Rain of Gold is a true-life saga of love, family and destiny that pulses with bold vitality, sweeping from the war-ravaged Mexican mountains of Pancho Villa's revolution to the days of Prohibition in California.

It all began when Villaseñor's maternal grandmother sat him down in their little home in the barrio of Carlsbad, California, gave him sweet bread and told him the story of their past. Of his mother Lupe, the most beautiful girl

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The story of Eadweard Muybridge, inventor of stop-motion photography and moving pictures--who was also a murderer--and his relationship with Leland Stanford, the wealthy railroad baron and founder of Stanford University.

Presents the life of a California ex-slave, nurse, and midwife, who started many philanthropic projects.

The best-known work by the eccentric anthropologist Jaime de Angulo, Indians in Overalls is a fascinating account of his first linguistic field trip-in 1921-to the Achumawi tribe of northeastern California. The Pit River tribe had lived in the barren high country for thousands of years and, despite the harsh climate and difficult living conditions, they had developed an extraordinary complex language and a rich mythology. As he traveled with the tribe...

In the tradition of Into the Wild, a story of daring and determination in one of nature's harshest, loneliest, and most beautiful places. The Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race is among the most challenging and dangerous of all the organized sporting events in the world. Every February, a handful of hardy souls sups over two-weeks racing sleds pulled by fourteen dogs over 1,023 miles of frozen rivers, icy mountain passes, and spruce forests...

This book, the only biography ever authorized by a sitting President--yet written with complete interpretive freedom--is as revolutionary in method as it is formidable in scholarship. When Ronald Reagan moved into the White House in 1981, one of his first literary guests was Edmund Morris, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Theodore Roosevelt. Morris developed a fascination for the genial yet inscrutable President and, after Reagan's landslide...

When she was a girl, Lisa See spent summers in the cool, dark recesses of her family's antiques store in Los Angeles Chinatown. There, her grandmother and great-aunt told her intriguing, colorful stories about their family's past—stories of missionaries, concubines, long wars, glamorous nightclubs, and the determined struggle to triumph over racist laws and discrimination. They spoke of how Lisa's great-great-grandfather emigrated from his Chinese

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"A frank, smart and captivating memoir by the daughter of Apple founder Steve Jobs. Born on a farm and named in a field by her parents--artist Chrisann Brennan and Steve Jobs--Lisa Brennan-Jobs's childhood unfolded in a rapidly changing Silicon Valley. When she was young, Lisa's father was a mythical figure who was rarely present in her life. As she grew older, her father took an interest in her, ushering her into a new world of mansions, vacations,...

"When prisoner Elliott Michener began tending the gardens at Alcatraz, his thoughts of escape were replaced with new skills and a sense of dignity. Back matter discusses the history of Alcatraz and the US prison system today"--

A short documentary about Ishi, billed in 1911 as the "last wild Indian" when he wandered out of the woods in Oroville, CA, and became a national sensation. When Ishi died, his brain was removed and sent to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Eighty years later, his descendants in California fight to have his remains repatriated to his ancestral home. Contrary to the master narrative that Indians would die off, the film shows how Native...