California gold rush

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The Death and Life of Monterey Bay: A Story of Revival by Dr. Stephen R Palumbi Phd, Ms. Carolyn Sotka M. A.

California gold rush, clean water, glass ceiling, land tenure, Ronald Reagan, Works Progress Administration

One such vessel, the Griffon, considered itself to be unusually lucky when it “after two months obtained 300 sea otter skins!” This success too was fleeting, and hunts of only 100 skins a season soon became more common, so little that “the owners will not lose or gain anything by the voyage.” Eventually, in 1841, The First California Gold Rush: Ottersâ•… â•… 23 even the Russians abandoned their outpost at Fort Ross, north of San Francisco. Although otter hunting continued until the California Gold Rush eclipsed other forms of extractive wealth, the decade from 1840 to 1850 saw the end of the commercial otter enterprise. Much had changed politically in California as well. The old mission system was largely gone, decayed into adobe ruin when the Spanish Empire fell and Mexico won its 1821 independence.

Stephen Palumbi To Maria and Richard, who instilled a love of being outdoors and of nature; to Erik, who opens my eyes to the ecological wonders of even the smallest marine creatures; and to Kai and Liv, who inspire me to keep looking for ocean treasures. Carolyn Sotka Contents Preface xi intr od uc ti on Chapter 1 Julia’s Window 3 part i:╇ The Rui n Chapter 2 The First California Gold Rush: Otters 11 Chapter 3 Whale Bones in Treasure Bay 25 Chapter 4 Abalone Shells and China Point 37 part ii:╇ The Bo t t om Chapter 5 Dr. Mayor Julia Platt 55 Chapter 6 The Power of One: Julia Fights the Canneries 68 Chapter 7 Ed Ricketts, Ecology and the Philosophy Chapter 8 of Tide Pools Dust Bowl of the Sea: The Canneries Collapse 87 100 part iii:╇ Th e Re cov e ry Chapter 9 The Otter Returns 113 Chapter 10 Kelp, Seals, and Seabirds Rise Again 132 Chapter 11 The Aquarium 144 Chapter 12 The Century to Come 163 Acknowledgments 175 About the Authors 177 Notes 179 Index 203 Preface Walking to work along the shore of Pacific Grove, at the southern end of Monterey Bay, is like a taking a stroll through another century.

The lower left corner of the inset shows a reproduction of the crude map Vizcaíno drew in 1602 to suggest that Monterey was a perfect harbor protected by a spur of land, the Point of Pines, which is grossly exaggerated in this drawing. (Maps based on the National Atlas.) Chapter 2 The First California Gold Rush: Otters E arly fall is a magical time in Monterey Bay, and French captain Jean-François de la Pérouse, arriving in September 1786, perhaps saw it at its best. The fogs of summer begin to roll back in September, releasing the pent-up sun to warm the hills and quicken the air with the scent of sage and pine.


Shotguns and Stagecoaches: The Brave Men Who Rode for Wells Fargo in the Wild West by John Boessenecker

California gold rush, mass immigration, transcontinental railway

This challenge could not have been met without the efforts of Wells Fargo & Company’s Express. And Wells Fargo’s mission would not have been possible without the valiant shotgun messengers and detectives who protected its treasure, its stagecoaches, and its railroad express cars. Wells Fargo sprang to life during the California Gold Rush and came to the forefront of every successive American frontier that followed. As soon as a new mining camp or cattle town burst forth, Wells Fargo was there. The company provided both express and banking services, taking in gold and silver and shipping it out of the mining regions. Wells Fargo followed the money, and robbers followed Wells Fargo.

After the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, Wells Fargo increasingly transported shipments aboard trains. During the 1870s, as railroads expanded throughout the West, Wells Fargo express cars, usually coupled behind the tender and in front of the baggage car, became a common sight. Wells Fargo’s first messengers, during the California Gold Rush, carried letters by horseback to and from the mining camps; soon they began transporting treasure from the mines on riverboats to San Francisco. They carried guns to ward off highway robbers. In the 1850s, if a stagecoach had a large shipment of gold on board, the local Wells Fargo agent would guard the treasure.

Hodgkins joined the discussion and at one point commented, “When I have any work to do I always start in and do the best I can.” At that, one of the would-be robbers grinned widely and said, “Yes, and you know your business too.”1 The career of Chips Hodgkins was the early history of Wells Fargo. During the initial years of the California Gold Rush, he worked for its predecessors, and when those small local express firms were absorbed by Wells Fargo, he served the new company faithfully for decades. For forty years, from 1851 to 1891, Chips was the best-known express messenger on the West Coast, transporting tens of millions of dollars in gold, first by horseback, then by stagecoach, and finally by steamship and railroad.


pages: 532 words: 162,509

The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andrés Reséndez

Bartolomé de las Casas, British Empire, California gold rush, classic study, Columbian Exchange, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, European colonialism, Francisco Pizarro, Jones Act, planetary scale, Right to Buy, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, War on Poverty

. ,” in Genaro García, ed., Documentos inéditos o muy raros por la historia de México (Mexico City: Porrúa, 1975), 41, 58. 4. THE PULL OF SILVER 1. For two excellent general treatments of the California gold rush, see Malcolm J. Rohrbough, Days of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the American Nation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); and Susan Lee Johnson, Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush (New York: Norton, 2000). 2. On the silver peso, see Carlos Marichal, “The Spanish-American Silver Peso: Export Commodity and Global Money of the Ancien Regime, 1550–1800,” in Steven Topik, Carlos Marichal, and Zephyr Frank, eds., From Silver to Cocaine: Latin American Commodity Chains and the Building of the World Economy, 1500–2000 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 25–42. 3.

They also fanned out into the Sierra Nevada to build cabins, divert rivers, and pan for the yellow metal. This is a familiar story of long journeys, ethnic conflict, broken dreams, and explosive growth.1 Yet the California gold rush was neither the largest metal-induced rush of North America nor the most transformative. By any measure, that title belongs to the earlier Mexican silver boom. In terms of duration, for instance, the California gold rush was like a hurricane. Gold production skyrocketed in 1849 but peaked as early as 1852, only four years after the start of the rush, and declined markedly thereafter. For all practical purposes, the rush was over by 1865, lasting less than twenty years.

Rather it was a system, one with extraordinary staying power recalled fifty years after Carvajal’s inquisitorial tribulations by Alonso de León, another notable frontiersman and the first chronicler of the New Kingdom of León: “In those days, we did not consider anyone a man until he had journeyed to the Indian rancherías, whether friends or enemies, and seized some children from their mothers to sell; and there was no other way to sustain ourselves or open new trails without tremendous difficulties.”42 4 * * * The Pull of Silver THE CALIFORNIA GOLD rush transformed the western United States. Within one decade of James W. Marshall’s discovery of a few flecks of gold in a ditch in 1848, some three hundred thousand migrants had moved to California. These Chinese, Italian, German, Chilean, and other newcomers turned the remote and picturesque Mexican outpost of San Francisco into a bustling port.


pages: 497 words: 153,755

The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession by Peter L. Bernstein

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Atahualpa, bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, California gold rush, central bank independence, double entry bookkeeping, Edward Glaeser, Everybody Ought to Be Rich, falling living standards, financial innovation, floating exchange rates, Francisco Pizarro, German hyperinflation, Hernando de Soto, Isaac Newton, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, large denomination, liquidity trap, long peace, low interest rates, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, old-boy network, Paul Samuelson, price stability, profit motive, proprietary trading, random walk, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, seigniorage, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, trade route

Whether it is Perseus in search of the Golden Fleece, the Jews dancing around the golden calf, Croesus fingering his golden coins, Crassus murdered by molten gold poured down his throat, Basil Bulgaroctonus with over two hundred thousand pounds of gold, Pizarro surrounded by gold when slain by his henchmen, Sutter whose millstream launched the California gold rush, or modern leaders such as Charles de Gaulle who deluded themselves with a vision of an economy made stable, sure, and superior by the ownership of gold-they all had gold, but the gold had them all. When Pindar in the fifth century Bc described gold as "a child of Zeus, neither moth or rust devoureth it, but the mind of man is devoured by this supreme possession," he set forth the whole story in one sentence.3 John Stuart Mill nicely paraphrased this view in 1848, when he wrote "Gold thou mayst safely touch; but if it stick/Unto thy hands, it woundeth to the quick."4 Indeed, gold is a mass of contradictions.

When gold is carried down by mountain streams, the prospector can wade in and sieve up the fragments of gold-bearing ore that have broken loose from the mountainside. Gold was collected long ago in this fashion in Asia Minor, where gold coinage first made its formal appearance. Some 3500 years later, the California gold rush of the nineteenth century began on the banks of the Sacramento River, when the Forty-Niners crowded into the river with their crude equipment to "pan" the gold out of the rushing waters. They were following a practice that had come down from the ancient Greeks, who used woolly sheepskins for panning gold from the rivers-the tight curls of the sheep's coat did an excellent job of capturing and holding the fragments of gold as the waters came rushing down the mountainsides.

By 1853, over one hundred thousand people had swarmed into California, including 25,000 Frenchmen and twenty thousand Chinese, and annual gold production approached eighty metric tons; production would peak as early as 1853 at around 95 tons.' The name Sutter's Mill has always been associated with the onset of the California gold rush. Poor Johann Sutter! In essence a good man, not a greedy man, Sutter was grieved rather than thrilled to hear about the golden nuggets in the stream on his property. He was so far out of step that he ultimately landed in deep trouble and came to a sad end. In 1876, when he was 67 years old, Sutter received a visitor named H.


pages: 404 words: 118,759

The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature by Ben Tarnoff

California gold rush, interchangeable parts, Kickstarter, mass immigration, Maui Hawaii, new economy, New Journalism, plutocrats, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald Reagan, South of Market, San Francisco, South Sea Bubble, Suez canal 1869, transcontinental railway, traveling salesman

The gold rush generation produced a vast amount of letters, diaries, and other documents about early California. The most famous of these early firsthand accounts was written by Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe under the pen name Dame Shirley in 1851–1852. For a complete listing of gold rush literature, see Gary F. Kurutz, The California Gold Rush: A Descriptive Bibliography of Books and Pamphlets Covering the Years 1848–1853 (San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1997). CHAPTER ONE What people remembered Twain’s drawl: Arthur McEwen, “In the Heroic Days,” in TIHOT, p. 22; Henry J. W. Dam, “A Morning with Bret Harte,” McClure’s 4.1 (Dec. 1894), p. 47; MTAL, pp. 168–169; and William H.

Statistics on numbers of newspapers: Bruce A. Bimber, Information and American Democracy: Technology in the Evolution of Political Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 52–53. The newspaper revolution Role of newspapers in the gold rush: H. W. Brands, The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream (New York: Doubleday, 2002), pp. 70, 124–126, 130. Literacy in the Far West: SFLF, pp. 7, 14; Earl Pomeroy, The Pacific Slope, pp. 34–35, 42, 153; and Sanford Winston, Illiteracy in the United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1930), pp. 16–17.

There was another Seeing the Far West for the first time: Wallace Stegner, “Thoughts in a Dry Land,” Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West (New York: Penguin, 1992), pp. 52–55. For eyewitness accounts of gold rush–era California, see Gary F. Kurutz, The California Gold Rush. For pre–gold rush narratives, see Joshua Paddison, ed., A World Transformed: Firsthand Accounts of California before the Gold Rush (Berkeley, CA: Heyday, 1999), pp. 167–305. “to about twice . . .” and “I said we . . .”: SLC to Jane Lampton Clemens, October 26, 1861, in MTL, vol. 1, p. 137.


pages: 208 words: 64,113

Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell

California gold rush, Easter island, index card, Maui Hawaii, polynesian navigation, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Steve Jobs, trade route

Hawaiians’ role in providing food for the surge of American settlers to Oregon and California in the 1840s contributed to increasingly prosperous planters lobbying the king to privatize the land. In an 1846 letter, the missionary Richard Armstrong wrote, “A brisk trade is opening with Oregon and California. . . . The sugar and molasses of the islands will be in demand in these territories and they will bring lumber, flour, salmon, etc. in exchange.” After the California gold rush of 1849, Armstrong reported, “Every bean, onion, potato or squash that we have to spare is at once snatched away to California to feed the hungry there.” As Hawaiian planters expanded their operations, it was only natural for them to want to secure their fields from the whims of chiefs or the king.

Nordyke estimate that ten thousand people (one tenth of the population) died in the islands in those two years alone. They attribute the alarming uptick in deaths from measles, whooping cough, dysentery, influenza, and diarrhea to the amplified ship traffic between Hawaii and the West Coast brought on by the California gold rush. They point out:Before the late 1840s, most ships visiting Hawai’i sailed from East Coast ports, and reached the Islands by a long, laborious voyage around South America. Any sick seamen were either dead or recovered by the time they sighted Diamond Head. Now they sailed directly from San Francisco in perhaps two weeks or less, fully capable of spreading the baleful diseases they had so recently picked up.


Great American Railroad Journeys by Michael Portillo

Alistair Cooke, California gold rush, colonial rule, company town, Cornelius Vanderbilt, friendly fire, Howard Zinn, invention of the telephone, it's over 9,000, Kickstarter, railway mania, short selling, the High Line, transcontinental railway, union organizing

As UP investors and canny businessmen they could see Durant’s game plan and wanted to play. The brothers’ money stemmed from a successful shovel-making business set up in Massachusetts by their blacksmith father, Oliver Ames Senior, nicknamed the King of Spades. Their manufacturing company benefitted from the treble-jackpot of civil war, railroad construction and the California gold-rush and, as demand for shovels, swords and tools grew, so did their fortunes. By 1863, Oakes was a Republican congressman and a member of the Committee on Railroads. The transcontinental line had landed in his in-tray. Within two years the project was in crisis. Under Durant’s stewardship the track had been meandering around the Midwest, behind schedule and mired in burgeoning costs.

., 53 Bryan, William Jennings, 212 Bryant, Gridley, 18, 19 buffalo, 196–7, 196 Buffalo Bill, see Cody, Buffalo Bill Bull Run, Battles of: first, 88–9, 89, 91 second, 90–1, 96 Bunker Hill, 18–19 monument, 19 Burleigh, Charles, 236 Burlington Gazette, 45 C California Central, 192 California gold rush, 131, 178 Camden & Amboy (C&A), 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 132, 218 charges against, 45 Cameron, Simon, 94 Campbell, Bill, 109 Canal Commissioners, 47 canals and waterways, 14, 30, 36, 46, 47, 48 calling the shots, 47 Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, 218 Erie Canal, 41, 46–7, 48, 52, 236 Illinois & Michigan Canal, 58 Panama Canal, 131 Pennsylvania Canal, 166 Carey, Henry C., 45 Carnegie, Andrew, 127, 164–5, 166, 167–70, 171, 220, 221 and Eads, 235 and Homestead strike, 168–9 McKinley backed by, 212 philanthropy of, 170–1 Carnegie Corporation, 170 Carnegie, Louise, 170 Carnegie, Margaret, 164, 170 Carnegie Steel, 168–70 and Homestead strike, 168–9 Carnegie, Tom, 170 Carnegie, William, 164, 168 carpetbaggers, 206–7, 207 ‘Prince of’, 206 Carroll, Charles, 34 Carrollton Viaduct, 35 Catoosa locomotive, 111 Casement, ‘General’ Jack, 199 Cassatt, Alexander, 222–3 Cedar Rapids & Missouri (CR&M), 174 Central America, SS, 138, 139 Central Pacific (later Southern Pacific), 174, 187, 189, 190–5, 200–1, 203, 229 Chase, Salmon P., 101 Chatsworth crash, 226 Chattanooga, 94, 95, 108–9 and The General, 115 Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, 218 Chesapeake & Ohio Canal Company, 36–7 Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad Company, 237 Chevalier, Michel, 23, 47 Cheyenne Leader, 199 Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, 203 Chicago Democratic Press, 73 Chicago Herald, 57, 167 Chicago & North-Western, 54, 56, 59 Chicago & Rock Island Railroad, 70 Chicago Times, 123, 215 Chicago Tribune, 75 Chicago World’s Fair, 115, 162 Chinese Exclusion Act, 193 Clark, John T., 53 Clarke, William, 10 Cleveland massacre, 158 coach design, early, 24–5 coal trucks, 17 Cody, Buffalo Bill, 197, 197 Colfax, Schuyler, 180 comfort and safety, 32, 220, 224–31 brakes and couplers, 226–7, 227 and Chatsworth crash, 226 and fire, 226 and fumes, 237 improvements in, 39 and Minot report, 65 and Pullman carriages, 224–5, 224–5, 228–9, 228, 229 and racial segregation, 231 statistics, 226 and telegraph, 64 Cooke, Alistair, 10 Cooke, Jay, 202, 203, 214, 220 Cooper, Peter, 34, 36 cotton, transportation of, 28 cowcatchers, 16, 42, 43 Crazy Horse, 197 Credit Mobilier, 172–80, 172–3, 182 Crimean War, 78 Crocker, Charles, 149, 190, 191, 192, 200 Croton Aqueduct, 33, 51 Cuomo, Andrew, 223 Custer, Gen.


pages: 255 words: 75,208

Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It by Gary Taubes

California gold rush, cognitive dissonance, Gary Taubes, meta-analysis, randomized controlled trial

Army battalion passed through Pima lands, John Griffin, the battalion’s surgeon, described the Pima as “sprightly” and in “fine health” and noted that they also had “the greatest abundance of food”—storehouses full of it.* So much that when the California gold rush began three years later, the U.S government asked the Pima to provide food, and they did, to the tens of thousands of travelers who passed through their territory in the next decade, heading to California on the Sante Fe Trail. With the California gold rush, the relative paradise of the Pima came to an end and, with it, their affluence. Anglo-Americans and Mexicans began settling in large numbers in the region. These newcomers—“some of the vilest specimens of humanity that the white race has produced,” wrote Russell—hunted the local game near to extinction, and diverted the Gila River water to irrigate their own fields at the expense of the Pimas’.


The First Tycoon by T.J. Stiles

book value, British Empire, business cycle, business logic, buttonwood tree, buy and hold, buy low sell high, California gold rush, Cornelius Vanderbilt, credit crunch, Edward Glaeser, gentleman farmer, informal economy, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, joint-stock company, margin call, Monroe Doctrine, new economy, public intellectual, risk free rate, short selling, Snow Crash, strikebreaker, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, three-masted sailing ship, tontine, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, vertical integration, working poor

George Templeton Strong derided him in 1851 as “that snob of snobs”—not in the sense of one who condescends, as the word would later mean, but one who sucks up insufferably. A dictionary of that era defined “snob” as “a person who looks up to his or her social betters and tries to copy or associate with them.” So when Clark married Maria Louise Vanderbilt on April 13, 1848, on a Thursday evening several months before the California gold rush changed the world, it was undoubtedly a wedding in keeping with the customs of New York's social elite, even if that elite shunned the event itself.51 Years after the wedding, a story would circulate about Clark's request for the Commodore's permission to marry Louise (as she was called).

.: Harvard University Press, 1977), 136–7; Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (New York: Modern Library, 2000), book 1, chap. 6, 70. 15 John Lauritz Larson, Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the Early United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 225–55, esp. 243. See also Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 557–69. 16 Soulé, 172, 174, 202, 214; H. W. Brands, The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream (New York: Doubleday 2002), 62. 17 Sherman, 46. 18 Ibid., 56–60. 19 MM, April 1847. 20 Entries for March 22, September 6, 1848, Minute Book of the Elizabethport and New York Ferry Company, box 4, Central Railroad Company of New Jersey Papers, Hagley Museum and Library; Petition of C Vanderbilt for Confirmation of Letters Patent, Issued April 3, 1816 (New York: S.

