounts from the days when California was part of Spain and Mexico. Having lived through the gold rush and seen their country change so drastically, these women understood the need to tell the full story of the people and the places that were their California.

This copious collection of reminiscences, reports, letters, and documents allows readers to experience the vast and varied landscape of early California from the viewpoint of its inhabitants. What emerges is not the Spanish California depicted by casual visitors—a culture obsessed with finery, horses, and fandangos—but an ever-shifting world of aspiration and tragedy, pride and loss. Conflicts between missionaries and soldiers, Indians and settlers, friends and neighbors spill from these pages, bringing the ferment of daily life into sharp focus.

Now in 4 glorious volumes- Book 1- The Spanish Era- The men and women who made California's history are here in flying colors with their lively stories told.

This book began as a venture to collect official and unofficial documents relating to the interval of American military rule. There proved to be thousands, the writings of Presidents, executive officers, and congressmen, naval and military personnel, governors, settlers, and citizens-routine, familiar, wheedling, seductive, blustering, commanding. As the quantity grew, they seemed eager to be heard. But the documents exhibit the traits of their makers. Containing neither the whole truth nor nothing but the truth, they offer many-sided versions of what people believed or wanted others to accept; they must be taken with a grain of salt. Long, sometimes garbled, and always incomplete, the record requires assessment, a referee to appraise the evidence and form his own imperfect conclusions. And any curious or dissenting reader may, by consulting the numerous cited sources, make his own interpretations. References, whenever possible, have been made to materials in some printed form, leading an inquirer to a vast array of historical evidence. Everything herein happened, or so the record tells, and if an assumption has been made, it is that men, issues, and events can be interesting in their own right, without exaggeration. "To exaggerate," a knowing urban child recently observed, "means you put in something to make it more exciting" (Los Angeles Times, Dec. 10, 1978).

“A California classic . . . California, it should be remembered, was very much the wild west, having to wait until 1850 before it could force its way into statehood. so what tamed it? Mr. Starr’s answer is a combination of great men, great ideas and great projects.”—The EconomistFrom the age of exploration to the age of Arnold, the Golden State’s premier historian distills the entire sweep of California’s history into one splendid volume. Kevin Starr covers it all: Spain’s conquest of the native peoples of California in the early sixteenth century and the chain of missions that helped that country exert control over the upper part of the territory; the discovery of gold in January 1848; the incredible wealth of the Big Four railroad tycoons; the devastating San Francisco earthquake of 1906; the emergence of Hollywood as the world’s entertainment capital and of Silicon Valley as the center of high-tech research and development; the role of labor, both organized and migrant, in key industries from agriculture to aerospace. In a rapid-fire epic of discovery, innovation, catastrophe, and triumph, Starr gathers together everything that is most important, most fascinating, and most revealing about our greatest state.Praise for California“[A] fast-paced and wide-ranging history . . . [Starr] accomplishes the feat with skill, grace and verve.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review“Kevin Starr is one of california’s greatest historians, and California is an invaluable contribution to our state’s record and lore.”—MarIa ShrIver, journalist and former First Lady of California“A breeze to read.”—San Francisco

A complex look at California Native ecological practices as a model for environmental sustainability and conservation.John Muir was an early proponent of a view we still hold today—that much of California was pristine, untouched wilderness before the arrival of Europeans. But as this groundbreaking book demonstrates, what Muir was really seeing when he admired the grand vistas of Yosemite and the gold and purple flowers carpeting the Central Valley were the fertile gardens of the Sierra Miwok and Valley Yokuts Indians, modified and made productive by centuries of harvesting, tilling, sowing, pruning, and burning. Marvelously detailed and beautifully written, Tending the Wild is an unparalleled examination of Native American knowledge and uses of California's natural resources that reshapes our understanding of native cultures and shows how we might begin to use their knowledge in our own conservation efforts.M. Kat Anderson presents a wealth of information on native land management practices gleaned in part from interviews and correspondence with Native Americans who recall what their grandparents told them about how and when areas were burned, which plants were eaten and which were used for basketry, and how plants were tended. The complex picture that emerges from this and other historical source material dispels the hunter-gatherer stereotype long perpetuated in anthropological and historical literature. We come to see California's indigenous people as active agents of environmental change and stewardship. Tending the Wild persuasively argues that this traditional ecological knowledge is essential if we are to successfully meet the challenge of living sustainably.