Title
American Alchemy: The California Gold Rush And Middleclass Culture (Cultural Studies Of The United States),Used
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California during the gold rush was a place of disputed claims, shootouts, gambling halls, and prostitution; a place populated by that rough and rebellious figure, the fortyniner; in short, a place that seems utterly unconnected to middleclass culture. In American Alchemy, however, Brian Roberts offers a surprising challenge to this assumption.Roberts points to a longneglected truth of the gold rush: many of the northeastern fortyniners who ventured westward were in fact middleclass in origin, status, and values. Tracing the experiences and adventures both of these men and of the 'unseen' fortyninerswomen who stayed back East while their husbands went out Westhe shows that, whatever else the gold seekers abandoned on the road to California, they did not simply turn their backs on middleclass culture.Ultimately, Roberts argues, the story told here reveals an overlooked chapter in the history of the formation of the middle class. While the acquisition of respectability reflects one stage in this history, he says, the gold rush constitutes a second stagea rebellion against standards of respectability.
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