"California: Four Months among the Gold-Finders: Being the Diary of an Expedition from San Francisco to the Gold Districts" by Henry Vizetelly The author wrote this book without ever leaving his home in London. Instead he relied on the correspondence and notes taken by Edwin Bryant, a journalist who spent time in California. The main character of this story, while fictional, is based on Bryant's experience in the state during the Gold Rush, mixed in with multiple fictional accounts.

This fictitious diary about the Californian Gold Rush was widely accepted as genuine, and was a bestseller in 1849.

An event of international significance, the California gold rush created a more diverse, metropolitan society than the world had ever known. In Riches for All, leading scholars reexamine the gold rush, evaluating its trajectory and legacy within a global context of religion and race, economics, technology, law, and culture. The opportunity for instant wealth directly influenced a dynamic range of peoples, including Mormon military veterans, California Indian workers, both slave and free African Americans, Chinese village farmers, skilled Mexican miners, and Chilean merchants. Riches for All gives attention to the varying motivations and experiences of these groups and to their struggles with both racial and religious bigotry. Emphasizing gold rush social history, some contributors examine the roles and influence of women, workers, law-breakers, and law-enforcers. Others consider the long-term impact of this episode on California and the American West and on subsequent gold rushes in Pacific Rim countries and the Klondike. With lively and incisive strokes, these historians sketch the most broadly contextualized and nuanced portrait of the California gold rush to date.

A study of the ways in which Americans from the east, who traveled to the "gold country" of California in 18491851, obtained and used information.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.