Stiles, Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 24; Strong, 1:337; Brands, 70. 23 Strong, 1:344; James G. King to Messrs Baring Bros. & Co., January 22, 1849, reel 41: Letters Received from New York, BB; James P. Delgado, To California by Sea: A Maritime History of the California Gold Rush (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990), 19, 27; NYH, April 19, 1849. 24 My guess that Daniel B. Allen created the scheme is based on the fact that he took the largest number of shares (three). See Daniel B. Allen, Jeremiah Simonson, William McLean, Alexander H Britton, WHV, Nathaniel Hayward, Henry Anderson, John Peck, and the Said Daniel B.


pages: 70 words: 22,172

How We'll Live on Mars (TED Books) by Stephen Petranek

Apollo 11, California gold rush, Colonization of Mars, Dennis Tito, Elon Musk, Hyperloop, Jeff Bezos, low earth orbit, Mars Rover, Mars Society, Neil Armstrong, nuclear winter, out of africa, Richard Feynman, TED Talk, trade route

Getting to Mars will have an entirely different meaning: If we can get to Mars, we can go anywhere. The achievement will make dreamy science fiction like Star Wars and Star Trek begin to look real. It will make the moons of Saturn and Jupiter seem like reasonable places to explore. It will, for better or worse, create a wave of fortune seekers to rival those of the California gold rush. Most important, it will expand our vision as far from the bounds of Earth’s gravity as we can imagine. When the first humans set foot on Mars, the moment will be more significant in terms of technology, philosophy, history, and exploration than any that have come before it, all because we will no longer be a one-planet species.


pages: 382 words: 92,138

The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths by Mariana Mazzucato

Apple II, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bretton Woods, business cycle, California gold rush, call centre, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, circular economy, clean tech, computer age, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, demand response, deskilling, dual-use technology, endogenous growth, energy security, energy transition, eurozone crisis, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Fairchild Semiconductor, Financial Instability Hypothesis, full employment, G4S, general purpose technology, green transition, Growth in a Time of Debt, Hyman Minsky, incomplete markets, information retrieval, intangible asset, invisible hand, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, linear model of innovation, natural language processing, new economy, offshore financial centre, Philip Mirowski, popular electronics, Post-Keynesian economics, profit maximization, Ralph Nader, renewable energy credits, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Robert Solow, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, smart grid, Solyndra, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trickle-down economics, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, William Shockley: the traitorous eight

Silicon Valley quickly became the nation’s ‘computer innovation hub’ and the resulting climate stimulated and nurtured by the government’s leading role in funding and research (both basic and applied) was harnessed by innovative entrepreneurs and private industry in what many observers have called the ‘Internet California Gold Rush’ or the ‘Silicon Gold Rush’ (Kenney 2003; Southwick 1999). There are 12 major technologies integrated within the iPod, iPhone and iPad that stand out as features that are either ‘enablers’, or that differentiate these products from their rivals in the market. These include semiconductor devices such as (1) microprocessors or central processing units (CPU); (2) dynamic random-access memory (DRAM); as well as (3) micro hard drive storage or hard drive disks (HDD); (4) liquid-crystal displays (LCDs); (5) lithium-polymer (Li-pol) and lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries; (6) digital signal processing (DSP), based on the advancement in fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithms; (7) the Internet; (8) the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML); (9) and cellular technology and networks – all of which can be considered as the core enabler technologies for products such as the iPod, iPhone and iPad.

.: on characteristics of DARPA model 78–9; developmental network state concept 78n2; on SBIR programme 80; on state funding behind innovation 63; on US industrial policy 21, 38n5, 68, 85; on US innovation policies 74–7 Bloom, Nicholas 46 Bloomberg on tax schemes 174–5 Bonus 145 Braeburn Capital 173 Branscomb, Lewis M. 48 Brazil 2, 4–5, 120, 122, 190 Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) 5, 122, 190 Breakthrough Report 109 Bristol-Myers Squibb 188 British Post Office 104 Brodd, Ralph J. 108 Brody, Peter 107 bureaucracy, Weberian 4n2 Burlamaqui, Leonardo 189 Bush, George H. W. 85 Bush, George W. 110–11 Bush, Vannevar 75 ‘business angels’ 47, 48 Buxton, Bill 102n10 Cailliau, Robert 105 California: Apple’s avoidance of capital gains tax in 173; Apple’s R&D base in 172; competitive climate of 165, 176; ‘Internet California Gold Rush’ 95; R&D tax packages of 109–10, 111n13; wind industry participation 145, 147, 156 Cameron, David 15 Canada 61 capacitive sensing technology 100–101, 100n9, 103 capitalism: Adam Smith’s view of 30; dysfunctional modern 12; financial fragility of 32n3; image of market as engine of 167; innovative labour in 13; Keynes on 30–32; State risks in framework of 193; State’s role in 195 Capital Moves (Cowie) 172 cellular technology 109, 109 Chang, Ha-Joon 9n3, 38n5, 40 China: clean technology investment by 120, 124n6, 125, 137; Evergreen Solar lured to 152; ‘green’ 5 year plan 122–4; green revolution in 11, 115n2, 116, 120; investment banks in 2, 4, 5; Kyoto Protocol signed by 123n5; new investment in renewable energy 120, 121; policy support for wind industry 153; as solar power competitor 129–31, 130n11, 144, 150; targeted industrialization in 40; ‘trade wars’ of 122, 131; wind capacity of 143; from ‘Wind Rush’ to rise of wind power sector 144–50 China Development Bank (CDB) 5, 122, 153, 189–90 Citizens for Tax Justice 174n5 classical economists 186–7 clean technology: in China 122–4; in crisis 158–9; electric cars/vehicles 108, 123, 124, 133; Ernst & Young report on 124; historical overview of 118, 118n3; investment (by country) 120–21; investment by venture capital 161; public vs. private investment in 26, 143; R&D investment in 119; sources 117–18; US calling to end support to 157; see also green revolution; wind and solar power climate change 117, 123, 135; see also green industrial revolution Climate Works 123 Clinton administration 84–5 Coad, Alex 44 ‘Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes’ (CALO) project 106 Compaq 107 competition, generating 77 computer field: DARPA’s role in 75–8; hard disk drives (HDD) 96–7; personal computers 78, 89, 94–5; research support to 99; sources of key technologies used in 94–5; in wind technology 147–8 Concorde 194; see also ‘picking winners’ Cook, Tim 171 countercyclical lending 4, 140, 190 ‘creative destruction’ 10, 10n4, 58, 165; see also Schumpeter, Joseph ‘crowd funding’ 127 ‘crowding in’ 5–6, 8 ‘crowding out’ 8, 23–4 DARPA: see Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ‘Death Valley’ stage of innovation 47, 48, 122 DEC 107 decentralization 78, 85, 104 defence contractors 76–7, 98 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA): ARPA-E modeled after 133; brokering role of 77, 79; clean energy funding 132n13; communications network project of 104, 104n11; creation of 76; dual-use technologies targeted by 97; funding by 76–7; model characteristics 78; organizational attributes of 133–4; role of behind SIRI 105–6; support for SPINTRONICS 97; technological contributions of 133; top talent attracted by 4 Defense Logistics Agency 132n13 demand-side policies 83, 113–15, 159 Demirel, Pelin 44 DEMOS 2 Denmark 115n2, 120n4, 121, 143, 144–5 Department of Commerce (US) 47 Department of Defense (DoD) (US): ARPANET project as Internet origin 63; energy innovation impacted by 132n13; GPS and SIRI development by 105–7; GPS costs to 105n12; solar opportunities created by 150; TRP initiated by 97 Department of Energy (DoE) (US): ARPA-E agency of 4; attracting top talent 18; clean energy research 132–3; First Solar’s link to research of 151; funding Solyndra 154; funding support of lithium-ion battery 108; loan guarantees administered by 129; SunPower’s patents link to 152; wind research funded by 147–8 Department of Energy and Climate Change (UK) 124 ‘de-risking’ of private sector 5–6, 9, 198 de-skilling perspective 186 ‘Developmental State’ 10, 37–8, 37–8n5, 40, 68; see also State development banks: see State development banks digital signal processing (DSP) 109 ‘directionality’ 2, 4–5, 32n2 ‘discursive’ battle, Judt’s 9, 58, 198 distribution and innovation 186 Domar, Evsey David 33 domestic content rules 149 Dosi, Giovanni 53 Drucker, Peter 58 drugs: classifications of new 64, 64; Gleevec 81; MRC research on 67; orphan drugs 81–3; percentages of new by types 66, 66; radical vs.


pages: 302 words: 96,609

Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Big Tech, California gold rush, Cape to Cairo, clean water, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, energy transition, global supply chain, Google Earth, Livingstone, I presume, Mahatma Gandhi, megacity, private military company, Scramble for Africa, social distancing, tech baron, transatlantic slave trade, vertical integration

THE CDM MODEL SITE The second model mine in Kolwezi belongs to CDM. It is located in the heart of a neighborhood called Kasulo. There is no place like Kasulo anywhere in the world. It is the frenzied apex of the mad scramble for cobalt. The best way to understand what happened in Kasulo is to look back to the fabled California gold rush. On January 24, 1848, a sawmill operator in Coloma, California, named James Marshall spotted a nugget of gold in a riverbed. News spread quickly, and treasure seekers from across the country flocked to California in search of riches. They ripped up hills, chopped down trees, dammed rivers, and burrowed thousands of mine shafts into the Sierra Nevada mountains.

See artisanal and small-scale mining Association Internationale du Congo (AIC) Atlantic slave trade Augustin (translator) Awilo (child miners) Balumuene, François Nkuna batteries Baudouin (king of Belgium) Beko (Muteba’s brother) Belgian Congo Benz, Karl Berlin Conference birth defects Bisette (Raphael’s mother) border fence Boss Chen (mining boss) Boss Chu (mining boss) Boss Peng (mining boss) Boss Xi (mining boss) Bredenkamp, John Bronze Age budget, DRC’s national buried alive California gold rush Cameron, Verney Lovett cancer capital expenditures capitalists, enterprising cargo trucks minerals transported by for mining activity riots blocking Casement, Roger The Casement Report (Casement) cathodes CATL Co. CCC. See Congo Construction Company CDM. See Congo DongFang Mining CDM model site artisanal miners interviewed at debt payments from depot prices at depots operated by depots set up at heterogenite at open-air pit mines at tunnel digging at visit to Central African Copper Belt Césaire, Aimé Chance (child miner) Charles (clerical employee) CHEMAF.


pages: 326 words: 97,089

Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among the Stars by Lee Billings

addicted to oil, Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, Apollo 11, Arthur Eddington, California gold rush, Colonization of Mars, cosmological principle, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, Dava Sobel, double helix, Eddington experiment, Edmond Halley, Ford Model T, full employment, Hans Moravec, hydraulic fracturing, index card, Isaac Newton, James Webb Space Telescope, Johannes Kepler, Kuiper Belt, Late Heavy Bombardment, low earth orbit, Magellanic Cloud, music of the spheres, Neil Armstrong, out of africa, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, planetary scale, private spaceflight, profit motive, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, random walk, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Searching for Interstellar Communications, selection bias, Silicon Valley, space junk, synthetic biology, technological singularity, the scientific method, transcontinental railway

Rain falling on the mountains eroded the sides, exposed the ore veins, and flushed flakes and fragments of precious metals into rivers. On January 24, 1848, while building a sawmill along the American River to float logs to the small coastal settlement of San Francisco, a carpenter named James Marshall found a few pieces of that washed-down gold, sparking the great California Gold Rush. Soon, some 300,000 people from around the world had swarmed the region to seek their fortunes, exponentially increasing its population and propelling the unorganized territory into official U.S. statehood. Boomtowns bubbled and burst throughout northern California. San Francisco became a bustling city.

He hoped to expand that fortune through purchasing cheap land in the new California territories, which he thought would soon be annexed by the United States. Along with his tools and workbench, Lick had brought along an ironclad chest filled with $30,000 in gold. He immediately began buying up vacant lots around town. Seventeen days after Lick’s arrival, James Marshall discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill, the California Gold Rush was set in motion, and Lick found himself the biggest player in a buyer’s market for San Francisco’s abundant real estate. Soon he was swamped with sales offers, as residents abandoned their coastal harbor homes in droves to seek gold in the inland hills. He bought up all the land he could at cut-rate prices, then netted huge profits as San Francisco’s population exponentially boomed from wave after wave of arriving prospectors.


pages: 314 words: 106,575

Black Fire: The True Story of the Original Tom Sawyer--And of the Mysterious Fires That Baptized Gold Rush-Era San Francisco by Robert Graysmith

California gold rush, Cornelius Vanderbilt, profit motive, South of Market, San Francisco, white picket fence

From published edition and advance uncorrected proofs. (This is a valuable source for the stories of Billy Mulligan, Dutch Charley, and Yankee Sullivan.) Block, Eugene E. Great Stagecoach Robbers of the West. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1962. (Great resource for Hank Monk.) Brands, H. W. The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream. New York: Anchor Books, 2002. Browning, Peter. San Francisco/Yerba Buena. Lafayette, CA: Great West Books, 1998. Camp, William Martin. San Francisco, Port of Gold. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1947. Carlisle, Henry C. San Francisco Street Names: Sketches of the Lives of Pioneers for Whom San Francisco Streets Are Named.

San Francisco: Don’t Call It Frisco Press, 1981. Country Beautiful editors. Great Fires of America. Waukesha, Wisconsin: Country Beautiful Publishing, 1973. DeFord, Miriam Allen. They Were San Franciscans. Caldwell, ID: The Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1941. Delgado, James P. To California by Sea: A Maritime History of the California Gold Rush. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1996. ———. Gold Rush Port: The Maritime Archaeology of San Francisco’s Waterfront. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2009. (A treasure trove of valuable archaeological information about Yerba Buena Cove from a leading maritime archaeologist.)


pages: 709 words: 191,147

White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg

A. Roger Ekirch, back-to-the-land, British Empire, California gold rush, colonial rule, Copley Medal, desegregation, Donald Trump, feminist movement, full employment, gentleman farmer, indoor plumbing, invisible hand, joint-stock company, land reform, land tenure, Lewis Mumford, low interest rates, mass immigration, New Urbanism, Norman Mailer, off-the-grid, plutocrats, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Republic of Letters, Ronald Reagan, Scientific racism, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, trade route, transcontinental railway, trickle-down economics, upwardly mobile, urban renewal, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, working poor, Works Progress Administration

By the 1860s he owned over twenty-three thousand acres and had established himself as one of the ruling patriarchs of the new state.20 Yet California’s early history had been as grim as that of Texas. Both of these extensive territories were overrun with runaway debtors, criminal outcasts, rogue gamblers, and ruthless adventurers who thrived in the chaotic atmosphere of western sprawl. The California gold rush attracted not only grizzled gold diggers but also prostitutes, fortune hunters, and con men selling fraudulent land titles. Among the Texas and California cutthroats who captured the American imagination was the “half-breed Mexican and white.” He was known for his “mongrel dandyism,” loud jewelry, and flamboyant clothing.21 In a certain sense, California reverted to older British colonial patterns.

The same kinds of appeals were made to recruit marriageable women to Florida; see New Bedford Mercury, September 4, 1835. Novelist Eliza Farnham wrote promotional literature for recruiting women to California; see her California, Indoor and Outdoor, How We Farm, Mine, and Live Generally in the Golden State (New York, 1856); also see Nancy J. Taniguchi, “Weaving a Different World: Women and the California Gold Rush,” California History 79, no. 2 (Summer 2000): 141–68, esp. 142–44, 148. For the French caricature, see Le Charivari, ca. 1850, Picture Collection, California State Library. On importing women to California ending spinsterhood, see “A Colloquial Chapter on Celibacy,” United States Magazine and Democratic Review (December 1848): 533–42, esp. 537.

On importing women to California ending spinsterhood, see “A Colloquial Chapter on Celibacy,” United States Magazine and Democratic Review (December 1848): 533–42, esp. 537. On the sex ratio imbalance in California, claiming there were three hundred men to every woman, see “Letters from California: San Francisco,” Home Journal, March 3, 1849. 23. See Sucheng Chan, “A People of Exceptional Character: Ethnic Diversity, Nativism, and Racism in the California Gold Rush,” California History 79, no. 2 (Summer 2000): 44–85; Hinton Rowan Helper, The Land of Gold: Reality Versus Fiction (Baltimore, 1855), 264. 24. Helper, Land of Gold, 264; Brown, Southern Outcast, 25–26. 25. Helper, Land of Gold, 166, 214, 221–22, 268, 272–73, 275. Helper also used the old allusion to Indians disappearing like melting snow; see Laura M.


Cast-Iron Cooking with Sisters on the Fly by Irene Rawlings

California gold rush, Mason jar, Maui Hawaii

DUTCH OVEN COOKING Before anyone ever even heard of a Crock-Pot, our grandmothers used Dutch ovens that were, we’re told, developed in Holland in the early 1700s. More history: There are reports that George Washington’s troops used Dutch ovens during the Revolutionary War and, from there, the versatile portable ovens traveled west with the homesteaders, miners, and ranchers. They were used to make sourdough bread during the California gold rush of 1849, and chuck wagon cooks used them during long cattle drives—from Texas and Oklahoma to the Chicago stockyards. SLOW COOKER DUTCH OVEN 12 hours/Low 3 hours/325°F 10 hours/Low 2½ hours/325°F 8 hours/Low 2 hours/325°F 6 hours/Low 1½ hours/325°F 5 hours/Low 1 hour, 15 min./325°F 4 hours/Low 1 hour/325°F 4 hours/High 2 hours/325°F 3 hours/Low 45 min./325°F 3 hours/High 1½ hours/325°F 2 hours/Low 30 min./325°F 2 hours/High 1 hour/325°F 1 hour/Low 15 min./325°F 1 hour/High 30 min./325°F Source: Originally published by Kathleen Purvis, food editor at the Charlotte Observer, and refined by Rick Mansfield (www.cookingincastiron.com) What to Look for in a Dutch Oven The Dutch Oven Divas of the Desert, who meet every January near Quartzsite, Arizona, to show off their culinary skills, have a list of features that their Dutch ovens must have: A flat bottom Three short kettle legs to allow circulation of air onto the coals placed below the Dutch oven A strong wire handle (called a “bail”) that can stand up at a 45-degree angle from the Dutch oven A flat lid with a lip to allow coals to be placed securely on top of the Dutch oven A small loop handle on the lid to allow the lid to be lifted off with a “lid lifter” or hook A lid that fits properly (so there is no rocking motion when the lid is on the pot, but not so tightly that the steam can’t escape) What Else You’ll Need for Dutch Oven Cooking A Dutch oven—The most popular size is 12 inches.


Discover Maui by Lonely Planet

California gold rush, carbon footprint, Charles Lindbergh, land reform, Maui Hawaii, no-fly zone, off-the-grid, sustainable-tourism, trade route

So bountiful is Kula’s soil, it produces most of the onions, lettuce and strawberries grown in Hawaii and almost all of the commercially grown proteas. The latest addition, sweet-scented lavender, is finding its niche, too. The magic is in the elevation. At 3000ft, Kula’s cool nights and sunny days are ideal for growing all sorts of crops. Kula’s farmers first gained fame during the California gold rush of the 1850s, when they shipped so many potatoes to West Coast miners that Kula became known as ‘Nu Kaleponi,’ the Hawaiian pronunciation for New California. In the late 19th century Portuguese and Chinese immigrants who had worked off their contracts on the sugar plantations also moved up to Kula and started small farms, giving Kula the multicultural face that it still wears today.

