Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush
by: Johnson, Susan Lee

Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 464 pages, b&w illustrations. Johnson's exquisitely researched and beautifully written book starts with the premise that the Southern mines during the early years of the California Gold Rush (1948-1852) were "a grand field for human interaction and connectedness." They were a kind of experiment in human relations, and Johnson points the spot light on the dynamic and flexible quality of race, gender, and sexuality. She argues that the social world of the gold rush - the organization of domestic labor, the leisure pursuits, and gaming activities (both mining and gambling) - reflected a topsy-turvy world not at all comfortable with itself. Johnson tells a story whereby the gold rush, particularly the relationships that developed in the more diverse and less wealthy Southern mines, created a crisis of racial and gender representation that only sorted itself out with the collusion of Anglo miners and the authority of the state. Johnson notes that Anglo miners, "Conflated their daily lives with a project of national expansion and economic growth infused with notions of progress and 'manifest destiny.'" In this way, Johnson explains the messy and not uncontested work of colonization and racial dominance, and she does so with an eye to the function of gender and sexuality. Clean copy.