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Aug. 25th, 2009 11:09 amFor some reason, I am completely fascinated by is California history. I don't know why! I went to college in California, which was fun, but I never felt a super-strong connection to the area and I don't really want to go back on a long-term basis or anything. Still, for some reason, if you set a story in early California I am pretty much guaranteed to sit up and pay attention. And then start dorking out all over the history and kind of forget about the need for the plot to make sense. Uh.
(I mean, part of it is obviously that California history is super fascinating, but it's not like everywhere else's history isn't fascinating also! HISTORY IS COOL, GUYS. /end dorkout.)
( Some fiction authors I love for their bits of California history )
Nonfictionwise,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nextian recently recced me Frances Dinkelspiel's Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California as a good book on California history, and it is a seriously cool read. I mean, as far as early California Big Names go, Isaias Hellman was pretty short on scandalous gossip - he was an extremely respectable banker! He loved his wife and kids! It is ever so slightly possible that he may have been associated with some people who bribed the mayor one time! - but it nonetheless seriously fascinating, both in terms of Jewish history (Hellman was part of a large group of Jewish immigrants who were friends and relatives back home, and helped each other out as they started forming GINORMOUSLY SUCCESSFUL businesses in the States) and as a portrait of the development of Los Angeles and San Francisco from a couple of hastily-thrown-up gold-rush towns to the giant, overdeveloped cities that we know and love today. The change over the sixty years that Hellman lived and worked in California is kind of incredible - you get the era of stagecoach robberies and a murder-a-day in LA, the San Francisco earthquake, the founding of the electric companies, WWI, all together.
I am definitely on the lookout for more books of California history, and I am also on the lookout for more fiction books that are full of California history - so, flist, I have two requests for you today. Either rec me books, fiction or nonfiction, that are awesome for California-history dorkouts, or tell me about a period of history that fills you with your own history-kink dorky joy, and I will see if I can rec you anything likewise!
(I mean, part of it is obviously that California history is super fascinating, but it's not like everywhere else's history isn't fascinating also! HISTORY IS COOL, GUYS. /end dorkout.)
( Some fiction authors I love for their bits of California history )
Nonfictionwise,
nextian recently recced me Frances Dinkelspiel's Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California as a good book on California history, and it is a seriously cool read. I mean, as far as early California Big Names go, Isaias Hellman was pretty short on scandalous gossip - he was an extremely respectable banker! He loved his wife and kids! It is ever so slightly possible that he may have been associated with some people who bribed the mayor one time! - but it nonetheless seriously fascinating, both in terms of Jewish history (Hellman was part of a large group of Jewish immigrants who were friends and relatives back home, and helped each other out as they started forming GINORMOUSLY SUCCESSFUL businesses in the States) and as a portrait of the development of Los Angeles and San Francisco from a couple of hastily-thrown-up gold-rush towns to the giant, overdeveloped cities that we know and love today. The change over the sixty years that Hellman lived and worked in California is kind of incredible - you get the era of stagecoach robberies and a murder-a-day in LA, the San Francisco earthquake, the founding of the electric companies, WWI, all together. I am definitely on the lookout for more books of California history, and I am also on the lookout for more fiction books that are full of California history - so, flist, I have two requests for you today. Either rec me books, fiction or nonfiction, that are awesome for California-history dorkouts, or tell me about a period of history that fills you with your own history-kink dorky joy, and I will see if I can rec you anything likewise!