Reservations are required. Kalaʻe Sights MOLOKAʻI MUSEUM & CULTURAL CENTER Museum Offline map ( 567-6436; adult/child $3.50/2; 10am-2pm Mon-Sat) Four miles northeast of Hwy 460 is the sugar mill built by Rudolph W Meyer, an entrepreneurial German immigrant. Meyer was en route to the California gold rush when he stopped off on the islands, married a member of Hawaiian royalty and landed a tidy bit of property in the process. In 1876 Meyer turned his lands over to sugar and built a mill. Now on the National Register of Historic Places, this restored mill is the last of its kind. The museum includes the sugar mill and intriguing displays of Molokaʻi’s history.


Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism by Harsha Walia

anti-communist, antiwork, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, blood diamond, borderless world, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, California gold rush, clean water, climate change refugee, collective bargaining, colonial rule, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crack epidemic, dark matter, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, extractivism, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Food sovereignty, G4S, gentrification, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Global Witness, green new deal, guest worker program, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, joint-stock company, land reform, late capitalism, lockdown, mandatory minimum, mass immigration, mass incarceration, means of production, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, moral panic, Naomi Klein, neoliberal agenda, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, open borders, pension reform, Rana Plaza, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Shoshana Zuboff, social distancing, special economic zone, Steve Bannon, strikebreaker, structural adjustment programs, surveillance capitalism, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, union organizing, upwardly mobile, urban planning, W. E. B. Du Bois, wages for housework, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce

At California’s inception as a state, white settler violence also instantly structured its bordering practices, beginning with two dozen state-funded militia expeditions authorized to kill Indigenous people.65 Justin Akers Chacón and Mike Davis argue that the first US border formation predated the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and actually took place in California during the years of genocidal conquest.66 Vigilantes inspired by these militia expeditions killed 6,460 Indigenous people beginning in 1846, and 100,000 Indigenous people were later killed during the California Gold Rush.67 Throughout the height of the gold rush, hundreds of Mexicans, including miners, were also lynched by vigilante mobs.68 During the subsequent period of economic decline, state-backed vigilante forces relentlessly waged lethal attacks on immigrant workers. Anti-Chinese race riots and massacres, including the 1871 massacre where white vigilantes killed 10 percent of all Chinese people in Los Angeles, the formation of the Japanese and Korean Exclusion League, and the KKK’s “Swat a Jap” campaign were all expressions of “Keep California white” efforts to consolidate white settler imperial jurisdiction and citizenship.69 Pressure for racial exclusion by white power vigilantes subsequently led to a California law prohibiting the employment of Chinese workers (bluntly titled An Act to Protect Free White Labor against Competition with Chinese Coolie Labor), the federal Page Act prohibiting East Asian “coolie labor” and Chinese women deemed to be sex workers, and the federal Chinese Exclusion Act banning all Chinese laborers.

See also White Australia climate change and, 101–102 colonialism of, 92, 93, 95–98, 204 deportation from, 98 exclusionist legislation in, 96–97, 101 Five Country Conference and, 92 Global Compact for Migration and, 133 Indigenous people in, 95–96 literary prize of, 93–94 offshore detention and, 88, 93–96, 98–104, 109, 112 settler colonial nature of, xvii Vishwa Hindu Parishad in, 175 Australian Defence Forces, 88, 102 Australian Immigration Department, 94 Australian Labor Party, 98–100 Australian Navy, 100 Austria, 115, 116, 133, 183–185, 188, 199, 202 Auxiliary Forces of Morocco, 111 Axom Andalon, 190 Azov movement, 169–170 B Bahamas, 134, 208 Bahng, Aimee, 154 Bahrain, 146, 148 Baker, Ella, 142 Bali Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime, 101 Balkans, 110, 115–116 Bangladesh, 11, 61–69, 106, 136, 151–152, 178, 190 Bannerji, Himani, 197 Bannon, Steve, 169 Barbados, 134, 158–159 Barker, Vanessa, 186 Barrett, Marcia, 162 Barrick Gold Corporation, 94 Barrientos Dardón, Héctor Rolando, 91 Bashi, Vilna, 126 Battalion 316, 43 Baxter detention camp, 103 Bayot, Jeffrey, 180 BBC News, 110 Begum, Saleha, 190 Belang, Vlaams, 183 Belgium, 124, 133, 183, 188 Belgrade, 185 Benetton, 61 Berger, Thomas, 70 Berlant, Lauren, 205 Berlin Conference of 1884–85, 127 Berlin Wall, 80 Berlusconi, Silvio, 116 La Bestia, 90 Better Migration Management program, 109 Bevins, Vincent, 182 Bhandar, Brenna, 140 Bharatiya Janata Party, 172, 174–175, 178, 189–190 Bhasan Char, 66 Biden, Joe, xvi, 59, 80 Bidoon people, 172, 193–194 Binder, Seán, 119 bin Laden, Osama, 26 bin Salman, Mohammed, 151 Bisbee Deportation of 1917, 85 Black Alliance for Just Immigration, 28, 31 The Black Atlantic (Gilroy), 123–124 Black Codes, 30 Blackhawk, Maggie, 26 The Black Jacobins (James), 46 Black people, xvii, 33, 171 abolition movements and, 83, 118, 124, 215 ACCESS program and, 29 anti-Black migration controls, 107 Canada and, 29, 88, 157–160 court fees and, 82 Covid-19 and, xv criminal injustice system and, 82–84 deportation of, 29, 31 domestic work and, 141–142, 158, 164 enslavement of, 3, 21–23, 28–29, 36, 83, 96, 123, 142, 199 far right and, 9 Homestead Act and, 26 Hurricane Katrina and, 30–31, 36 in Brazil, 182–183 incarceration and, 36, 41 in Haiti, 46, 48 Islam and, 188 NAFTA and, 51 Republic of Texas and, 23 spectacles of violence against, 107 strikes by, 35 surveillance of, 57 uprisings of, 3, 5, 28 US–Mexico border and, 29 war on drugs and, 40–43 welfare reform and, 53 white terror and, 30 Black Power, 200 Black Sardines, 215 Blackstone, 182 Blackwater, 4, 135 Blair, Tony, 189 Boeing, 82 Boko Haram, 74 Bolivia, 182, 218 Bolsonaro, Jair, xvii, 169, 178, 180–183, 219 Bomana immigration detention center, 102 Bonilla, Manuel, 44 Boochani, Behrouz, 93–94, 103 Border Industrialization Program, 49 Border Patrol Explorer Program, 41 Border Protection Act, 99 Border Security Force, 178, 190 Bosnia, 116, 169, 214 Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, 171, 173, 177 Brahmins, 174 Brand, Dionne, 123 Brandenburg Gate, 122 Brathwaite, Kamau, 26 Brazil, 9, 72, 169, 171, 178, 180–183, 189, 218–219 Brecht, Bertolt, 219 Breitbart News, 169 Breivik, Anders, 169–170, 172 Brexit, 169, 203 British Columbia, 163 British East India Company, 48, 138 British empire, 6, 93, 95–96, 123, 138, 148–149 India and, 48, 175, 190 Myanmar and, 191 British National Party, 183 British people, 95 Broadspectrum, 103 Bronfenbrenner, Kate, 51 Browne, Simone, 29 Brown, Wendy, 80 Buddhist people, 190, 191 Bulgaria, 115, 116, 183, 188, 203–204 Bureau of Immigration, 34 Bureau of Indian Affairs, 24 Bureau of Land Management, 24 Bureau of Prisons, 81 Burj Khalifa, 154 Burkinabé revolution, 124 Burkina Faso, 91, 109 Bush Doctrine, 219 Bush, George W., 55–56, 58–60 Mérida and, 90 Butler, Judith, 188 Buzi, Jason, 14–15 Byrd, Jodi, 26, 159 C Caal Maquin, Jakelin Amei, 27 Cáceres, Berta, 45, 207 Calabria, 131 Calais, 105–106, 122 California, 23, 29, 32–34, 52, 58, 204 California Gold Rush, 33 Cambodia, 47, 103 Cameroon, 71, 91 Campbell, Angus, 102 Camp, Jordan, 42 Canada, 47, 84, 133–134, 202, 213 anti-Chinese legislation in, 96, 160, 204 anti-Semitism and, 173 as “nation of immigrants,” xvi–xvii, 161 asylum in, 194 Black people and, 29, 88, 158–160 caregiver program in, 164–166 Department of Immigration and Colonization, 160 far right in, 161, 170, 203 Five Country Conference, 92 gentrification in, 1 Global Compact for Migration, 133 immigration detention in, 98 Indigenous people in, 1, 25, 73, 82–83, 156, 158–160, 162, 164 interdiction and, 88 mandatory detention in, 102 mining and, 94–95, 219 multiculturalism and, 158–161, 165–166, 197–198 Muslim people in, 160 NAFTA and, 51 “racial destiny” of, 96 safe third county agreements and, 88–89 SAWP in, 156–158, 161–164 TEAP and, 165 TFWP in, 8, 137, 155–166, 161 the Philippines and, 180 US visas and, 79 Vishwa Hindu Parishad in, 175 wealthy elite in, 163 Canada Border Services Agency, 88 Canary Islands, 110, 112 Cannery and Agricultural Workers’ Industrial Union, 35 Cape Town, 214 Cape Verde, 110, 112 Caracol Industrial Park, 47 Caregiver Program, 156, 158, 165–166 Cargill, 50 Caribbean, 193, 208 domestic workers from, 144, 164–165 free trade agreements and, 49 immigrant detention and, 81 migrants from, 88 migrant worker programs and, 30, 161–162 nationalism in, 213 sugar workers in, 135, 204 US border with, 46–48, 87 war on terror and, 57–58 Caribbean Domestic Scheme, 158, 164 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 12 Central African Republic, 91 Central America, 4 caravan from, 59 displacement from, 3, 27, 43–45, 73, 88 domestic workers from, 144 Indigenous people in, 27, 44, 45, 73 Mexico and, 91 US border training in, 89 wars in, 39, 43–44 Central American people H2-A program and, 135 hunger strikes by, 38 SAWP and, 161 Central American Regional Security Initiative, 45 Césaire, Aimé, 86 Ceuta, 110–113 Chabad of Poway, 170 Chacón, Justin Akers, 33, 205 Chad, 107, 109 Chang, Kornel, 204 Charleston, 199 Charlie Hebdo, 188 Charlottesville, 173 Chávez, César, 204–205 Chávez, Manuel, 204 Cheney, Dick, 136 Chen, Listen, 199 Cherokee, 24 Chiapas, 90–91 Chicago, 42, 196 Chile, 218 China Africa and, 71 African migrants in, 11 Belt and Road Initiative, 192 Covid-19 and, 12 hukou system in, 133 indentured laborers from, 96, 158 migrants from, 32 Myanmar and, 192 Trump and, 12 Trump’s racism against, 59 workers in, 64 Chinese Canadian people, 162 Chinese Exclusion Act, 32, 34, 204 Chinese Exclusion Act (Canada), 160 Chinese people, 32–35, 96, 162, 200, 204, 218 Chios Island, 114 Chippewa people, 25 Chiquita, 44 Chiricahua people, 21 Chittagong, 63, 65 Chomsky, Noam, 43 Christchurch, 169, 170, 207 Christian people, 24, 124, 173, 174, 182, 185–186, 188, 190, 198 Christmas Island, 95, 99, 100, 103 Chu, Jim, 164 CIA, 43–45, 182 CI Resources, 95 Citizenship Amendment Act, 190 Citizenship Law, 191 Ciudad Juárez, 51 Civilian Material Assistance, 44 Civil War, 30, 33 climate refugees, xviii–xix, 3, 66, 69–74, 73–74, 101–102 Clinton, Bill, xvi, 51–53, 56, 80, 206 Clinton, Hillary, 188–189 Coahuilteca people, 23 Coalición de Derechos Humanos, 52 Coca-Cola, 73 Cold War, 44–48, 86, 125, 126, 185, 197 Cole, Juan, 54 Cole, Teju, 86 Collins, Patricia Hill, 141 Colombia, 218 Colorado, 23 Comanche people, 23, 32 Commonwealth Caribbean SAWP, 158–159 Communist Party of the Philippines, 180 Comoros, 194 Compromise of 1850, 28 CONASUPO, 50 Congo Basin, 71 Congress, 41, 52 Conservative Party (Austria), 184 Conservative Party (UK), 203 Constitutional Tribunal, 192 Continuous Journey law, 160 Contras, 43, 44 Cooke, Marvel, 142 Corbyn, Jeremy, 14 CoreCivic, 81 Cornum, Lou, 200 coronavirus.


pages: 143 words: 42,555

Humble Pie and Cold Turkey: English Expressions and Their Origins by Caroline Taggart

animal electricity, bread and circuses, California gold rush, cuban missile crisis, false flag, invention of the telegraph, low interest rates, the market place

If the flint sparked but the gunpowder didn’t ignite – perhaps because it was damp – the result was a flash in the pan, a brief burst of light that achieved little or nothing. The metaphorical use of this expression dates from the early nineteenth century, when this style of gun was still very much in use. It’s found forty years before the California Gold Rush, which means that the alternative explanation (that prospectors were briefly excited when they saw a flash of light that looked like gold in the pan they used to wash earth from the metal) can’t be true. A miner’s pan is, however, responsible for to pan out: a Manual of Mineralogy of the period explained that Gravel or soil...is said to pan well or pan poorly according to the result.


pages: 538 words: 138,544

The Story of Stuff: The Impact of Overconsumption on the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-And How We Can Make It Better by Annie Leonard

air freight, banking crisis, big-box store, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, business logic, California gold rush, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, Community Supported Agriculture, cotton gin, dematerialisation, employer provided health coverage, energy security, European colonialism, export processing zone, Firefox, Food sovereignty, Ford paid five dollars a day, full employment, global supply chain, Global Witness, income inequality, independent contractor, Indoor air pollution, intermodal, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, liberation theology, McMansion, megaproject, Nelson Mandela, new economy, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, planned obsolescence, Ralph Nader, renewable energy credits, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, supply-chain management, systems thinking, TED Talk, the built environment, trade liberalization, trickle-down economics, union organizing, Wall-E, Whole Earth Review, Zipcar

It’s known for its resistance to heat and to corrosion by acids—even when actually submerged in acid.98 Although coltan has mostly been sourced from other countries like Australia, Brazil, and Canada, 80 percent of the world’s supplies are in the politically unstable and violence-plagued eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.99 Congolese coltan mining has funded brutal guerilla forces and their backers in neighboring countries like Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda. Coltan can be mined with very basic methods: simply dug up and sifted through pans, just as the forty-niners in the California Gold Rush worked. So when the global price of the metal shot up in 2000 to three hundred dollars per pound of the refined mineral (in part due to the huge launch of Sony’s PS2 game console), thousands of Congolese scrambled into the country’s lush green forests to get at it, destroying national parks and other pristine land, killing gorillas for food, and ruining the animals’ habitat.100 Various armies (official and rebel) rushed in to take over the trade, often employing children and prisoners of war, brutally raping local women (the UN estimated 45,000 raped in 2005 alone101), and bringing prostitution and illegal arms trade with them.

INDEX Abacha, Sani, 31 Abu Dhabi, 66 Acetone, 60 Advertising, 160, 163–168, 251, 256 Advisory committees, 99–100 Afghanistan, 243, 244 Agent Orange, 54, 213 Air freight, 115, 119 al-Qaeda, 26 Alameda County Waste Management Authority, 211 Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), 258 Allan, John, 17 Alloys, 44 Aluminum, 21, 59 Aluminum cans, 64–68, 196 Amazon, 116, 118–121 Amazon River, 66 American Chemistry Council, 93, 99 American Cyanamid, 222 Ammonia, 60, 61 Amnesty International, 28, 32 Anderson, Ray, 19, 185, 187–189 Anderson, Warren, 92 Anheuser-Busch, 196 Antibacterial products, 79 Antimony, 59 Appalachia, 35, 36 Apple Computer, 57, 59, 108, 109, 203, 206 Aral Sea, 46 Arsenic, 13, 15, 35, 59, 73, 203 Autoclaving, 201 Automobile industry, 159–160, 164 Bangladesh, 12–14, 49, 184, 193, 219–221 Barber, Benjamin, 169, 172 Basel Action Network (BAN), 205, 227, 228 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, 227, 258 Batker, Dave, 246 Batteries, 203, 204 Bauxite, 21, 64–65 Beavan, Colin, 147, 239, 245 Bechtel, 140 Bee, Rashida, 91 Benin, 45 Benyus, Janine, 105 Benzene, 30, 48 Beryllium, 203 Beta-hexachlorocyclohexane, 79 Beverage containers, 64–68, 194–195 Bezos, Jeff, 118 Bhopal disaster, India, 90–93, 98 Big-Box Swindle (Mitchell), 121, 125 Big Coal (Goodell), 36 Bingham Canyon copper mine, Utah, 21 Biological oxygen demand (BOD), 10–11 Biomimicry, 104–105 Bioplastics, 230–231 BioRegional, 40 Birol, Fatih, 29–30 Birth defects, 60, 74, 76, 91 Bisignani, Giovanni, 115 Bisimwa, Bertrand, 28 Bisphenol A (BPA), 78, 99–100 Bleach, 15, 48, 56 Blood Diamond (movie), 26, 28 Body burden testing, 78–80 Bolivia, 140 Books, 51–56, 118–120 Borden Chemical, 222 Borneo, 3 Boron, 59 Boston Tea Party, 127 Bottle Recycling Climate Protection Act of 2, 195 Bottled water, 16 Bowling Alone (Putnam), 149, 238–239 Bräutigam, Deborah, 37 Brazil, 8, 66, 67 Breast milk, 81, 82–83, 91, 171 Bridge at the End of the World, The (Speth), 167 Brockovich, Erin, 30 Bromines, 48 Bruno, Kenny, 225 Burkina Faso, 45 Burundi, 27 Bush, George H. W., 250 Bush, George W., 147 Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), 141 Cadmium, 24, 30, 59, 73, 203, 205, 219 California Gold Rush of 1849, 24–25, 27 Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, 256 Cancer, 45, 48, 54, 60, 68, 69, 74, 76, 83, 85, 202 Car-sharing programs, 43 Carbon dioxide, 2, 36, 50–51, 65, 180–181, 209 Carbon monoxide, 65 Cargo ships, 113–114 Carlin, George, 183 Carson, Rachel, 98 Catalogs, 9 Caustic soda (lye), 48, 54, 64 Cell phones, 27, 29, 57, 103–104, 161, 202 Center for a New American Dream, 246 Center for Constitutional Rights, 258 Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ), 69 Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), 100 Center for Sustainable Economy, 242 Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), 62 Ceramics, 44 Chelaton, Jayakumar, 236 Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA), 93 Chemical pulping, 53 Chemicals.


pages: 505 words: 138,917

Open: The Story of Human Progress by Johan Norberg

Abraham Maslow, additive manufacturing, affirmative action, Albert Einstein, anti-globalists, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Bletchley Park, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, business process, California gold rush, carbon tax, citizen journalism, classic study, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crony capitalism, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, digital map, Donald Trump, Edward Jenner, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, Filter Bubble, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Flynn Effect, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, Galaxy Zoo, George Gilder, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, green new deal, humanitarian revolution, illegal immigration, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, indoor plumbing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John von Neumann, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, labour mobility, Lao Tzu, liberal capitalism, manufacturing employment, mass immigration, negative emissions, Network effects, open borders, open economy, Pax Mongolica, place-making, profit motive, RAND corporation, regulatory arbitrage, rent control, Republic of Letters, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Schrödinger's Cat, sharing economy, side project, Silicon Valley, Solyndra, spice trade, stem cell, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, tacit knowledge, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, Tyler Cowen, Uber for X, ultimatum game, universal basic income, World Values Survey, Xiaogang Anhui farmers, zero-sum game

