|
|
$18.95 $11.37 |
It was another time. Deadly earthquakes, steamboat explosions, floods, train wrecks, and other tragedies were a part of everyday life in nineteenth-century California. Yet, the men and women of the day licked their wounds, mourned their dead, picked up the pieces, and plunged ahead to build a great prosperous new state that took its place in the forefront of our great Union. This is their stories, in their own words. First-person accounts of the major 19th century California catastrophes. Includes scores of contemporary period photographs and other illustrations.
|
|
$18.95 $11.37 |
Kim Steinhardt and Gary Griggs The Pacific coast is the most iconic region of California and one of the most fascinating and rapidly changing places in the world. Densely populated, urbanized, and industrialized—and also home to complex, fragile ecosystems—the coast is the place where humanity and nature coexist in a precarious balance that is never perfectly stable. The Edge is a dramatic snapshot of the California coast’s past, present, and probable future in a time of climate change and expanding human activity. Written by two marine experts who grew up on the coast, The Edge is both an appreciation of the coast’s natural and cultural uniqueness and a warning of the changes that threaten that uniqueness. As ocean levels rise, coastal communities are starting to erode, and entire neighborhoods have been lost to the sea. Coastal ecosystems and wildlife that were already stressed by human settlement now face new dangers. Fisheries, oil drilling, recreation, housing and environmental advocates compete to define the future of the region. A masterful and sweeping synthesis of environmental and social science, The Edge presents a comprehensive portrait of the history, people, communities, industries, ecology, and wildlife of the coast.
|
|
$14.95 |
Dangerous Dames and Murderous Moms by David Kulczyk Illustrations by Olaf Jens Publication Date: September 2016 According to all the sexist clichés, women are nurturers, not murderers. But women do kill … and when they do, the results are devastating. A masterpiece of pure trashy tabloid fun, California’s Deadliest Women is the definitive guide to the murderesses of the Golden State, a horrifying compendium of women driven to kill by jealousy, greed, desperation, or their own inner demons. California’s Deadliest Women presents 28 mini-tragedies — sardonic, tightly written profiles of some of the most ghastly crimes ever committed in California. Each lethal vignette presents a murderer’s early life, thecircumstances that drove her to murder, her detection, her punishment, and the aftermath of her terrible deeds, plus quirky, disturbing caricatures of the killers by artist Olaf Jens. The murderers in California’s Deadliest Women aren’t passive instruments of male masterminds, like the women of the Manson Family. These are women who got their hands bloody, personally killing their victims, who often were their own husbands, lovers or children. From Brynn Hartman, who killed her husband, comedian Phil Hartman, to chemist Larissa Shuster, who dissolved her husband in acid, to dominatirix Omaima Aree Nelson, who cooked and ate her husband, the killers profiled in California’s Deadliest Women show that the fairer sex can be as evil — and as deadly — as any man. The stories in California’s Deadliest Women are shocking and lurid, but also filled with compassion for victim and murderer alike. There are no heroes in this book and no happy endings. The crimes are so bizarre, so puzzling, so corrupt, so disgusting, so gory, so inhumane and so despicable that they are unforgettable … and perversely fascinating and entertaining. Audience: True crime readers, California history readers, and lovers of the bizarre. About the Author: David Kulczyk (pronounced Coal-check) is a Sacramento-based crime historian. His previous books include California Justice (2008), Death in California (2009) and California Fruits, Flakes and Nuts (2013), all available from Craven Street Books. $14.95 ($18.95 Canada) • Trade Paperback • 6" x 9" • 140 pages ISBN 978-1-61035-280-2
|
|
$49.95 $29.97 |
The largest and most comprehensive checklist on the Indian Mutiny since the publication, in 1966, of The Revolt in India by Janice Ladendorf. Includes approximately 1160 entries with author, publisher, date and place of publication, annotation, and the institution holding a copy. An extensive 24 page index is included.
|
|
$15.95 $9.57 |
Punctuated by gunshots and posse hoofbeats, these true tales, many told for the first time, illustrate, in both words and rare photographs, perilous trails and dangerous men from a time gone forever.
|
|
$14.95 |
They call California the Granola State — a place where everyone is a fruit, a flake or a nut. They don’t get any fruitier, flakier or nuttier than the deviants, crackpots and losers profiled in California Fruits, Flakes, and Nuts. A freewheeling catalog of misfits, eccentrics, creeps, criminals and failed dreamers, California Fruits, Flakes, and Nuts profiles 48 bizarre personalities who exemplify the Golden State’s well-deserved reputation for nonconformity. Unlike the sanitized heroics taught in school, California Fruits, Flakes, and Nuts tells history from the viewpoint of the losers: murderers, lunatics, eccentrics and disgraced, washed-up celebrities. Presenting a wealth of historical information that had long been swept away and forgotten, California Fruits, Flakes, and Nuts is a uniquely entertaining look at the dark and disreputable corners of California history. In these pages, Gold Rush pioneers are revealed as murderous madmen; Hollywood celebrities are shown to be drug-addled sex maniacs; early hippies are just 1950s weirdos; and even seemingly ordinary Californians have a talent for freakish, crazy and criminal behavior. California Fruits, Flakes, and Nuts profiles such stellar Californians as frontier lunatic Grizzly Adams (whose head was one massive wound after multiple bear attacks); I Love Lucy star William Frawley (a racist, misogy- nist, foul-mouthed drunk); skirt-wearing, skirt-chasing legendarily awful film director Ed Wood; proto-hippie and “Nature Boy” singer eden ahbez; rocket scientist, black magician and L. Ron Hubbard mentor Marvel Par- sons; and many more nutjobs, oddballs and dangerously violent freaks. The perfect book for anyone who likes feeling superior to losers, California Fruits, Flakes, and Nuts is a side-splitting, salacious and shocking salute to the people who made California the strangest place on earth.