Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
H.W. Brands holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin. A New York Times bestselling author, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography for The First American and Traitor to His Class.
H.W. Brands's website
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Bold Type: What
prompted you to take up the story of the California gold rush?
H.W. Brands: It was really a subject I returned to. I grew up on
the West Coast in Portland, Oregon and had learned about the gold rush when
I was in school. It may get more attention in schools on the West Coast than
in the East, or at least it did when I was growing up. Now I see history
textbooks where the whole period gets one paragraph. Later when I was living
in California I would go out on weekends to visit the gold rush country. I'm
a twentieth century historian who has written a lot about the 18th century.
Another of the reasons I wanted to write about the 19th century was that
it's familiar even though it's not. A lot of the institutions and actors are
known to the readers: the Congress, the debate over slavery, the Indian wars
and the railroad. Unlike in earlier books, I don't have to spend a lot of
backstory on British court politics, for example.
BT: Your earlier book The First American used the life of Benjamin
Franklin to trace the birth and growth of a distinct American identity. The
evolution of that identity is also a theme in The Age of Gold, but the means ...
Born in Peru and raised in Chile, Isabel Allende is the author of a number of bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including The House of the Spirits, Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, Paula, and In the Midst of Winter. ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Age of Gold
Try:
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by Isabel Allende
Rinker Buck began his career in journalism at the Berkshire Eagle and was a longtime staff writer for the Hartford Courant. He has written for Vanity Fair, New York, Life, and many other publications, and his work has won the... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Age of Gold
Try:
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by Rinker Buck
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