INDEX Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258), 6, 136–7, 138, 169, 353 abortion, 113 absolutist monarchies, 154, 155, 170, 182, 185 Academy Awards, 82 Accenture, 375 accountants, 41 Acemoglu, Daron, 185, 187, 200 Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC), 86–7, 88, 249 Acton, Lord, see Dalberg-Acton, John Adams, Douglas, 295 Adobe, 310 Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), 306 Aeschylus, 132 affirmative action, 244 Afghanistan, 70, 345 Age of Discovery, 177 agriculture, 39–40, 42, 74, 171, 263 Akbar I, Mughal Emperor, 98 Akkadian Empire (c. 2334–2154 BC), 42 Alaska, 76 Albania, 54 Albertus Magnus, Saint, 145 d’Alembert, Jean-Baptiste le Rond, 154 Alexander III ‘the Great’, Basileus of Macedon, 87–9 Alexandria, Egypt, 134 algae, 332 algebra, 137 Alibaba, 311 Allport, Gordon, 244–5 Almohad Caliphate (1121–1269), 137–8 alpha males, 227–8, 229 Alphaville, 245 altruism, 216 Amalric, Arnaud, 94 Amazon, 275, 311 America First, 19, 272 American Civil War (1861–5), 109 American Declaration of Independence (1776), 103, 201, 202 American Revolutionary War (1775–83), 102–3, 200–201 American Society of Human Genetics, 76–7 Americanization, 19 Amherst, William, 1st Earl Amherst, 176–7 amphorae, 48 Amsterdam, Holland, 150, 152, 153 An Lushan Rebellion (755–63), 352 anaesthesia, 279, 296 anagrams, 83 Anatolia, 42, 74 Anaximander, 127 Anaximenes, 127 al-Andalus (711–1492), 97, 137–9, 140 Andromeda, 88 Anglo–French Treaty (1860), 53–4 Anhui, China, 315 anti-Semitism, 11, 94–7, 109, 220, 233, 251, 254, 255 anti-Semitism, 254–5, 356 Antonine Plague (165–80), 77 Antoninus Pius, Roman Emperor, 91 Apama, 88 Appiah, Kwame Anthony, 5 Apple, 82, 195, 304, 311, 319 Apuleius, 89 Arab Spring (2011), 10, 342 Arabic numerals, 70, 137, 156 Arabic, 136, 137, 140 archaeology, 21–2, 31, 32, 38, 43, 50, 51 Archer Daniels Midland, 329 Aristides, Aelius, 48 Aristophanes, 129, 131, 132 Aristotle, 130–31, 132, 137, 141–6, 161 Armenians, 136, 220 ARPAnet, 306 Art Nouveau, 198 art, 198 Artaxerxes III, Persian Emperor, 87 Ashkenazi Jews, 99 Ashoka, Mauryan Emperor, 53 Assyria (2500–609 BC), 248–9 Assyrian Empire (2500–609 BC), 41, 43, 86 astronomy, 80, 145–6, 150 Atari, 304 Athens, 47, 53, 89, 90, 131, 134 Atlas Copco, 65 Augustine of Hippo, 133, 139 Australia, 50–53, 76, 262 Australopithecus afarensis, 24–5 Austria, 1, 150, 151, 190 Austria-Hungary (1867–1918), 179, 254 Battle of Vienna (1683), 237, 238 Habsburg monarchy (1282–1918), 151, 179, 190, 237 migration crisis (2015–), 342 Mongol invasion (1241), 95 Nazi period (1938–45), 105 Ötzi, 1–2, 8–9, 73, 74 Thirty Years War (1618–48), 150 Authoritarian Dynamic, The (Stenner), 343 authoritarianism, 4, 14, 220, 343–61, 363, 379 democracy and, 357 economics and, 346–51 exposure to difference and, 242 innovation and, 318 insecurity and, 338, 342, 378 media and, 346–9 nostalgia and 351–4 predisposition, 220, 343–6 populism and, 325, 350–51 scapegoats and, 355–6 science and, 161–3 automatic looms, 179 automation, 63, 312–13 Averroes, 137–8, 143, 144, 145 Aztec Empire (1428–1521), 55 Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, 75 baby-boom generation (1946–64), 294, 340 Babylon, 39, 86–7 Babylonia (1895–539 BC), 39, 42, 43, 86–7, 128, 131, 249, 267 Bacon, Francis, 147, 156, 165–6, 201 bad news, 322 Baghdad, 70, 136, 353 Bahrain, 42 Bailey, Ron, 11 Bailyn, Bernard, 201 balance of trade, 59–60 Banda Islands, 100 Bangladesh, 270 Bannon, Steve, 14, 108 Barcelona, Catalonia, 320 Basel, Switzerland, 152 Battle of Vienna (1683), 237, 238 Bayezid II, Ottoman Sultan, 98 Bayle, Pierre, 158 Beginning of Infinity, The (Deutsch), 332 Behavioural Immune System, 222 Beirut, Lebanon, 236 benefit–cost ratio, 60, 61, 62 Berges, Aida, 80 Bering land bridge, 76 Berkeley, see University of California, Berkeley Berlin Wall, fall of (1989), 10, 340, 341, 363, 364 Berners-Lee, Timothy, 307–8 Bernstein, William, 42 Berossus, 267 Better Angels of Our Nature, The (Pinker), 243 Beveridge, William, 59 Béziers, France, 94 Bezos, Jeffrey, 274, 275–6, 277 Bi Sheng, 171 Bible, 46, 72, 248–50, 296 bicycles, 297 de Biencourt, Charles, 189 Big Five personality traits, 7 Black Death (1346–53), 77, 139, 208, 356, 352, 356 Blade Runner, 334 Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, 124–6 Blue Ghosts, 236 Bohr, Niels, 105 Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN), 307 bonobos, 226–7 Book of Jonah, 248–50 Borjas, George, 116 Boston, Massachusetts, 122, 223 Boudreaux, Donald, 62, 270 Boulton, Matthew, 194 Bowles, Samuel, 216 Boym, Svetlana, 288 Brandt, Willy, 364 Brewer, Marilynn, 247 Brexit (2016–), 9, 14, 118, 238, 240–41, 349, 354, 379 Brezhnev, Leonid, 315 Britain, 169, 181–99 Acts of Union (1707), 101, 194 Afghanistan War (2001–14), 345 Amherst Mission (1816), 176–7 anti-Semitism in, 254 arts, 198 Bletchley Park, 124–6 Brexit (2016–), 9, 14, 118, 238, 240–41, 349, 354, 379 Cheddar Man, 74 Cobden–Chevalier Treaty (1860), 53–4 coffee houses, 166 colonies, 84, 191, 194, 200 Corn Laws repeal (1846), 53, 191 creative destruction in, 179 crime in, 119, 120 Dutch War (1672–4), 101 English Civil War (1642–1651), 148, 183, 184, 201 Glorious Revolution (1688), 101, 185–8, 190, 193 hair powder tax (1795), 72 immigration in, 113, 115, 118, 119, 120, 193–4 Industrial Revolution, 188–99, 202 innovation in, 53, 189–90 Internet, development of, 307–8 Iraq War (2003–11), 345 Levellers, 183–4, 186 literacy in, 188, 198 literature, 188–9 London Bridge stabbings (2019), 120 London 7/7 bombings (2005), 341 Macartney Mission (1793), 176 Magna Carta (1215), 5 monopolies, 182 MPs’ expenses scandal (2009), 345 Muslim community, 113 Navigation Acts, 192 nostalgia in, 294 open society, 169, 181–2, 195–9 patent system, 189–90, 203, 314 Peasants’ Revolt (1381), 208 political tribalism in, 238, 240–41 poverty in, 256 railways in, 297 Royal Society, 156, 157, 158, 196, 296 ruin follies, 286–7 slavery, abolition of (1807), 182, 205 smuggling in, 192 Statute of Labourers (1351), 208 United States, migration to, 104 West Africa Squadron, 205 Whig Party, 185, 201 World War II (1939–45), 124–6 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 135 Bronze Age (c. 3300–600 BC) Late Bronze-Age Collapse (1200–1150 BC), 44, 49, 54 migration to Europe, 74–5 Phoenician civilization, 43–6, 49, 70 Sumerian civilization, 42–3 Brotherton, Rob, 322 Brown, Donald, 219, 283 Bruges, Flanders, 208 Bruno, Giordano, 150 Bryn Mawr College, 201 Buddhism, 96, 149, 352 Bulgaria, 73, 342 Bureau of Labor Statistics, US, 65 Burke, Edmund, 152, 292 Bush, George Walker, 328 ByteDance, 318 Byzantine Empire (395–1453), 94, 134, 135, 155, 224 California Gold Rush (1848–1855), 104 Calvin, John, 149 Calvinism, 6, 99, 153, 356 Canada, 235, 258 Caplan, Bryan, 258 Caracalla, Roman Emperor, 91 Carbon Engineering, 332 Cardwell, Donald, 10 Cardwell’s Law, 10 Carlson, Tucker, 82, 302 Carlyle, Thomas, 206 Carthage (814–146 BC), 45 Caspian Sea, 75 Cathars, 94, 142 Catherine II, Empress of Russia, 154 Catholicism, 208 in Britain, 101, 185–6, 191 Crusades, 94, 138 in Dutch Republic, 99 exiles and, 153 in France, 154 Jews, persecution of, 97–8, 100, 106, 140, 233 Inquisition, 94, 97, 98, 100, 143, 150 in Italy, 6, 169 Muslims, persecution of, 97, 106, 233 Papacy, 102, 142, 143, 152, 155, 178, 237 in Rwanda, 230–31 in United States, 102, 104, 108, 254 values and, 114 Cato’s Letters (Trenchard and Gordon), 201 Celts, 89, 289 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 313 Ceres, 89 Cerf, Vinton, 307 CERN (Conseil européen pour la recherche nucléaire), 306, 307 chariot racing, 224 Charles I, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, 148, 179, 183 Chávez, Hugo, 354 Chechen War, Second (1999–2009), 354 Cheddar Man, 74 cheongsam dresses, 73 Chesterton, Gilbert Keith, 286, 300 Chicago principles, 164–5 Chicago, Illinois, 202 child mortality, 168–9 Child, Josiah, 184 children, 26 chimpanzees, 24, 25, 32, 36, 226–7, 228 China, 4, 5, 6, 13, 84, 270, 314–18 Amherst Mission (1816), 176–7 An Lushan Rebellion (755–63), 352 Antonine Plague (165–80), 77 authoritarianism, 4, 162–3, 175, 318, 325, 343 budget deficits, 60 cheongsam dresses, 73 Confucianism, 129, 149, 169, 176 COVID-19 pandemic (2019–20), 4, 11–12, 162–3 Cultural Revolution (1966–76), 355 dictatorships, support for, 367 dynamism in, 315–18 ethnic groups in, 84 Great Wall, 178 industrialization 169, 172–3, 207 intellectual property in, 58 kimonos, 73 literacy in, 148 Macartney Mission (1793), 176 Ming dynasty (1368–1644), 54, 148, 175, 177–8, 179, 215 national stereotypes, 235, 236 overcapacity in, 317 paper, invention of, 136 private farming initiative (1978), 315–16 productivity in, 317 poverty in, 273, 316 Qing dynasty (1644–1912), 148, 149, 151, 153, 175–7, 179, 353 Reform and Opening-up (1979–), 4, 53, 56, 315–16 SARS outbreak (2002), 162 science in, 4, 13, 70, 153, 156, 162–3, 169–73, 269 Silk Road, 171, 174, 352 Song dynasty (960–1279), 53, 169–75 state capitalism in, 316–17 Tang dynasty (618–907), 84, 170, 177, 352 Taoism, 129, 149 trade barriers, 59 United States, migration to, 104, 109, 254 United States, trade with, 19, 57, 58–9, 62–3, 64 WTO accession (2001), 63 Yuan Empire (1271–1368), 174–5 Zheng He’s voyages (1405–33), 177–8 Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), 254 Christensen, Clayton, 305 Christianity, 46, 70, 96, 129 Bible, 46, 72, 248–50, 296 in Britain, 101 Calvinism, 6, 99, 149, 153, 356 Cathars, 94, 142 clash of civilizations narrative, 237 Crusades, 94, 138 Catholicism, see Catholicism Dominican order, 356 in Dutch Republic, 99 economic hardship and, 359 fundamentalism, 133–5, 149 Great Awakening (1730–55), 102 Great Vanishing, 134–5 Inquisition, 97, 98, 100 Jews, persecution of, 95, 96, 97 Lutheranism, 99, 356 in Mongol Empire, 96 Old Testament, 46, 72 orthodox backlash, 149–50 Orthodox Church, 155 Papacy, 102, 142, 143, 152, 155, 178, 233 Protestantism, 99, 104, 148, 149, 153, 169, 178 Puritanism, 99, 102 Rastafari and, 72 Reformation, 148, 155 in Roman Empire, 90, 93–4 science and, 133–5, 141–6, 149–50 Thirty Years War (1618–48), 97 tribalism and, 230–31, 246 zero-sum relationships and, 248–50 Chua, Amy, 84 Cicero, 141 Cilician, Gates, 42 cities, 40, 79, 140 division of labour in, 40 immigration and, 114, 250 innovation and, 40, 53, 79, 140, 145, 172, 287 liberalism and, 339 Mesopotamia, 37–43 open-mindedness and, 35 productivity and, 40, 98 tradition and, 287, 291 turtle theory and, 121–2 civic nationalism, 377–8 civil society, 6, 199, 253, 358, 363 clash of civilizations narrative, 237, 362–3, 365–6 ‘Clash of Civilizations?’

