Lorena Lenity Hays (1827-1860) was born in New York or Pennsylvania, lived in Pennsylvania, Illinois, and following a long overland trip to the west coast, California. She married John Clement Bowmer once she settled in California and lived in the Lone Valley. This diary documents her experiences from 1848 to 1859. The trip from Illinois to California occurred in 1853.

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.

N.T. Wright explores all aspects of evil and how it presents itself in society today. Fully grounded in the story of the Old and New Testaments, this presentation is provocative and hopeful; a fascinating analysis of and response to the fundamental question of evil and justice that faces believers.

Fear of death, the regeneration of life, and the choice between good and evil are universal themes for humanity. This book challenges Christian dogma surrounding these themes. It argues that the concept of ‘a fall’ is an invention based on an incorrect interpretation of what drove the behaviour of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The evidence demonstrating life after death does not necessarily depend on faith alone. We observe the afterlife within the laboratory of life that nature has provided. The proof of death and resurrection is right before our eyes – every species holds a unique blueprint enabling perpetual regeneration. ‘The seed within itself’ has always held the key to everlasting life (Genesis 1:11, 12). Most biblical scholars continue to teach that humanity is subject to intrinsic sin due to a ‘fall’. This book demonstrates that Eve’s transgression was a life-affirming choice which moved humanity from a state of innocence to acknowledge good and evil and understand the concept of choice. That most of us choose good over evil validates Eve’s original decision. We are shown how man-made laws and the earthly trappings of the established churches are constructs aimed at entrenching the authority and power of church hierarchies. These constructs have come to diminish the power of the gospel and obscure the beautiful simplicity of Jesus’ teaching that ‘Christ is within all’ whether a believer, unbeliever, agnostic, or atheist. Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all (Colossians 3:11).