Bøger af William F. Deverell

America's expansion west was the driving force for issues of democracy, politics, race, freedom, and property. This book re-writes the history of the United States through a western lens. It reflects the important role of the West in national narratives of American history, from 1850 to the late twentieth century.

America's expansion west was the driving force for issues of democracy, politics, race, freedom, and property. This title re-writes the history of the United States through a western lens. It reflects the important role of the West in national narratives of American history, from the pre-Columbian era to 1877.

Chronicling the rise of Los Angeles through shifting ideas of race and ethnicity, William Deverell offers a unique perspective on how the city grew and changed. Whitewashed Adobe considers six different developments in the history of the city-including the cementing of the Los Angeles River, the outbreak of bubonic plague in 1924, and the evolution of America's largest brickyard in the 1920s. In an absorbing narrative supported by a number of previously unpublished period photographs, Deverell shows how a city that was once part of Mexico itself came of age through appropriating-and even obliterating-the region's connections to Mexican places and people. Deverell portrays Los Angeles during the 1850s as a city seething with racial enmity due to the recent war with Mexico. He explains how, within a generation, the city's business interests, looking for a commercially viable way to establish urban identity, borrowed Mexican cultural traditions and put on a carnival called La Fiesta de Los Angeles. He analyzes the subtle ways in which ethnicity came to bear on efforts to corral the unpredictable Los Angeles River and shows how the resident Mexican population was put to work fashioning the modern metropolis. He discusses how Los Angeles responded to the nation's last major outbreak of bubonic plague and concludes by considering the Mission Play, a famed drama tied to regional assumptions about history, progress, and ethnicity. Taking all of these elements into consideration, Whitewashed Adobe uncovers an urban identity-and the power structure that fostered it-with far-reaching implications for contemporary Los Angeles.

Los Angeles rose to significance in the first half of the twentieth century by way of its complex relationship to three rivers: the Los Angeles, the Owens, and the Colorado. Full of primary sources and original documents, this book is of interest to both students of Los Angeles and general readers interested in the origins of the city.

Nothing so changed nineteenth-century America as did the railroad. Growing up together, the iron horse and the young nation developed a fast friendship. This book presents the story of what happened to that friendship, particularly in California.