(Fukuyama), 362–5 End of Work, The (Rifkin), 312 Engels, Friedrich, 33, 36, 162, 206, 247, 256 English Civil War (1642–1651), 148, 183, 184, 201 Enigma machine, 124–6 Enlightenment, 4, 5, 6, 13, 103, 154–60, 165–6, 195–6 Environmental Performance Index, 327 Ephesus, 45 Epic of Gilgamesh, The, 38 Epicurus, 134–5 Epstein, Richard, 320 equality matching, 262–6, 267 Erasmus, 152 Erdogan, Recep Tayyip, 354 Ethiopia, 72, 130 ethnocentrism, 219, 271 Etruscan civilization (c. 900–27 BC), 43 Eubulus, 47 eugenics, 109 Euphrates river, 37 Euripides, 132 European Organization for Nuclear Research, 306 European Parliament, 325 European Union (EU) Brexit (2016–), 9, 14, 118, 238, 240–41, 349, 354, 379 common currency, 280–81 freedom of movement, 118, 343 migration crisis (2015–), 10, 114, 115, 342–3, 358 subsidies in, 280 trade and, 272 United States, trade with, 19 Evans, Oliver, 203 Evolution of God, The (Wright), 249 evolutionary psychology, 14, 23, 225 exoticism, 84 Expressionism, 198 Facebook, 239, 309 Falwell, Jerry, 113–14 Farage, Nigel, 241 farming, see agriculture Fascist Italy (1922–1943), 105, 219 FedEx, 319 Feifer, Jason, 290–92 Fenway Park, Boston, 223 Ferdinand II, King of Aragon, 97, 98, 106 Ferguson, Charles, 314 Fermi, Enrico, 105 Ferney, France, 153 feudalism, 92, 194, 202, 208 fight-or-flight instinct, 15, 346, 348–9 filter bubbles, 239 financial crisis (2008), 10, 15, 62, 254, 333, 358, 359–60 fire, control of, 32–3, 76 Flanders, 208 fluyts, 100 Flynn effect, 109 Fogel, Robert, 276 folk economics, 258–62 football, 223–4, 245–6 Forbes, 274 Ford, Henry, 203 Fortune 500 companies, 82 Fox News, 82, 302, 354 France, 151 American Revolutionary War (1775–83), 201 automation in, 313 Cathars, 94, 142 Cobden–Chevalier Treaty (1860), 53–4 corruption in, 345 Dutch War (1672–8), 101 Encyclopédie, 154 free zones in, 180–81 Huguenots, persecution of, 97, 99, 101, 158, 193 immigration in, 115 Jews, persecution of, 96, 97, 254 languages in, 289 Minitel, 313 Revolution (1789–99), 201, 292 Royal Academy of Sciences, 156 ruin follies, 287 St Bartholomew’s Day massacre (1572), 97 Thököly Uprising (1678–85), 137 Uber in, 320 University of Paris, 140, 141–2, 143 Francis I, Emperor of Austria-Hungary, 178 Franciscans, 144 Franklin, Benjamin, 107 Franks, 92 free speech, 127, 131–2, 160, 163–5, 343 Chicago principles, 164–5 emigration for, 152–3 university campuses, 163–5 free trade, see under trade Fried, Dan, 289 Friedman, Benjamin, 253 Friedman, David, 284 Friedman, Thomas, 325 Friedrich Wilhelm I, King of Prussia, 153 Fukuyama, Francis, 362–5 Fulda, Germany, 179, 180 Future and Its Enemies, The (Postrel), 300 Future of Nostalgia, The (Boym), 288 Galatia, 90 Galaxy Zoo, 80 Galilei, Galileo, 146, 150 Gallup, 164 game theory, 26 Gandhi, Indira, 326 gas lighting, 297 Gates, William ‘Bill’, 274, 277, 309 Gauls, 90, 91, 92 gay rights, 113, 336 Geary, Patrick, 288–9 gender equality, 113, 114 General Motors, 64 generations baby-boom generation (1946–64), 294, 340 generation X (1965–80), 340 immigration and, 106, 110–11, 113–14 interwar generation (1928–45), 340 millennial generation (1981–96), 340 nostalgia and, 291, 293–4, 296 genetically modified organisms (GMO), 299, 301 Geneva, Switzerland, 152, 153 Genghis Khan, 94–5, 96, 174 Genoa, Republic of (1005–1797), 73, 178 George II, King of Great Britain and Ireland, 193 George III, King of Great Britain and Ireland, 103, 193 George Mason University, 257, 258 Georgia, 365 Georgia, United States, 349 German Conservative Party, 254 Germany automatic looms, 179 Berlin Wall, fall of (1989), 10, 340, 341, 363, 364 Bronze Age migration, 75 budget deficits, 60 COVID-19 pandemic (2019–20), 12 guilds in, 190 immigration in, 114, 115 Jews, persecution of, 99, 104–6, 109, 220, 233 migration crisis (2015–), 342–3 Nazi period (1933–45), 104–6, 109, 124, 220, 233, 353 Neolithic migration, 74 protectionism in, 314 Reichstag fire (1933), 353 Thirty Years War (1618–48), 150 United States, migration to, 104, 107–8, 111 Weimar period (1918–33), 353 al-Ghazali, 139 Gholia, 89 Gibbon, Edward, 90 Gilder, George, 314 Gilgamesh, 38 Gillis, John, 291 Gingrich, Newton, 313 Gini coefficient, 273 Gintis, Herbert, 36 global history, 13 global price crisis (2010–11), 11 global warming, 75, 323, 325, 326–34 globalization, 4, 55, 270 backlashes against, 9, 14, 54, 57 cities and, 35 classical world, 43–50 conspiracy theories on, 323 disease and, 11, 77–9 United States and, 19 Westernization, 4 Glorious Revolution (1688), 101, 185–8, 190, 193 Goa, India, 146–7 golden nugget theory, 5 Golden Rule, 251–2 Golding, William, 219, 243, 244 Goldstone, Jack, 5, 133, 353 Goodness Paradox, The (Wrangham), 227 Google, 309, 311 Gordon, Thomas, 201 Göring, Hermann, 106 gossip, 229 Goths, 92 Gottlieb, Anthony, 135 Great Awakening (1730–55), 102 Great Depression (1929–39), 54–5, 56, 254 Great Enrichment, 167, 204 Great Recession (2007–9), 254–5, 358, 359–60 Great Transformation, The (Polanyi), 37 Great Vanishing, 134–5 Great Wall of China, 178 Greece, ancient, 127–32, 169 Athens, 47, 53, 89, 90, 131–2, 134 Axial Age, 129 cosmopolitanism, 87–8 golden nugget theory, 5 Ionian enlightenment, 127–9 Mycenae, 88 philosophy, 13, 70, 127–32, 134–5, 136 Phoenicians, relations with, 43, 44, 45, 46 science, 127–32, 136 Sparta, 47, 54, 90, 132 trade, attitudes towards, 47, 54 xenophobia in, 90 Green New Deal, 302 Greene, Joshua, 216, 259 Greenland, 51 Gregorian calendar, 137, 152 Gregory IX, Pope, 142 Gregory XIII, Pope, 152 gross domestic product (GDP), 68–9, 257, 278–9 Grotius, Hugo, 147, 152–3 groupthink, 83 Guangzhou, Guangdong, 352 guilds, 190 Gutenberg, Johannes, 146 Haber, Fritz, 105 Habsburg Empire (1282–1918) anti-Semitism in, 254 Austria, 151, 179, 190 refugees, 99 Spain, 98–9, 208 Hadrian, Roman Emperor, 91 Hadrian’s Wall, 47 Hagley Park, West Midlands, 286–7 Haidt, Jonathan, 163, 229, 344, 348, 357 Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, 72 Hamas, 365 Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 173 Hanseatic League (1358–1862), 53 Hanson, Robin, 282 Hanway, Jonas, 298 Happy Days, 294 Harari, Yuval Noah, 38 Harriot, Thomas, 150 Hartsoeker, Nicolaas, 159 Harvard Business Review, 313 Harvard University, 116, 122, 137, 253, 309, 313 Haskell, Thomas, 206 Hässelby, Stockholm, 217–18, 245 Hayashi, Stuart, 370 Hayek, Friedrich, 1, 7, 29, 300, 325 Hebrew Bible, 248–50 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 288, 365 Helm, Dieter, 328, 331 Henrich, Joseph, 36 Hercules, 87 Herodotus, 132 Hewlett-Packard, 304 Higgs, Robert, 337 Hill, Christopher, 182 Hinduism, 136, 149, 354 von Hippel, William, 24, 25, 262, 284 Hippocrates, 128 Hispanic people, 110–11 Hitler, Adolf, 104–5, 353 Hobbes, Thomas, 9, 152, 226 Hofer, Johannes, 288 Holmgren, Pär, 325 Holocaust (1941–5), 109, 220 Holy Roman Empire (800–1806), 155, 181, 288 Homestead Acts, 171 Homo economicus, 34, 36 Homo erectus, 76, 267 Homo sapiens, 3, 21, 23, 30–33, 76, 259–62, 282, 371 homosexuality, 79, 113–14, 336 Homs, Syria, 82 Honeywell, 303 Hong Kong, 53, 235, 316 Hoover, Herbert, 55 horseshoes, 203 House of Wisdom, Baghdad, 136 Household Narrative, The, 297 housing, 375–6 Huguenots, 97, 99, 101, 158, 193 human rights, 87, 147, 213 humanitarianism, 204–7 Hume, David, 151, 154, 194 Hungary, 105, 190, 235, 237, 354, 357 hunkering down, 121, 165 Huns, 93 hunter-gatherer societies death rate, 9 disease and, 78 division of labour and, 29, 32, 40–41, 57 equality matching, 262–3, 265 inbreeding and, 78 isolation and, 52 migration, 73–4, 78–9 physical fallacy, 268 race and, 232 trade, 265 tyranny of cousins, 230 Huntington, Samuel, 110, 362–3, 365–6 Hussein, Saddam, 345 Hussey, Edward, 287 Hutchins, Robert Maynard, 165 Hutus, 230–31 Hypatia, 134 hyper-fast stars, 80 IBM, 305, 307, 319 Ibn al-Haytham, 156 Ibn Hayyan, Jabir, 156 Ibn Rushd, 137–8, 143, 144, 145 ice core drilling, 49 Identity & Violence (Sen), 231 identity politics, 241 al-Idrisi, Muhammad, 137 immigration birth rates and, 115 crime and, 110, 119 culture and, 69–73, 116, 119, 120–23 disgust and, 336, 371 division of labour and, 117 empires and, 84–106 European migration crisis (2015–), 10, 114, 115, 118, 342–3 exoticism, 84 GDP and, 68 innovation and, 81–4 Islam and, 112–14, 255 labour market and, 115, 116–19 opposition to, 69, 70, 114–23, 223, 254–5 productivity and, 68, 81, 117, 204 protectionism and, 66–7 self-selection and, 107, 112 skilled vs unskilled, 66, 82, 102, 116, 117 trade and, 35, 66–7, 234–5 tribalism and, 223, 235–6, 240, 243 urban vs rural areas, 114 welfare and, 118, 281 zero-sum thinking and, 254–5, 259 immigration in United States, 102–14 crime and, 110, 119 innovation and, 81–2, 202 overestimation of, 115, 223 tribalism and, 223, 240 zero-sum thinking and, 254–5, 259 In Defence of Global Capitalism (Norberg), 270 in vitro fertilization, 298–9 inbreeding, 78 India, 42, 45, 46, 56, 75, 129, 136, 140, 146, 270 Arabic numerals, 70, 137 engineering in, 269 Hindu nationalism, 354 industrialization, 207 Maurya Empire (323–184 BC), 53 Mughal Empire (1526–1857), 98, 148, 149, 215 national stereotypes, 235 Pakistan, relations with, 366 pollution in, 326 poverty in, 276, 326 Indo-European language, 75 Indonesia, 41 Industrial Revolution; industrialization, 5, 6, 13, 54, 132, 180, 339 in Britain, 182, 188–99, 202 in China, 169, 172–3, 207 climate change and, 326 in Dutch Republic, 101 in India, 207 in Japan, 71 in United States, 202, 291–2 in Vietnam, 207 inequality, 273, 349 Inglehart, Ronald, 339 ingroups and outgroups, 217–47 fluidity, 230–38 political, 224–5, 238–42 zero-sum relationships and, 252–5 Innocent III, Pope, 233 InnoCentive, 126–7 innovation, 4, 6, 10, 27, 80 ancient world, 32, 42, 44, 46 authoritarianism and, 318 bureaucratic inertia and, 318–21 canon and, 195 cities and, 40, 53, 79 creative destruction, 57, 179, 182, 190 cultural evolution, 28 immigration and 81–4 patent systems, 189–90 population and, 27, 51, 53 Schumpeterian profits, 273–5 resistance to, 10, 179–81 zero-sum thinking and, 266–9 Inquisition, 150 France, 94, 143 Portugal, 100 Spain, 97, 98 intellectual property, 58 Intergalactic Computer Network, 307 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 117 Internet, 57, 275, 278, 306–11, 312, 313 interwar generation (1928–45), 340 Inuit, 22, 51 Ionian enlightenment, 127–9 IQ (intelligence quotient), 109 Iran, 365 Ireland, 104, 108–9, 111, 112, 379 iron, 172 Isabella I, Queen of Castile, 97 Isaiah, 46 Isaura Palaia, Galatia, 90 Isenberg, Daniel, 296 Isis, 89 Islam; Islamic world Arab Spring (2011), 10, 342 clash of civilizations narrative, 237, 365 conflict within, 365 efflorescence, 6, 53, 136–41 fundamentalism, 112, 134, 139, 351 Koran, 137, 250–51 migration from, 112–14 orthodox backlash, 148–9 philosophy, 5, 13 science, 70, 132, 136–41 values in, 112, 113 Islamic State, 351, 365–6 Islamic world, 5, 6, 13, 53, 70 Israel, 111, 365 Italy, 6, 151, 169 anti-Semitism in, 254 Fascist period (1922–1943), 105 Genoa, Republic of (1005–1797), 73, 178 guilds in, 190 Lombard League (1167–1250), 181 Ötzi, 1–2, 8–9, 73, 74 Padua, 144, 146 Papacy in, 155, 181 Renaissance, 6, 150, 153, 169 United States, migration to, 104, 109 Venice, Republic of (697–1797), 53, 144, 152, 174, 181 Jacobs, Jane, 39–40, 79, 264 James II and VII, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, 185–6 Jamestown, Virginia, 200 Japan housing in, 376 kimonos, 73 Meiji Restoration (1868), 53, 70–71 protectionism, 314 Tokugawa Shogunate (1600–1868), 54 United States, migration to, 104, 236, 335 Japanning, 156 JavaScript, 310 jealous emulation, 154–7 jeans, 73 Jefferson, Thomas, 103, 184, 201, 205 Jenner, Edward, 296 Jerusalem, 87, 251 Jesus, 250 Jews in Abbasid Caliphate, 136 anti-Semitism, 254–5, 356 Ashkenazim, 99 Babylonian captivity, 87, 249 Bible, 46, 72, 248–50 Black Death and, 355–6 in Britain, 101, 193 in Dutch Republic, 99, 100, 150 in Germany, 99, 104–6, 109, 111, 254 Inquisition and, 97, 98 in Israel, 111 Mongol invasion and, 95 Muhammed and, 251 Nazirites, 72 in Ottoman Empire, 98 persecution of, 11, 95–7, 109, 220, 233, 251, 355–6 in Poland, 111, 220 in Roman Empire, 90, 93, 94 Sephardim, 99 in Song Empire, 170 in Spain, 97, 98, 99, 140 in United States, 102, 109 Jim Crow laws (1877–1965), 106, 254 Job Buddy, 375 Jobless Future, The (Aronowitz), 312 Jobs, Steven, 82, 304 John Chrysostom, 135 John III Sobieski, King of Poland, 237, 238 Johnson, Samuel, 191, 197 Johnson, Steven, 306 Jones, Rhys, 51 Joule, James Prescott, 196 Judaism, 46, 72, 93, 94, 96, 97 Jupiter, 145 Jurchen people, 172 Justinian I, Byzantine Emperor, 134, 224 Kahn, Robert, 307 Kandinsky, Wassily, 220–21, 289 Kant, Immanuel, 154 Karakorum, Mongol Empire, 96 al-Karaouine, Morocco, 137 Kearney, Denis, 109 keels, 44 Kenya, 21–2 Khayyam, Omar, 137 al-Khwarizmi, 137 Kiesling, Lynne, 328 Kim Jong-il, 314–15 kimonos, 73 King, Martin Luther, 19 King, Steven, 111 Kipling, Rudyard, 70 Klee, Paul, 220–21, 289 Know-Nothings, 108–9 Kodak, 319 Koran, 137, 250–51 Kramer, Samuel Noah, 37, 292 Krastev, Ivan, 342–3 Krugman, Paul, 309 Ku Klux Klan, 254 Kublai Khan, 174 Kurds, 136 Kushim, 37–8 labour mobility, 69, 374–7 lacquerware, 156 lactose, 75 Lao Tzu, 129 lapis lazuli, 70 Late Bronze-Age Collapse (1200–1150 BC), 44, 49, 54 Lebanon, 43, 236 Lee, William, 179 leisure, 199 Lenin, Vladimir, 256 Lesbos, 141 Levellers, 183–4, 186 Leviathan (Hobbes), 152 Levinovitz, Alan Jay, 290 Levy, David, 205 Lewis, David Levering, 140 Libanius, 49 liberalism, 14, 183, 334–40 colonialism and, 214 disgust and, 335, 336 dynamism and, 301 economic, 185, 336 Islam and, 112–14 security and, 334–40, 378 slave trade and, 205 universities and, 163 Libya, 48, 89, 366 Licklider, Joseph Carl Robnett, 307 life expectancy, 4, 169, 339 light bulbs, 297 Lilburne, John, 183 Lincoln, Abraham, 203 Lind, Amanda, 72 Lindsey, Brink, 301 literacy, 15, 57, 168 in Britain, 188, 198 in China, 148 in Dark Ages, 50 empathy and, 246–7 in Greece, 128–9 in Renaissance, 146, 148 Lithuania, 238 Little Ice Age, 148 lobbying, 280, 329 Locke, John, 100, 152, 185, 186, 201 Lombard League, 181 London, England, 190, 193–4, 197 7/7 bombings (2005), 341 London Bridge stabbings (2019), 120 Long Depression (1873–86), 253–4 Lord of the Flies (Golding), 219, 243, 244 Lord’s Resistance Army, 365 Louis IX, King of France, 96 Louis XIV, King of France, 237 Louis XVI, King of France, 201 love, 199 Lucas, Robert, 167 Lucy, 24–5 Lugh, 89 Lul, 111 Luther, Martin, 150, 356 Lutheranism, 99, 356 Lüthi, Max, 351 Lysenko, Trofim, 162 Lyttelton family, 286 Macartney Mission (1793), 176 Macedonian Empire (808–148 BC), 84, 87–9 Madison, James, 337 madrasas, 138 Madrid train bombings (2004), 341 Maduro, Nicolás, 354, 380 Magna Carta (1215), 5 Magris, Claudio, 219 Malacca, 100 Maltesholm School, Hässelby, 217–18, 245 mammoths, 76 Manchester United, 246 Manichaeism, 93 Mann, Thomas, 79 Mansfield, Edward, 271 Mao Zedong, 53, 162, 315, 316, 317, 355 Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor, 91 Marduk, 87 de Mariana, Juan, 147 markets, 37 humanitarianism and, 204, 206 immigration and, 68 tribalism, 247 ultimatum game, 34–5 Marley, Robert ‘Bob’, 72 marriage, 199 Marshall, Thurgood, 335 Marx, Karl, 33, 36, 162, 169, 247, 255–6 Marxism, 33, 36, 162, 182, 256, 268 Mary II, Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland, 186, 193 Maryland, United States, 349 Maslow, Abraham, 339, 341 al-Masudi, 136 mathematics, 70, 134, 135, 137, 156 Maurya Empire (323–184 BC), 53 Mauss, Marcel, 71 McCarthy, Joseph, 335 McCarthy, Kevin, 108 McCloskey, Deirdre, 167, 189, 191–2, 198 McConnell, Addison Mitchell ‘Mitch’, 108 McKinsey, 313 measles, 77 media, 346–9, 370 Medicaid, 119 Medina, 251 Medusa, 88 Meiji Restoration (1868), 53, 70–71 Mencken, Henry Louis, 325, 353 Mercury, 89 Merkel, Angela, 343 Mesopotamia, 37–43, 45, 70, 292–3 Metaphysics (Aristotle), 142 Mexico, 73, 77, 257 United States, migration to, 110, 122, 223, 240, 255 Miami, Florida, 120 Micro-80 computers, 304 Microsoft, 305–6, 309 middle class, 60–61 Migration Advisory Committee, UK, 118 Miletus, 127 militarism, 214 Mill, John Stuart, 124, 160, 164, 176, 319 millennial generation (1981–96), 340 Milton, John, 150 Ming Empire (1368–1644), 54, 148, 175, 177–8, 179, 215 minimal group paradigm, 220–22 Minitel, 313 Mobutu Sese Seko, 187 Mokyr, Joel, 157, 195, 196–7 Molyneux, Stefan, 84 Mongol Empire (1206–1368), 53, 84, 94–7, 138, 139, 173–4, 352–3 monopolies, 182, 189 Monte Testaccio, 48 Montesquieu, 89, 94 Moral Consequences of Growth, The (Friedman), 253 Moral Man and Immoral Society (Niebuhr), 253 Moriscos, 97 mortgages, 375 Moscow Institute of Electronic Engineering, 304 most-favoured-nations clause, 53–4 Mughal Empire (1526–1857), 98, 148, 149, 215 Muhammed, Prophet of Islam, 251 Murray, William Vans, 104 Muslims migration of, 112–14, 170, 255 persecution of, 97, 106, 233, 355 Mutz, Diana, 271 Mycenae, 88 Myth of Nations, The (Geary), 288–9 Myth of the Rational Voter, The (Caplan), 258 Naipaul, Vidiadhar Surajprasad, 167 Napoleonic Wars (1803–15), 288 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 126, 127 National Library of Medicine, US, 12 National Science Foundation, US, 313 National Security Agency, US, 313 national stereotypes, 235 nationalism, 9, 11, 13, 16 civic nationalism, 377–8 clash of civilizations narrative, 237 cultural purity and, 69, 70, 71, 352 immigration and, 69, 70, 82 nostalgia and, 287–8, 351 World War I (1914–18), 214 zero-sum thinking, 253, 254, 259, 272 nativism, 14, 122, 176, 223, 254, 349–51, 358 Natural History Museum, London, 124, 125 Naturalism, 198 Nazi Germany (1933–45), 104–6, 109, 124, 220, 233, 353 Nazirites, 72 Neanderthals, 30–33, 75, 76 Nebuchadnezzar, Babylonian Emperor, 46 neckties, 72 negative income tax, 374–5 Neilson, James Beaumont, 194 Nemeth, Charlan, 83 Neo-Classicism, 198 Neolithic period (c. 10,000–4500 BC), 74 Netflix, 309, 310 Netherlands, 99 von Neumann, John, 105 neurasthenia, 291 New Atlantis (Bacon), 147 New Guinea, 41 New Testament, 250 New York, United States crime in, 246, 334 