Most accounts of California’s role in the Civil War focus on the northern part of the state, San Francisco in particular. In Los Angeles in Civil War Days, John W. Robinson looks to the southern half and offers an enlightening sketch of Los Angeles and its people, politics, and economic trends from 1860 to 1865. Drawing on contemporary reports in the Los AngelesStar,Southern News, and other sources, Robinson shows how the war came to Los Angeles and narrates the struggle between the pro-Southern faction and the Unionists. Los Angeles in the early 1860s was a developing town, lacking many of the refinements of civilization that San Francisco then enjoyed, and was much smaller than the bustling metropolis we know today. The book focuses on the effects of the war on Los Angeles, but Robinson also considers social and economic problems to provide a broader view of the community and its place in the nation. The Conscription Act and devalued greenbacks encited public unrest, and the cattle-killing drought of 1862–64, a smallpox epidemic, and recurrent vigilantism challenged Angelenos as well. California historians and those interested in the city’s historical record will find this book a fascinating addition to the body of California’s Civil War history.

Los Angeles in the early 1860s was a developing town, lacking many of the refinements of civilization that San Francisco then enjoyed, and was much smaller than the bustling metropolis we know today. The book focuses on the effects of the war on Los Angeles, but Robinson also considers social and economic problems to provide a broader view of the community and its place in the nation. The Conscription Act and devalued greenbacks encited public unrest, and the cattle-killing drought of 1862-64, a smallpox epidemic, and recurrent vigilantism challenged Angelenos as well.

Most accounts of California’s role in the Civil War focus on the northern part of the state, San Francisco in particular. In Los Angeles in Civil War Days, John W. Robinson looks to the southern half and offers an enlightening sketch of Los Angeles and its people, politics, and economic trends from 1860 to 1865. Drawing on contemporary reports in the Los Angeles Star, Southern News, and other sources, Robinson shows how the war came to Los Angeles and narrates the struggle between the pro-Southern faction and the Unionists. Los Angeles in the early 1860s was a developing town, lacking many of the refinements of civilization that San Francisco then enjoyed, and was much smaller than the bustling metropolis we know today. The book focuses on the effects of the war on Los Angeles, but Robinson also considers social and economic problems to provide a broader view of the community and its place in the nation. The Conscription Act and devalued greenbacks encited public unrest, and the cattle-killing drought of 1862–64, a smallpox epidemic, and recurrent vigilantism challenged Angelenos as well. California historians and those interested in the city’s historical record will find this book a fascinating addition to the body of California’s Civil War history.

Breaks new ground in its coverage of California during the Civil War era, in terms of geography and social groupings.

In the most comprehensive investigation of the Los Angeles Public Library’s early history and architectural genesis ever undertaken, Kenneth Breisch chronicles the institution’s first six decades, from its founding as a private library association in 1872 through the completion of the iconic Central Library building in 1933. During this time, the library evolved from an elite organization ensconced in two rooms in downtown LA into one of the largest public library systems in the United States—with architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue’s building, a beloved LA landmark, as its centerpiece. Goodhue developed a new style, fully integrating the building’s sculptural and epigraphic program with its architectural forms to express a complex iconography. Working closely with sculptor Lee Oskar Lawrie and philosopher Hartley Burr Alexander, he created a great civic monument that, combined with the library’s murals, embodies an overarching theme: the light of learning. “A building should read like a book, from its title entrance to its alley colophon,” wrote Alexander—a narrative approach to design that serves as a key to understanding Goodhue’s architectural gem. Breisch draws on a wealth of primary source material to tell the story of one of the most important American buildings of the twentieth century and illuminates the formation of an indispensible modern public institution: the American public library.

Lincoln and California portrays the previously unrecognized ties between President Abraham Lincoln and the Golden State, portraying his key relationships with close friends and personal acquaintances that helped influence the imperiled Union.

Winner of Columbia University's 2024 Bancroft Prize in American History 2024 Spur Award Winner Named a Best Civil War Book of 2023 by Civil War Monitor In Continental Reckoning renowned historian Elliott West presents a sweeping narrative of the American West and its vital role in the transformation of the nation. In the 1840s, by which time the United States had expanded to the Pacific, what would become the West was home to numerous vibrant Native cultures and vague claims by other nations. Thirty years later it was organized into states and territories and bound into the nation and world by an infrastructure of rails, telegraph wires, and roads and by a racial and ethnic order, with its Indigenous peoples largely dispossessed and confined to reservations. Unprecedented exploration uncovered the West’s extraordinary resources, beginning with the discovery of gold in California within days of the United States acquiring the territory following the Mexican-American War. As those resources were developed, often by the most modern methods and through modern corporate enterprise, half of the contiguous United States was physically transformed. Continental Reckoning guides the reader through the rippling, multiplying changes wrought in the western half of the country, arguing that these changes should be given equal billing with the Civil War in this crucial transition of national life. As the West was acquired, integrated into the nation, and made over physically and culturally, the United States shifted onto a course of accelerated economic growth, a racial reordering and redefinition of citizenship, engagement with global revolutions of science and technology, and invigorated involvement with the larger world. The creation of the West and the emergence of modern America were intimately related. Neither can be understood without the other. With masterful prose and a critical eye, West presents a fresh approach to the dawn of the American West, one of the most pivotal periods of American history.