{"product_id":"mining-california-an-ecological-history-9780809069323","title":"Mining California: An Ecological History","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAn environmental History of California during the Gold Rush\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e Between 1849 and 1874 almost $1 billion in gold was mined in California. With little available capital or labor, here's how: high-pressure water cannons washed hillsides into sluices that used mercury to trap gold but let the soil wash away; eventually more than three times the amount of earth moved to make way for the Panama Canal entered California's rivers, leaving behind twenty tons of mercury every mile--rivers overflowed their banks and valleys were flooded, the land poisoned. In the rush to wealth, the same chain of foreseeable consequences reduced California's forests and grasslands.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNot since William Cronon's\u003ci\u003e Nature's Metropolis\u003c\/i\u003e has a historian so skillfully applied John Muir's insight--\"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe\"--to the telling of the history of the American West. Beautifully told, this is western environmental history at its finest.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAndrew C. Isenberg \u003c\/b\u003eis a professor of history at Temple University. He is the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920 \u003c\/i\u003eand is a former fellow of the Huntington Library and the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Farrar, Strauss \u0026 Giroux-3pl","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50845433168146,"sku":"9780809069323","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_b84f07bf-5d17-4cbe-8bc4-b405d575d2f8.jpg?v=1737350784","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/mining-california-an-ecological-history-9780809069323","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}