September 11 attacks (2001), 10, 114, 340–42 New York Times, 291, 297, 325 New York University, 223 New York Yankees, 223 Newcomen, Thomas, 196 Newton, Isaac, 158–9, 201 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 131 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 253 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 365 Nîmes, France, 73 Nineteen Eighty-Four (Orwell), 230, 368 Nineveh, Assyria, 248–9 Nixey, Catherine, 134 Nobel Prize, 82, 105, 276 non-market societies, 34, 35 Nordhaus, William, 273–4 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 63, 64 North Carolina, United States, 102 North Korea, 54, 314–15, 366 North Star, 44 nostalgia, 14, 286–95, 313, 351 Not Fit for Our Society (Schrag), 107 novels, 188–9, 246–7 nuclear power, 301, 327, 328, 329, 332 nuclear weapons, 105, 290, 306 O’Rourke, Patrick Jake, 280 Oannes, 267 Obama, Barack, 66, 240, 329 obsidian, 22, 29 occupational licensing, 376–7 Ögedei Khan, 96 Ogilvie, Sheilagh, 179 Oklahoma, United States, 218–19 Old Testament, 46, 72, 248–50 olive oil, 48 Olorgesailie, 21–2 omnivores, 299 On Liberty (Mill), 160 one-year-old children, 26 open society, 6 open-mindedness, 35, 112 Opening of the mouth’ rite, 70 Orbán, Viktor, 354, 380 de Orta, Garcia, 146–7 Orwell, George, 230, 368 Osman II, Ottoman Sultan, 148 Ottoman Empire (1299–1923), 84, 94, 98, 148, 215, 220, 237, 353 Ötzi, 1–2, 8–9, 73, 74 overpopulation, 81, 160 Overton, Richard, 183 Pacific islands, 52 Paine, Thomas, 56, 158, 247 Pakistan, 70, 366 Pallas Athena, 89 Pallavicino, Ferrante, 150 Palmer, Tom Gordon, 15 Panthers and Pythons, 243–4 Papacy, 102, 142, 143, 152, 155, 178 Papin, Denis, 179, 180 Paris, France exiles in, 152, 153 University of Paris, 140, 141–2, 143 parochialism, 216 patent systems, 58, 82, 189–90, 203, 314 in Britain, 179, 189–90, 203, 314 in China, 58 in France, 189 immigrants and, 82 in Netherlands, 189 in United States, 203 PayPal, 310 Peasants’ Revolt (1381), 208 peer review, 127 Pence, Michael, 108 penny universities, 166 Pericles, 131 Permissionless Innovation (Thierer), 299 Perry, Gina, 243 Perseus, 87–8 Persia, ancient, 84, 86–7, 88, 95, 129, 215 Abbasid period (750–1258), 136 Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC), 86–7, 88 Greeks, influence on, 129 Mongols, influence on, 95 Safavid Empire (1501–1736), 149 Sasanian Empire (224–651), 134 personality traits, 7 Pertinax, Roman Emperor, 91 Pessimists Archive, 290, 297, 298 Pessinuntia, 89 Peters, Margaret, 66 Peterson Institute for International Economics, 60 Petty, William, 296 Philip II King of Spain, 98 Phoenicia (2500–539 BC), 43–6, 49, 70, 128–9 Phoenicia dye, 44 Phrygians, 89 physical fallacy, 267–8 Physics (Aristotle), 142 Pietists, 153 Pinker, Steven, 23, 243, 266, 324 Plague of Justinian (541–750), 77 Plato, 130, 131, 132, 134, 352 pluralism, 85, 129, 357 Plutarch, 45–6 Poland Battle of Vienna (1683), 237, 238 Dutch Republic, migration to, 99 Holocaust (1941–5), 220 immigration, 116 Israel, migration to, 111 United Kingdom, migration to, 120 United States, migration to, 108, 109 Polanyi, Karl, 37 polio, 293 pollution, 326, 347 Polo, Marco, 174 Popper, Karl, 6, 26, 127, 129, 130, 182–3, 237, 362 population density, 28 populism, 9, 13, 14, 16, 324, 379–82 authoritarianism and, 325, 350–51 complexity and, 324 nostalgia and, 295, 324, 351 trade and, 19 zero-sum thinking and, 254, 259, 274 pornography, 113, 336 Portugal Empire (1415–1999), 100, 146–7, 178 guilds in, 190 Inquisition, 100 Postrel, Virginia, 300, 312, 326 pound locks, 172 poverty, 4, 168, 213, 270 in Britain, 256 in China, 4, 316 immigration and, 66, 69, 81, 121 in Japan, 71 Jeff Bezos test, 275–9 Preston, Lancashire, 190 priests, 41, 128 printing, 146, 153, 171 Pritchard, James Bennett, 43 productivity cities and, 40 foreign trade and, 57, 59, 63 free goods and, 278 immigration and, 68, 81, 117, 204 programming, 8 Progress (Norberg), 12–13 progressives, 286, 300–302 Proserpina, 89 protectionism, 13, 15, 16, 54–5 Great Depression (1929–39), 54–5 immigration and, 66–7 Internet and, 314 Trump administration (2017–), 19, 57–8 Protestantism, 99, 104, 148, 149, 153, 169, 178, 237 Prussia (1701–1918), 153, 288 Psychological Science, 335 Puerto Rico, 80 Pufendorf, Samuel, 147 purchasing power, 59, 61, 63, 66, 198 Puritanism, 99, 102 Putin, Vladimir, 14, 353–4 Putnam, Robert, 121, 165 Pythagoras, 137 Pythons and Panthers, 243–4 al-Qaeda, 351 Qianlong, Qing Emperor, 153 Qing Empire (1644–1912), 148, 149, 151, 153, 175–7, 179 Quakers, 99, 102, 206 Quarantelli, Enrico, 338 Quarterly Journal of Economics, The, 63 race; racism, 76–7, 206, 231–4, 358–9 railways, 53, 179, 202, 296, 297 Rammstein, 274 RAND Corporation, 307 Raphael, 137 Rastafari, 72 Rattlers and Eagles, 218–19, 236, 243, 252 reactive aggression, 227–8 Reagan, Ronald, 63, 111 Realism, 198 realistic conflict theory, 222 Reconquista (711–1492), 139 Red Genies, 236 Red Sea, 75 Reformation, 148, 155 refugees crime and, 119 European migration crisis (2015–), 10, 114, 115, 281, 342–3 integration of, 117–18 German Jews (1933–45), 104–6, 109 Rembrandt, 99 reminiscence bump, 294 Renaissance, 5, 6, 132, 143, 145–6, 149–50, 215 Republic of Letters, 157–9, 165, 195 Republic, The (Plato), 352 Republican Party, 164, 225, 238, 240, 301 Reynell, Carew, 184 Reynolds, Glenn, 308 Ridley, Matthew, 20–21, 80 right to work laws, 65 Rizzo, Frank, 334 Road to Serfdom, The (Hayek), 325 Robbers Cave experiment (1954), 218–19, 236, 243, 252, 371 Robbins, Caroline, 200–201 Robertson, Marion Gordon ‘Pat’, 114 Robinson, James, 185, 187, 200 rock paper scissors, 26 Rogers, Will, 282 Roman Law, 5 Romanticism, 198, 287, 296–7 Rome, ancient, 47–50, 89–94, 132 Antonine Plague (165–80), 77 assimilation, 91–2 chariot racing, 224 Christianity in, 90, 93–4, 133–4 citizenship, 91 cosmopolitanism, 89–91 fall of, 54, 94 gods in, 89–90 golden nugget theory, 5 globalization, 45–6, 47–50 haircuts, 72 Latin alphabet, 45 philosophy, 70, 136 Phoenicians, relations with, 43, 44 Sabines, relations with, 89 Social War (91–88 BC), 91 trousers, attitudes towards, 92 Romulus, 89, 90 Rotterdam, Holland, 158 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 226 Royal Navy, 205 Royal Society, 156, 157, 158, 196 Rubin, Paul, 258 ruin follies, 286–7 rule of law, 68, 189, 269, 334, 343, 358, 379 Rumbold, Richard, 183–4 Rushdie, Salman, 73 Ruskin, John, 206, 297 Russia Imperial period (1721–1917), 154, 289–90 Israel, migration to, 111 Mongol period (1237–1368), 95, 352 Orthodox Christianity, 155 Putin period (1999–), 14, 15, 347, 353–4, 365, 367 Soviet period (1917–91), 162, 302–5, 315, 317 United States, relations with, 236 Yamnaya people, 74–5 Rust Belt, 58, 62, 64–6, 349 Rwandan Genocide (1994), 230–31 Sabines, 89 Safavid Empire (1501–1736), 149 safety of wings, 374 Saint-Sever, France, 180 Salamanca school, 147, 150 Sanders, Bernard, 302 Santa Fe Institute, 216 SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), 3, 162 Saudi Arabia, 365 Scandinavia Bronze Age migration, 75 Neolithic migration, 74 United States, migration to, 104, 108 see also Sweden scapegoats, 11, 83, 253, 268, 349, 355–61 Black Death (1346–53), 352, 355–6 Great Recession (2007–9), 255 Mongol invasion (1241), 95 Schmandt-Besserat, Denise, 38 School of Athens, The (Raphael), 137 School of Salamanca, 147, 150 Schrag, Peter, 107 Schrödinger, Erwin, 105, 128, 129, 132 Schumpeter, Joseph, 277 Schumpeterian profits, 273–5 science, 127–66 in China, 4, 13, 70, 153, 156, 162–3, 169–73 Christianity and, 133–5, 141–6, 149–50 Enlightenment, 154–9 experiments, 156–7 Great Vanishing, 134–5 in Greece, 127–32 jealous emulation and, 154–7 in Islamic world, 70, 132, 136–41 Renaissance, 145–6 Republic of Letters, 157–9, 165, 195 sclera, 25 Scotland, 101, 194 Scotney Castle, Kent, 287 Sculley, John, 304 sea peoples, 43 sea snails, 44 Seinfeld, Jerry, 224 Seleucid Empire (312–63 BC), 88 self-esteem, 372, 379 Sen, Amartya, 231 Seneca, 49, 91 Sephardic Jews, 99 September 11 attacks (2001), 10, 114, 340–42, 363 Septimius Severus, Roman Emperor, 91 Servius, Publius, 90 Seven Wonders of the World, 45 Seville, Spain, 91, 139 sex bonobos and, 226 encoding and, 233 inbreeding, 78 views on, 113, 336 SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), 307 Shaftesbury, Lord, see Cooper, Anthony Ashley Sherif, Muzafer, 219, 220, 222, 243, 252 Shia Islam, 149 Shining, The, 335 shirts, 72 Siberia, 76 Sicily, 89 Sierra Leone, 365 Siger of Brabant, 143, 144 Sikhism, 149 Silicon Valley, 311 Silk Road, 171, 174, 352 silver processing, 49 Simler, Kevin, 282 Simmel, Georg, 266 Simon, Julian, 81 Simple Rules for a Complex World (Epstein), 320 Singapore, 53 skilled workers, 36, 45, 66, 95, 97, 101, 117 Slater, Samuel, 202 slavery, 86, 156, 205–6, 232 in British Empire, 182, 199, 200, 205 in Mesopotamia, 40, 41, 43 in Rome, 47, 48 in Sparta, 54 in United States, 103, 106, 205, 232 smallpox, 77, 197, 293, 296 Smith, Adam, 21, 59, 192, 194, 205, 280 Smith, Fred, 319 smoke detectors, 234 Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act (1930), 55 snack boxes, 20 Snow, Charles Percy, 105 social media, 239, 347, 370 social status, 281–5 Social War (91–88 BC), 91 Socrates, 130, 131–2, 330 solar power, 328, 329, 331, 332 Solomon, King of Israel, 38, 45 Solyndra, 329 Song Empire (960–1279), 53, 169–75 Sony, 319 Soros, George, 323 South Korea, 314, 366 South Sudan, 365 Soviet Union (1922–91), 162, 302–5, 315, 317 Sovu, Rwanda, 231 Sowell, Thomas, 267–8 Spain, 97–101, 184, 207 Almohad Caliphate (1121–1269), 137–8 amphorae production, 48 al-Andalus (711–1492), 97, 137–9, 140 Columbus’ voyages (1492–1503), 178 Dutch Revolt (1568–1648), 98–9, 101 Empire (1492–1976), 147, 178, 182 guilds in, 190 Inquisition (1478–1834), 97, 98 Jews, persecution of, 97–8, 106, 140 Madrid train bombings (2004), 341 Muslims, persecution of, 97, 106 Reconquista (711–1492), 97, 138–9, 140 regional authorities, 152 Roman period (c.218 BC–472 AD), 48, 91 Salamanca school, 147, 150 sombreros, 73 Uber in, 320 vaqueros, 73 Spanish flu (1918–19), 77 Sparta, 47, 54, 90, 132 Spencer, Herbert, 165, 214 Spinoza, Baruch, 100, 150, 153 Spitalfields, London, 190 sports, 199, 223–4, 232–3, 245–6 Sri Lanka, 100, 365 St Bartholomew’s Day massacre (1572), 97 St Louis, SS, 109 Standage, Tom, 166 Stanford University, 307, 311 Star Trek, 246, 259 stasists, 301–2 Statute of Labourers (1351), 208 steam engine, 179, 180, 189, 194, 203, 296 steamships, 53, 202 Stenner, Karen, 242, 343, 348, 350, 357 Stockholm, Sweden, 217–18 Stranger Things, 294 Strasbourg, France, 153 strategic tolerance, 86–96 Strindberg, August, 239 Suarez, Francisco, 147 suits, 72 Sumer (4500–1900 BC), 37–43, 45, 55, 292–3 Summers, Larry, 329 Sunni Islam, 148, 149, 238, 365 superpowers, 338–9 supply chains, 11, 62, 66 Sweden DNA in, 73 Green Party, 325 Lind dreadlocks affair (2019), 72 immigration in, 114, 115, 118, 281 manufacturing in, 65 Muslim community, 114 Neolithic migration, 74 refugees in, 118, 281, 342 United States, migration to, 107 Sweden Democrats, 281 swine flu, 3 Switzerland, 152, 153 Sylvester II, Pope, 137 Symbolism, 198 Syria, 42, 82, 342, 365, 366 tabula rasa, 225 Tacitus, 91 Taiwan, 316, 366 Taizu, Song Emperor, 170 Tajfel, Henri, 220, 221–2 Tandy, Geoffrey, 124–6 Tang Empire (618–907), 84, 170, 177, 352 Tanzania, 257 Taoism, 129, 149 tariffs, 15, 56, 373 Anglo–French Treaty (1860), 53–4 Great Depression (1929–39), 54–5 Obama’s tyre tariffs (2009), 66 Trump’s steel tariffs (2018), 272 Tasmania, 50–53, 54 Tatars, 238 taxation in Britain, 72, 187, 188, 189 carbon tax, 330–31 crony capitalism and, 279–80 immigration and, 69 negative income tax, 374–5 in Song Empire, 172 in Spanish Netherlands, 98 Taylor, Robert, 306 TCP/IP protocol, 307 technology, 296–9 automation, 63, 312–13 computers, 302–14 decline, 51–2 Internet, 57, 275, 278, 306–11, 312 nostalgia and, 296–9, 313 technocrats, 299–300, 312, 313–14, 326–9 technological decline, 51–2 telescopes, 145–6 Teller, Edward, 105 Temple of Artemis, Ephesus, 45 Temple of Serapis, Alexandria, 134 Tencent, 311 terrorism, 10, 114, 229, 340–41, 363 Tetlock, Philip, 160 textiles, 172–3 Thales, 127 Thierer, Adam, 299 third-party punishment game, 35 Thirty Years War (1618–48), 72, 97, 148, 150 Thomas Aquinas, Saint, 142–3, 144–5 Thoreau, Henry David, 203 Thracians, 130 Thucydides, 131, 132 Tiangong Kaiwu, 153 Tibetans, 85 Tierra del Fuego, 52–3 Tigris river, 37, 139 Timurid Empire (1370–1507), 139 tin, 42 Tokugawa Shogunate (1600–1868), 54 Toledo, Spain, 140 tolerance, 86–114, 129 Tomasello, Michael, 25 ‘too big to fail’, 280 Tower of Babel, 39 Toynbee, Arnold, 382 trade, 13, 19–23, 28–9, 129, 140, 363, 373 backlashes against, 19, 54–67, 254 benefit–cost ratio, 60, 61, 62 Britain, 181–99 competitive advantage, 28–9 division of labour and, 28, 31, 57 Great Depression (1929–39), 54–5 Greece, ancient, 47 humanitarianism and, 204–7 Mesopotania, 37–43 migration and, 35, 66–7, 234–5 morality of, 33–6 Phoenicia, 43–6 Rome, ancient, 47–50 snack boxes, 20 United States, 19, 57–8, 202–3 zero-sum thinking and, 248, 252–66, 270–72 trade unions, 64, 65, 272, 374 Trajan, Roman Emperor, 91 Trans-Pacific Partnership, 58 Transparency International, 381 Treaty of Trianon (1920), 354 Treaty of Versailles (1919), 353 Trenchard, John, 201 Treschow, Michael, 65 Trevor-Roper, Hugh, 215, 356 tribalism, 14, 217–47, 362, 368–72 fluid, 230–38 political, 224–5, 238–42, 378, 379 media and, 348, 370 threats and, 241, 350, 370 Trollboda School, Hässelby, 218 Trump, Donald, 9, 14, 240, 313, 321, 322, 354, 365, 367, 380 immigration, views on, 223 presidential election (2016), 238, 241, 242, 349, 350 stasism, 301, 302 steel tariffs (2018), 272 trade, views on, 19, 57–8 zero-sum attitude, 248 Tunisia, 45, 48 Turing, Alan, 124 Turkey; Turks, 70, 74, 136, 156, 354, 357, 365 turtle theory, 121–2 Tutsis, 230–31 Twilight Zone, The, 260–61 Twitter, 84, 239, 245 Two Treatises of Government (Locke), 186, 201 tyranny of cousins, 229, 230 tyre tariffs, 66 Tyre, 45 Uber, 319–20 Uganda, 365 Ukraine, 75, 116, 365 ultimatum game, 34–6 umbrellas, 298 uncertainty, 321–6 unemployment, 62, 373–4, 376, 377 ‘unicorns’, 82 United Auto Workers, 64 United Kingdom, see Britain United Nations, 327 United States, 199–203 Afghanistan War (2001–14), 345 America First, 19, 272 automation in, 313 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 65 California Gold Rush (1848–1855), 104 China, trade with, 19, 57, 58–9, 62–3, 64 Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), 254 citizenship, 103 Civil War (1861–5), 109 climate change polices in, 328 Constitution (1789), 102, 202 consumer price index, 277 COVID-19 pandemic (2019–20), 12 crime in, 110, 119, 120, 346 Declaration of Independence (1776), 103, 201, 202 dynamism in, 301–2 Federalist Party, 103 free trade gains, 60, 61 Great Depression (1929–39), 54–5, 254 gross domestic product (GDP), 257 Homestead Acts, 171 housing in, 376 immigration, see immigration in United States Industrial Revolution, 202, 291–2 innovation in, 53, 203, 298–9 intellectual property in, 58 Internet in, 306–14 Iraq War (2003–11), 345 Jim Crow laws (1877–1965), 106, 254 Know-Nothings, 108–9 Ku Klux Klan, 254 labour mobility in, 374, 376–7 lobbying in, 280, 329 Manhattan Project (1942–6), 105 manufacturing, 62–6 McCarthy era (1947–57), 335 Medicaid, 119 middle class, 60–61 NAFTA, 63, 64 National Library of Medicine, 12 national stereotypes, 235, 236 nostalgia in, 290–92, 294 open society, 169, 199–203 patent system, 203 political tribalism in, 224–5, 238, 240 populist movement, 254 presidential election (2016), 238, 241, 242, 349, 350 railways, 202 Revolutionary War (1775–83), 102–3, 200–201 Robbers Cave experiment (1954), 218–19, 236, 243, 252, 371 Rust Belt, 58, 62, 64–6, 349 Saudi Arabia, relations with, 365 Senate, 108 September 11 attacks (2001), 10, 114, 340–42, 363 slavery in, 103, 106, 205 Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act (1930), 55 Supreme Court, 108, 335 tariffs, 66, 272 trade deficits, 60, 270 Trump administration (2017–), see Trump, Donald unemployment in, 373, 376 universities, 163–5, 241 Vietnam War (1955–75), 345 Watergate scandal (1972–4), 345 World War II (1939–45), 56, 64, 335 Yankees, 58 United Steelworkers, 64, 272 universal basic income (UBI), 374, 375 universities, 140 University Bologna, 140 University of California, Berkeley, 311 University of Cambridge, 140 University of Chicago, 165 University of Leeds, 357 University of London, 201 University of Marburg, 153 University of Oxford, 140, 144, 145, 328 University of Padua, 144, 146 University of Paris, 140, 141–2, 143 University of Pennsylvania, 271 University of Salamanca, 140 University of Toulouse, 144 unskilled workers, 36, 66, 102, 117 untranslatable words, 288 Ur, 55 urbanization, see cities Uruk, Sumer, 39 US Steel, 64 Usher, Abbott Payson, 196 Uyghurs, 85, 174 vaccines, 12, 296, 299 Vandals, 92 Vanini, Lucilio, 150 vaqueros, 73 Vargas Llosa, Mario, 213, 261 Vatican Palace, 137 Vavilov, Nikolai, 162 Venezuela, 354 Venice, Republic of (697–1797), 53, 144, 152, 174, 181 Vermeer, Johannes, 99 Vespucci, Amerigo, 146 Vienna, Austria, 95, 237, 238 Vienna Congress (1815), 288 Vietnam, 171, 207, 270, 345 Virgil, 91 Virginia Company, 200 vitamin D, 74 de Vitoria, Francisco, 147 Vladimir’s choice, 221, 252, 271 Voltaire, 153, 193 Walton, Sam, 277 Wang, Nina, 315 War of the Polish Succession (1733–8), 289–90 Ward-Perkins, Bryan, 50 warfare, 216–17, 243 Warren, Elizabeth, 302 washing of hands, 10, 335 Washington, George, 103, 205 Washington, DC, United States, 280 Watergate scandal (1972–4), 345 Watson, John, 291 Watson, Peter, 79 Watt, James, 172, 189, 194, 274 Weatherford, Jack, 95 Web of Science, 159 Weber, Maximilian, 204 WeChat, 311 Weekly Standard, 312 welfare systems, 118, 281, 374 Wengrow, David, 42 West Africa Squadron, 205 Western Roman Empire (395–480), 94, 135 Westernization, 4–5 Wheelan, Charles, 20 Whig Party, 185, 201 White House Science Council, 313 white supremacists, 84, 351, 367 Whitechapel, London, 190 Who Are We?


