Download or read book Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush written by Susan Lee Johnson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2000-12-17 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Bancroft Prize The world of the California Gold Rush that comes down to us through fiction and film is one of half-truths. In this brilliant work of social history, Susan Lee Johnson enters the well-worked diggings of Gold Rush history and strikes a rich lode. Johnson explores the dynamic social world created by the Gold Rush in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of Stockton, charting the surprising ways in which the conventions of identity—ethnic, national, and sexual—were reshaped. With a keen eye for character and story, she shows us how this peculiar world evolved over time, and how our cultural memory of the Gold Rush took root.