pages: 282 words: 28,394

Learn Descriptive Cataloging Second North American Edition by Mary Mortimer

California gold rush, clean water, corporate governance, deskilling, illegal immigration, machine readable, Norman Mailer

E XERCISE 6.4 Refer to the rules for this area in the appropriate chapters of AACR2, and to the MARC codes at the back of this book (or use the MARC manual, if you have access it). Transcribe and code the publication, distribution area only for each of the following: a. Title page of a book Forest Press A Division of OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. Albany, New York 2004 260 52 LEARN DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGING b. Label of the audiocassette California Gold Rush : life in the goldfields in the days of ‘49 (bought in a Californian folk museum) Lay of the Land, Copyright 1996 260 c. Verso of the title page of a book bf 2001 by boyd & fraser publishing company A Division of South-Western Publishing Company One Corporate Place • Ferncroft Village Danvers, Massachusetts 260 d.


Lonely Planet Panama (Travel Guide) by Lonely Planet, Carolyn McCarthy

California gold rush, carbon footprint, clean water, cognitive dissonance, Francisco Pizarro, Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Bilbao, land tenure, low cost airline, megaproject, off-the-grid, Panamax, post-Panamax, Ronald Reagan, Suez canal 1869, sustainable-tourism, trade route, transcontinental railway, urban renewal, women in the workforce

Once an overland trade route that linked the great civilizations of ancient Peru and Mexico, in the post-Colombian conquest it became the overland route for the siphoning off of Inca treasures. With two oceans so near, transit is a longtime theme. As the Panama Railroad once brought prospectors to the California gold rush, today the Panama Canal has become the roaring engine of global commerce. Panama: Four Hundred Years of Dreams and Cruelty, by David A Howarth, chronicles the history of the isthmus from Balboa’s 1513 exploration through 1964, with scintillating tales of conquistadors and buccaneers. Lost Panama The coastlines and rainforests of Panama have been inhabited by humans for at least 10,000 years, and it’s estimated that several dozen indigenous groups including the Kuna, the Ngöbe-Buglé, the Emberá, the Wounaan and the Naso were living on the isthmus prior to the Spanish arrival.

Birth of a Nation Panama’s future forever changed from the moment that the world’s major powers learned the isthmus of Panama was the narrowest point between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. In 1846 Colombia signed a treaty permitting the US to construct a railway across the isthmus, though it also granted them free transit and the right to protect the railway with military force. At the height of the California gold rush in 1849, tens of thousands of people traveled from the east coast of the US to the west coast via Panama in order to avoid hostile Native Americans living in the central states. Colombia and Panama grew wealthy from the railway, and the first talks of an inter-oceanic canal across Central America began to surface.


pages: 488 words: 144,145

Inflated: How Money and Debt Built the American Dream by R. Christopher Whalen

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Black Swan, book value, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, buy and hold, California gold rush, Carl Icahn, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, classic study, commoditize, conceptual framework, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, currency peg, debt deflation, falling living standards, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, Ford Model T, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, housing crisis, interchangeable parts, invention of radio, Kenneth Rogoff, laissez-faire capitalism, land bank, liquidity trap, low interest rates, means of production, military-industrial complex, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, non-tariff barriers, oil shock, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, plutocrats, price stability, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, special drawing rights, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transcontinental railway, Upton Sinclair, women in the workforce

Department of the Treasury, Washington, DC. 31. Webster, Daniel, The Works of Daniel Webster, Vol. III (Boston: Little Brown, 1881), 394. 32. Margo, Robert A., “Wages in California During the Gold Rush,” NBER Historical Working Paper No. 101* (June 1997). 33. Brands, H.W., The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream (New York: Anchor Books, 2003), 488. 34. For an interesting discussion of the New York clearinghouse, see Ida M. Tarbel, “The Hunt for a Money Trust,” American Magazine, Volume LXXVI, July 1913 to December 1913, (New York: Phillips Publishing Co.), 42. 35. Timberlake, Richard H., Monetary Policy in the United States: An Intellectual and Institutional History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 213.

New York: Little Brown. Barron, C.W. (1915). The Audacious War. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co. Baruch, B. (1957). The Public Years. New York: Holt. Bernard, H. (2002). Independent Man: The Life of James Couzens. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Brands, H.W. (2003). The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American dream. New York: Anchor Books Byrd, R.C. (1988). The Senate, 1789–1989. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Calder, L. (1999). Financing the American Dream: A Cultural History of Consumer Credit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, Catteral, R.C.H. (1903).


pages: 585 words: 151,239

Capitalism in America: A History by Adrian Wooldridge, Alan Greenspan

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, air freight, Airbnb, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Asian financial crisis, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Blitzscaling, Bonfire of the Vanities, book value, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, business process, California gold rush, Charles Lindbergh, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate raider, cotton gin, creative destruction, credit crunch, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, edge city, Elon Musk, equal pay for equal work, Everybody Ought to Be Rich, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Ford Model T, full employment, general purpose technology, George Gilder, germ theory of disease, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, Ida Tarbell, income per capita, indoor plumbing, informal economy, interchangeable parts, invention of the telegraph, invention of the telephone, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Kitchen Debate, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, land bank, Lewis Mumford, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market bubble, Mason jar, mass immigration, McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, means of production, Menlo Park, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, minimum wage unemployment, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, Northern Rock, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Peter Thiel, Phillips curve, plutocrats, pneumatic tube, popular capitalism, post-industrial society, postindustrial economy, price stability, Productivity paradox, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, Ralph Nader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, refrigerator car, reserve currency, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, savings glut, scientific management, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Simon Kuznets, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, strikebreaker, supply-chain management, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade route, transcontinental railway, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, union organizing, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, urban sprawl, Vannevar Bush, vertical integration, War on Poverty, washing machines reduced drudgery, Washington Consensus, white flight, wikimedia commons, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration, Yom Kippur War, young professional

., Pennsylvania, with special reference to Its Use for Illumination and Other Purposes.” Three years later Edwin Drake began drilling for oil at Titusville, Pennsylvania, applying techniques used in salt wells. Though the Civil War briefly put a halt to the drilling, as soon as the war was over America witnessed an “oil rush” reminiscent of the California gold rush, and northwestern Pennsylvania was soon littered with makeshift oil wells and crude refineries where men refined oil much as they distilled whiskey, boiling the liquid and smelling it to see if it could be used for kerosene. Though the mountainous terrain of the Pennsylvania oil fields made transportation difficult, the construction of an oil pipeline in 1865 removed the bottleneck: oil flowed from Pennsylvania to railroad tanker cars and tanker ships and thence to giant refineries.

., 328–29, 331, 344, 372 Bush, George W., 368–69, 372–73, 379–80, 406 Bush, Vannevar, 282–83, 349 business confidence, 408–10 “businessman,” 9 business newspapers, 138 Butler, Nicholas Murray, 133 California, 103, 287 Proposition 13, 310 statehood, 5, 40 California gold rush, 42, 101, 111, 125 CaLPERS (California Public Employees Retirement System), 339 Campbell, Joseph, 120 Canal Age, 50–51, 54 Cannon, Joe, 159 cap-ex ratio, 408–10 capital gains tax, 329 Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (Schumpeter), 14, 138–39, 169, 319, 333, 397, 424 capitalism vs. laissez-faire, 165–71 capital reserves, 444–47, 446 Capone, Al, 192 “caravan” society, 389 car imports, 312–14, 313 Carnegie, Andrew, 11, 17, 101, 123, 124, 125–28, 136, 146, 164, 356, 439 Carnegie Steel Company, 123–24 Carrier, Willis, 213–14 cars, 106–7, 196–99, 274, 311, 312–14, 313, 321–22 Carter, Jimmy, 26, 299, 310, 324–25 Carter, Susan B., 433 Case, Anne, 399 Cass, George, 114–15 catalogues, 140–42 cattle industry, 113, 115–17, 119 Cavaliers, 60 census, decennial, 13, 35, 195, 452 census data, 13, 451–52 Central Pacific Railroad, 16, 90, 114 Chandler, Alfred, 137, 139 chartered companies, 134–35 Chase Bank, 79 checks and balances, 157–58, 178–79 Cheney, Richard, 306, 368 Chernow, Ron, 131 Chetty, Raj, 393 Chevalier, Michel, 45 Chicago Board of Trade, 120, 340 Chicago Fire of 1871, 91 Chicago World’s Fair (1933), 418 child labor, 160 China, 370–71, 391, 448–49 exports (1971–2016), 370, 370–71 GDP, 448–49 gold reserves, 229 hypothetical Davos forum, 1–2, 447–48 infrastructure, 394, 395 trade, 346, 347, 370–71, 376–77, 416 “China shock,” 368, 370–71 Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, 157 Chrysler, 313, 314 Chrysler Building (New York City), 195 Churchill, Winston, 126, 228–29, 239, 394 churn rate, 393 Cisco Systems, 347 Citicorp, 337 Citigroup, 382 Citizens Bank of Louisiana, 79 Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), 244 Civil Rights Act of 1964, 303 Civil War, 9, 81–85, 161, 266, 267, 455 Clark, Edward, 48 Clark, Jim, 354 Clark, John Bates, 136 Clark, William, 168 class warfare, 259–60 Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914, 184 Cleveland, Grover, 152, 153–56, 158–59, 162, 165, 166, 173, 178, 325 Clifford, Clark, 277 Clifton, Robert, 116 climate, 33–34 Clinton, Bill, 331–32, 343, 344, 346, 367, 372, 406 Clinton, Hillary, 415 closing of the frontier, 179–81 Club of Rome, 300 coal, 10, 19, 49, 51, 55, 88, 127–28, 173, 229 Coca-Cola, 91, 215 Cody, William F., 110–11 Cogan, John, 306 Coinage Act of 1792, 32 Cold War, 279–80, 283–84 Colfax, Schuyler, 167 collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), 379 collective bargaining, 209, 250, 251, 255 college education, 281–82, 364, 365, 400–402 Colonial America, 5–6, 29–34 Colt, Samuel, 72 Columbus Buggy Company, 110 Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO), 261, 290 communism, 25, 193, 202, 277, 278, 279 Comstock Lode, 162 ConAgra, 324 condensed milk, 119–20 Confederate States of America, 69–90 Civil War and, 9, 81–85 collapse of agriculture, 83–86 farms and farm output, 85, 85–86 GDP, 81, 81–82 money stock and price level, 82–83, 83 role of slavery, 74–87 taxable property, 78, 78 conglomerates, 319–20, 335–36 consolidation, 144, 396–98 conspicuous consumption, 169–70 Constitution, U.S., 7–8, 25–26, 30–31, 32, 35, 40, 187 consumer debt, 216–17, 366 consumer electronics, 316–17 consumer research, 290–91 consumer society (consumerism), 92, 126, 295–96 containerization, 292–93 Continental Congress, 30, 38–39 continental currency, 38–39, 39 Coolidge, Calvin, 188, 189–92, 194, 330 Corn Laws, 232 corporate imperialism, 294–97 corporate restructurings, 335–36 corporate taxes, 329, 416 corporations, 133–34, 135–42, 156 advent of widespread ownership, 206–9 evolution of, 146–49 Great Merger Movement, 142–45 cotton, 73–79, 76, 86–89 Cotton, Calvin, 164 cotton gin, 15, 46, 74, 75 Coughlin, Charles, 204, 246 Council of Economic Advisers, 275, 302–3 Countrywide Financial, 378 cowboys, 113, 116 Cowen, Tyler, 4 Cox, Michael, 431 Crain, Nicole and Mark, 413 creative destruction, 12, 14–21, 209, 324, 389, 390 downside of, 21–23 to mass prosperity, 426–32 political resistance and, 24–26 problems with, 420–26 Crédit Mobilier, 167 credit rating agencies, 383–84 Criscuolo, Chiara, 397 Crissinger, Daniel, 235 Croly, Herbert, 178 Cross of Gold speech, 150–52 culture of growth, 43–57 Custer, George, 110 Dalrymple, Oliver, 115 DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), 349–50 Darrow, Clarence, 196, 256 Darwin, Charles, 163–64 data and methodology, 451–55 Data General, 353 David, Paul, 13, 35, 202, 403 Davis, Francis, 212 day traders, 340 Deaton, Angus, 399 DeBartolo, Edward J., 292 Debs, Eugene V., 154, 184, 186 debt.


pages: 477 words: 144,329

How Money Became Dangerous by Christopher Varelas

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, airport security, barriers to entry, basic income, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Bonfire of the Vanities, California gold rush, cashless society, corporate raider, crack epidemic, cryptocurrency, discounted cash flows, disintermediation, diversification, diversified portfolio, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, driverless car, dumpster diving, eat what you kill, fiat currency, financial engineering, fixed income, friendly fire, full employment, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, initial coin offering, interest rate derivative, John Meriwether, junk bonds, Kickstarter, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, mandatory minimum, Mary Meeker, Max Levchin, Michael Milken, mobile money, Modern Monetary Theory, mortgage debt, Neil Armstrong, pensions crisis, pets.com, pre–internet, profit motive, proprietary trading, risk tolerance, Saturday Night Live, selling pickaxes during a gold rush, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, technology bubble, The Predators' Ball, too big to fail, universal basic income, zero day

Less than nine months later, the stock bottomed out at nineteen cents, and they liquidated all assets and went out of business. The entire meteoric run of pets.com—from launch to falloon to Super Bowl to IPO to handing in its keys—spanned barely more than two years. There was a gold rush atmosphere in the fledgling days of the internet boom, and indeed it evoked memories of the first California gold rush, which was its own sort of bubble. Exactly a century and a half earlier, gold was discovered in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada by a former carpenter from New Jersey. Hordes of fortune seekers then invaded the state from every corner of the globe, striding into the hills with picks and shovels and pans—and nearly all of them ended up penniless.

., 51 Boeing Company, 124 bonds, 50–51, 56, 77–78 high-yield (junk), 91, 93, 96, 97, 104 Salomon and, 50–51, 55–58, 62, 64, 67, 72, 74–76 Bonfire of the Vanities, The (Wolfe), 47, 116, 144 bonuses, see compensation Boob Cruise, 231 Booker, Cory, 340 Borde, Laurence (“Larry Bird”), 54, 55, 79, 203 Brannan, Sam, 230 Bruck, Connie, 93, 94 bubbles, 229, 244, 307, 362–63 crypto, 245–46 dotcom, 175, 211, 214, 228–31, 233–34, 236, 238, 240, 243, 244, 267, 322 education, 292 pension, 353–54 Budweiser, 162 Buffett, Warren, 275, 316, 324 Salomon Brothers and, 68, 75–76, 262–63 Businessweek, 68 cable industry, 96 Caesars Palace, 27–29 California Community Foundation, 347 California gold rush, 230 CalPERS (California Public Employees’ Retirement System), 335–36 Canal+, 170 Caporali, Renso, 119 Carpenter, Michael, 200–201 Carr, Michael, 118, 138, 145 Carter, Jimmy, 154 character, 13, 22–23, 34, 35, 40–43, 358 Chicago Daily Herald, 219 Chinatown, 150 Chrysler, Walter, 74 Cicero, 128 Citadel, The, 48 Citicorp-Travelers merger, 189, 253 Citigroup (Citi), 211, 214–15, 261, 315 AT&T and, 197, 207, 208 author at, 5, 199, 204–5, 211–12 bureaucracy and policies at, 203–4 creation of, 189 culture at, 209, 215, 264, 365–66 culture committee at (Project Passion), 204–6, 211, 264–65, 365–66 Lucent and, 200–201 Prince as CEO of, 208–10 TMT (technology, media, and telecom) group at, 5, 211–12, 253 Weill as CEO of, 188 Weill’s creation of financial supermarket model with, 189–90, 195, 196, 200, 209, 211 Weill’s resignation from, 208–9 Citron, Robert, 315–20, 324, 326, 343–45, 352, 367 Clinton, Bill, 189, 324 cloud, 225, 361 see also data centers Coachella, 292–93, 295, 296 CocaCola, 295 Cocktail, 355 college: admissions scandal, 291–92 financial aid, see student loans Colorado River, 162 COMDEX, 218 Comedy Central, 302 commerce: e-commerce, 232–33, 244, 245 physical world and, 247 CommScope, 201, 202 community and human contact, 233, 247, 307, 309, 358, 361 diminishment of, 216, 246–47 engagement with, 369–70 Compagnie Générale des Eaux, 169 compensation, 248–79, 361 and aligning incentives with investment horizons, 364 annual cycle of, 270–71 author’s bonuses, 248–51, 266–70 of CEOs, 275–76 and complexity and opacity of purpose, 260–61 contentment and, 268–70, 278–79 culture tied to, 205–6, 257–58, 264–65 and “having a number,” 251–53, 263–64, 274, 277, 278 reactions to bonus amounts, 256–59, 270 Salomon bonuses, 64, 248–51, 253–59, 262–63 talent and skills and, 261–62 transparency in, 260, 269, 270, 275, 361–62 CompuServe, 237, 241 computers, 38 algorithms, 23, 37, 242 Black Monday and, 37 spreadsheets, 19–23, 24, 37, 360 ConQuest, 221 Conquest of Happiness, The (Russell), 248 Conquistadores del Cielo, 124–25, 146 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), 217–19 Conway, Cathy, 109–12 Corbat, Michael, 315, 324 Corning Inc., 201 corporate raiders, 82, 84, 88, 89, 94, 96, 103–4, 360 as activist investors, 104, 106, 360 in Pretty Woman, 98, 100–102 see also hostile takeovers credit: five c’s of, 13, 42, 205 spreadsheets used for analysis in, 19–20, 24 worthiness, 22 credit cards, 233 in e-commerce, 232–33, 244, 245 Credit Suisse, 263–64, 273–74, 340 Crisanti, Jim, 203 cryptocurrencies, 245–46, 308 Culligan, 164–68, 182 currency(ies), 245–46 cryptocurrencies, 245–46, 308 phone minutes as, 245 Cutler, Carol, 207 Daily Stormer, 304 Danni’s Hard Drive, 226, 227, 231–33 data centers, 224–25, 227–28, 231 Equinix, 228, 230–31, 237–47 “naked woman in the server room” story and, 223–26, 232 security at, 225 Davis, Mark, 156–58, 165, 166, 221–22 DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), 31–33, 34, 39, 40 Deasy, John, 351 DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation), 227–28 defense and aerospace companies, see aerospace and defense companies Defense Department, 124 Denham, Bob, 324 Denny’s, 154 Depression, Great, 51, 189 derivatives, 316–19, 324 de Vries, Peter, 81 Diamond, Neil, 321 diamond and gold wholesalers, see jewelry industry Diamond Club, 15 Dii Group, 213 Dimon, Jamie, 196, 197 Disney, 81–90, 85, 86, 111, 304 Eisner at, 88, 89, 109 Epcot Center, 86 films, 88, 102, 148–49 Steinberg’s hostile takeover attempt, 81–84, 86–91, 98, 102–4, 111 Touchstone Pictures, 88, 102 Disney, Roy, 85 Disney, Walt, 84–86, 87, 103, 112 Disney Channel, 299, 301, 302 Disneyland, 84, 85, 103, 112, 148, 288–90, 314 author’s career at, 4, 5, 10, 11–13, 40, 45, 61, 71, 81–85, 89–90, 106–12, 148, 158, 289, 290 Café Orleans at, 81, 106–12, 289 in Pretty Woman, 106 privilege and, 289–90 Disney World, 85–86 Dominguez, Bernardo, 132 Dominica, 285, 286 dotcom bubble, 175, 211, 214, 228–31, 233–34, 236, 238, 240, 243, 244, 267, 322 Doughty, Caitlin, 301 Douglas, Michael, 98 Drexel Burnham Lambert, 91–96, 188 author’s offer from, 91, 93, 94–95 bankruptcy of, 96 Milken at, 91–94 Ducasse, Alain, 168, 169 Dunkin’ Donuts, 294 earthquake, Whittier Narrows, 34–35 eBay, 233 Ebbers, Bernie, 212, 238 e-commerce, 232–33, 244, 245 Economic Consequences of the Peace, The (Keynes), 280 Economist, 245 Eisner, Michael, 88, 89, 109 Elmassian, George, 25, 31, 32, 34, 38 Elmassian, Richard, 25, 31–33, 38 Enron, 171, 177 Epcot Center, 86 Equinix, 228, 230–31, 237–47 Escobar, Pablo, 39 Euripides, 9 Evoqua, 182 exchange-traded funds (ETFs), 105 F9 mistake, 127 Facebook, 294, 305 Family Ties, 97–98 Fargo, William, 230 Federal Reserve, 370 FedEx, 127 Feuerstein, Don, 57 FICO score, 22 Finance Leaders Fellowship program, 371 financial crisis of 2008, 1–2, 7, 76, 211, 215, 259, 307 Equinix and, 242 financial supermarkets and, 211 see also Great Recession financial supermarkets, 204, 214–15, 361 financial crisis and, 211 Weill’s model of, with Citi, 189–90, 195, 196, 200, 209, 211 financial system, financial industry, 6, 328–30 causes of society’s dysfunctional relationship with money, 359–63 citizens’ disconnection from government finance, 328–29, 343–44, 351, 353, 362 clashes sparked by financial unrest and collapse, 355–58 compensation in, see compensation complexity of, 260–61, 277 estimated worth of financial instruments in the world, 209 net financial burden, 329–30 people’s feelings about working in, 277 preppers and, 306 see also Wall Street financial system, reform of, 363–64 accountability for public officials, 369 action items for banking system and investment management, 364–66 action items for each of us, 368–70 action items for government, 366–68 changing compensation structures to align incentives with investment horizons, 364 community engagement, 369–70 creating federal-level oversight or review board for pension systems, 366–67 creating independent review processes, 364–65 education in financial and economic matters, 368 forming culture or values committees, 365–66 requiring finance background for treasurers and other financial officers, 367 simplicity of regulations, 367–68 Fiorina, Carly, 190, 194–95 Fitzgerald, F.


pages: 135 words: 53,708

Top 10 San Diego by Pamela Barrus, Dk Publishing

California gold rush, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, East Village, El Camino Real, G4S, haute cuisine, illegal immigration, Silicon Valley, the market place, transcontinental railway, urban renewal

When you walk the Gaslamp Quarter, note the short blocks and lack of alleys, created due to the opinion that corner lots were worth more and alleys only accumulated trash. 72 Little Italy stores, and hip cafés distinguish its streets. d Map J3 Asian Pacific Historic District An eight-block area that overlaps part of the Gaslamp Quarter designates the former center of San Diego’s Asian community. The Chinese came to San Diego following the California Gold Rush and took up fishing and construction work; others ran opium dens and gambling halls. Filipinos and Japanese soon followed. This is the home of Chinese New Year celebrations, a farmers’ market, and an Asian bazaar. Pick up a walking-tour map at the Chinese Historical Museum (see p42), and look out for the Asian architectural flourishes on the buildings you pass by. d Map J5 Museum of Contemporary Art A satellite location of the museum in La Jolla (see p32), galleries here present rotating exhibits from emerging and established contemporary artists, as well as selected pieces from the museum’s permanent collection.


Lonely Planet Chile & Easter Island (Travel Guide) by Lonely Planet, Carolyn McCarthy, Kevin Raub

California gold rush, call centre, carbon footprint, centre right, Colonization of Mars, company town, East Village, Easter island, gentrification, haute cuisine, Kickstarter, land reform, low cost airline, mass immigration, New Urbanism, off grid, off-the-grid, place-making, QR code, rewilding, satellite internet, Skype, sustainable-tourism, trade route, upwardly mobile, urban sprawl, white picket fence

Fishing sustained the area’s first inhabitants, the Chango, and no sooner had the Spanish conquistadores arrived than Valparaíso became a stop-off point for boats taking gold and other Latin American products to Spain. More seafaring looters soon followed: English and Dutch pirates, including Sir Francis Drake, who repeatedly sacked Valparaíso for gold. The port city grew slowly at first, but boomed with the huge demand for Chilean wheat prompted by the California gold rush. The first major port of call for ships coming round Cape Horn, Valparaíso became a commercial center for the entire Pacific coast and the hub of Chile’s nascent banking industry. After Valparaíso’s initial glory days, the port saw hard times in the 20th century. The 1906 earthquake destroyed most of Valparaíso’s buildings, then the opening of the Panama Canal had an equally cataclysmic effect on the city’s economy.

But the colonizing residents stuck to their guns, and Concepción eventually became one of the Spanish empire’s southernmost fortified outposts. After independence, Concepción’s isolation from Santiago, coupled with the presence of lignite (brown coal) near Lota, a coastal town south of Concepción, fomented an autonomous industrial tradition. The export of wheat for the California gold-rush market further spurred the area’s economic growth. During the early 1970s the city was a bulwark of support for Marxist President Salvador Allende and his Unidad Popular party, and it suffered more than other regions under the military dictatorship of 1973 to 1990. Sights La Casa del Arte MUSEUM ( 224-2567; cnr Chacabuco & Paicaví, Barrio Universitario; 10am-6pm Tue-Fri, 10am-5pm Sat, 10am-2pm Sun) The massive, fiercely political mural La Presencia de América Latina is the highlight of the university art museum La Casa del Arte.

Best Places to Eat »Afrigonia (Click here) »La Marmita (Click here) »Remezón (Click here) »La Tablita (Click here) »La Mesita Grande (Click here) Best Places to Stay »Ilaia Hotel (Click here) »The Singular Hotel (Click here) »Hotel IF Patagonia (Click here) »Tierra Patagonia (Click here) »Refugio Grey (Click here) Southern Patagonia Highlights Discover the remote backside of Parque Nacional Torres del Paine (Click here) Join the march of the penguins on Isla Magdalena (Click here) Hike the under the toothy Fitz Roy Range (Click here) near El Chaltén, Argentina’s trekking capital Ride the range and trade fireside yarns at a working estancia (grazing ranch) at Skyring Sound (Click here) Enjoy a local microbrew, massage and lovely meals in Puerto Natales (Click here) after time in Torres del Paine Explore the gnarled volcanic steppe of the little-known Parque Nacional Pali Aike (Click here) Ice-trek the cool blue contours of 15-story Glaciar Perito Moreno (Click here) in Argentina History Caves in Última Esperanza show that humans, known as the Aonikenk people, have inhabited the region since 10,000 BC. In 1520 Ferdinand Magellan was the first European to visit the region. Development was spurred by the California gold rush, which brought trade via the ships sailing between Europe, California and Australia. In the late 19th century, estancias (grazing ranches) formed, creating a regional wool boom that had massive, reverberating effects for both Chilean and Argentine Patagonia. Great wealth for a few came at the cost of native populations, who were all but wiped out by disease and warfare.


pages: 187 words: 62,861

The Penguin and the Leviathan: How Cooperation Triumphs Over Self-Interest by Yochai Benkler

Abraham Maslow, Alan Greenspan, behavioural economics, business process, California gold rush, citizen journalism, classic study, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, do well by doing good, East Village, Everything should be made as simple as possible, experimental economics, experimental subject, framing effect, Garrett Hardin, informal economy, invisible hand, jimmy wales, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, loss aversion, Murray Gell-Mann, Nicholas Carr, peer-to-peer, prediction markets, Richard Stallman, scientific management, Scientific racism, Silicon Valley, social contagion, Steven Pinker, telemarketer, Toyota Production System, Tragedy of the Commons, twin studies, ultimatum game, Washington Consensus, Yochai Benkler, zero-sum game, Zipcar

Gold Miners, Shipwreck Sailors, and Politicians: Fairness of Outcomes and Intentions Fairness can mean quite different things for different people in different settings. One example of this comes from the work of legal historian Andrea McDowell. McDowell studied the mining codes developed during the 1848–49 California gold rush. Because camps were cropping up like mushrooms after a rain, miners were transient, and the territory had not yet been formed into a state, it was impossible for authorities to effectively enforce a single, formal property law over mining rights. So instead the miners in each camp set up codes themselves to ensure that the distribution of the land would be more or less fair.


pages: 230 words: 62,294

The Coffee Book: Anatomy of an Industry From Crop to the Last Drop by Gregory Dicum, Nina Luttinger

biodiversity loss, California gold rush, carbon credits, clean water, corporate social responsibility, cuban missile crisis, do well by doing good, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, European colonialism, gentrification, Honoré de Balzac, illegal immigration, land reform, land tenure, open economy, price stability, Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place

Folgers Coffee, for example, was founded by a Nantucket Yankee in San Francisco (somewhat of a departure from the norm, as most of the other major coffee companies, indeed companies period, were founded in the East and spread west). The young Jim Folger, in a made-for-TV story showcasing grit and the vicissitudes of fortune, pioneered his business of selling roasted and ground coffee to gold miners, who took to the convenience of not having to roast and grind their own. During the California gold rush, ships transporting miners from Central America (where they crossed the narrow isthmus after a sea journey from the eastern United States) to San Francisco made that city the first U.S. port to receive regular and large shipments of Central American coffee. The port also received coffee from the Dutch East Indies in bags marked with their origin: JAVA.


pages: 522 words: 162,310

Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History by Kurt Andersen

affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, animal electricity, anti-communist, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, augmented reality, back-to-the-land, Bernie Sanders, British Empire, Burning Man, California gold rush, Celebration, Florida, centre right, cognitive dissonance, Columbine, corporate governance, cotton gin, Credit Default Swap, David Brooks, delayed gratification, dematerialisation, disinformation, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Donner party, Downton Abbey, Easter island, Edward Snowden, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, failed state, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, God and Mammon, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Herman Kahn, high net worth, illegal immigration, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, John von Neumann, Kickstarter, large denomination, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, McMansion, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Minecraft, moral panic, mutually assured destruction, new economy, New Urbanism, Norman Mailer, off-the-grid, Oklahoma City bombing, placebo effect, post-truth, pre–internet, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, reality distortion field, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, smart meter, Snapchat, South Sea Bubble, Steve Jobs, sugar pill, Ted Kaczynski, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Timothy McVeigh, trade route, transcontinental railway, urban renewal, We are all Keynesians now, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, Y2K, young professional

He writes that “Americans are, among other things, prone to be hustlers,” which “is simply to acknowledge Americans have enjoyed more opportunity to pursue their ambitions, by foul means or fair, than any other people in history.” For a large pool of hustlers to be successful, of course, requires a large population of easy believers. The California Gold Rush accelerated the westward migration of dreamy Americans. Many people had solid reasons to go west. But once there was an industry based on moving Americans west—the transcontinental railroads—a large and continuous stream of travelers and settlers was required to sustain those new entrepreneurial businesses.

Miami was still a small town when promoters started calling it the Magic City, then started marketing the whole region as an idyllic place for living as well as vacationing. A real estate boom and building frenzy started around 1915, with swamps drained to make buildable land. Miami Beach was created by a developer who dredged up sand from the ocean and imported thousands of tons of soil. Addison Mizner—who’d grown up in an old California Gold Rush town and taken off for the Klondike during its gold rush—was South Florida’s defining architect, and picturesque fantasies of European glamour were de rigueur: imitation Côte d’Azur and Costa del Sol, faux Paris and Venice.*3 One way to track the nation’s transmutation into Fantasyland is to look at where Americans moved during the twentieth century.


pages: 568 words: 162,366

The Oil and the Glory: The Pursuit of Empire and Fortune on the Caspian Sea by Steve Levine

Berlin Wall, California gold rush, classic study, computerized trading, corporate raider, cuban missile crisis, facts on the ground, failed state, fixed income, independent contractor, indoor plumbing, John Deuss, Khyber Pass, megastructure, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, oil rush, Potemkin village, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, telemarketer, trade route, vertical integration

Kennan, George F. Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin (New York, 1960–1961). Kissinger, Henry. White House Years (Boston, 1979). Klebnikov, Paul. Godfather of the Kremlin (New York, 2001). Knickerbocker, H. R. The Red Trade Menace (New York, 1931). Levinson, Robert E. The Jews in the California Gold Rush (Jersey City, N.J., 1978). Lloyd, John. Rebirth of a Nation (London, 1998). MacMillan, Margaret. Paris 1919 (New York, 2001). Marvin, Charles. The Region of the Eternal Fire (London, 1884). Matlock, Jack F., Jr. Autopsy on an Empire (New York, 1995). McCain, William D., Jr. The Properties of Petroleum Fluids (Tulsa, Okla., 1990).

A Swede, Feuerring was one of the few westerners who did business with the Soviets in the 1950s. Chapter 5: The Middleman “crowded bars and card rooms”: Leonard Gardner, Fat City (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969), 85. Riverboats from San Francisco: Robert E. Levinson, The Jews in the California Gold Rush (Jersey City, N.J.: Ktav Publishing House, 1978), 94, 174. “hick”: Author interview with Briggs. a Beau Brummel: Author interview with Melvin Corren, a prominent eighty-year-old Stockton merchant who knew Lloyd Giffen, January 15, 2004. Lloyd Giffen was an Oklahoma: Stockton Record, August 14, 1995.


pages: 228 words: 65,953

The Six-Figure Second Income: How to Start and Grow a Successful Online Business Without Quitting Your Day Job by David Lindahl, Jonathan Rozek

bounce rate, California gold rush, Charles Lindbergh, financial independence, Ford Model T, Google Earth, multilevel marketing, new economy, speech recognition, There's no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home - Ken Olsen

These are often the same hucksters who told you that you could sit on the couch and money would spew from the TV. They want to be the pioneer whom you pay for the silver bullet that you seek to solve all your problems in one fell swoop. It ain’t gonna happen. Occasionally someone will figure out a clever angle and make some money from it. Then—just like the California Gold Rush—as soon as word gets out, there’s a mad scramble to get in on the action. Prices go up and the quality of the opportunity plummets. That story should only be depressing for the human pack rat, because the good news is that plenty of methods still work just fine for making money online. No single method is revolutionary, just as nothing is the single super-food you probably want to eat for the rest of your life to the exclusion of all else.


pages: 281 words: 72,885

Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World by Mark Miodownik

3D printing, active measures, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, California gold rush, invention of the printing press, Isaac Newton, liquidity trap, New Urbanism, stem cell, trade route

There is a piano in the corner that no one is playing. The bright California sun filters through the blinds, which are broken and make a rattling noise when the wind blows. Cigar smoke lingers in the air. The occupants of the saloon are a collection of rough-looking men, mostly out of work. Some are ex-miners who came out West during the California Gold Rush ten years earlier and then gravitated to the city, having failed to get rich. Others are veterans of the Civil War, who have wound up here as guns for hire. A few women keep them company. In the corner there is a billiards table to accommodate the new craze for “pool,” using fifteen colored billiard balls.


pages: 272 words: 64,626

Eat People: And Other Unapologetic Rules for Game-Changing Entrepreneurs by Andy Kessler

23andMe, Abraham Maslow, Alan Greenspan, Andy Kessler, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bob Noyce, bread and circuses, British Empire, business cycle, business process, California gold rush, carbon credits, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, commoditize, computer age, Cornelius Vanderbilt, creative destruction, disintermediation, Douglas Engelbart, Dutch auction, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, fiat currency, Firefox, Fractional reserve banking, George Gilder, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, income inequality, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, libertarian paternalism, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, McMansion, Michael Milken, Money creation, Netflix Prize, packet switching, personalized medicine, pets.com, prediction markets, pre–internet, profit motive, race to the bottom, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Skype, social graph, Steve Jobs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transcontinental railway, transfer pricing, vertical integration, wealth creators, Yogi Berra

The competition quickly followed. Vanderbilt was eventually bought out by the Association so they could get their high fees. Over time, Vanderbilt ran one hundred ships around Long Island and up and down the coast, making a fortune. Then he yanked the price down on the New York to San Francisco trip during the California Gold Rush. By going through Nicaragua instead of Panama, he shaved two days off the thirty-five-day trip. He cut prices from $600 to $400. His competitors were paid $500,000 by the Post Office to deliver the mail to California, so Vanderbilt offered to do it for free, and then he cut his passenger price for the trip to $150.


pages: 213 words: 70,742

Notes From an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back by Mark O'Connell

Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, California gold rush, carbon footprint, Carrington event, clean water, Colonization of Mars, conceptual framework, cryptocurrency, disruptive innovation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Donner party, Easter island, Elon Musk, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, Jeff Bezos, life extension, lock screen, low earth orbit, Marc Andreessen, Mars Society, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, New Urbanism, off grid, Peter Thiel, post-work, Sam Altman, Silicon Valley, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, the built environment, yield curve

They will need to construct shelters, perhaps from regolith bricks, to protect them from the extreme cold and from the sun’s radiation, which passes unfiltered through the planet’s thin atmosphere. The example set by these pioneers, he writes, “will create a wave of fortune seekers to rival those of the California gold rush.” And just as the first European settlers in America saw themselves as ensuring the survival of Christendom, these first settlers on Mars will represent an insurance policy for civilization, for humanity itself. “There are real threats to the continuation of the human race on Earth,” writes Petranek, “including our failure to save the home planet from ecological destruction and the possibility of nuclear war.


Frommer's San Francisco 2012 by Matthew Poole, Erika Lenkert, Kristin Luna

airport security, Albert Einstein, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Blue Bottle Coffee, California gold rush, car-free, centre right, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, El Camino Real, gentrification, glass ceiling, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, high-speed rail, Loma Prieta earthquake, machine readable, Mason jar, Maui Hawaii, McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, off-the-grid, place-making, Port of Oakland, post-work, San Francisco homelessness, sensible shoes, Silicon Valley, South of Market, San Francisco, Torches of Freedom, transcontinental railway, urban renewal, Works Progress Administration, young professional

You can also listen to podcasts, connect with other Frommers.com members through our active-reader forums, share your travel photos, read blogs from guidebook editors and fellow travelers, and much more. 1 The Best of San Francisco A queen on her throne/float at the Gay Pride parade. San Francisco’s reputation as a rollicking city where almost anything goes dates back to the boom-or-bust days of the California gold rush. It’s always been this way: This city is so beautiful, exciting, diverse, and cosmopolitan that you can always find something new to see and do no matter if it’s your first or fiftieth visit. Oh, and bring a warm jacket: Bob Hope once remarked that San Francisco is the city of four seasons—every day.

Ex-sailor Richard Henry Dana extolled the virtues of California in his best-selling novel Two Years Before the Mast and helped fire the public’s imagination about the territory’s bounty, particularly that of the Bay Area. The first overland party crossed the Sierra and arrived in California in 1841. San Francisco grew steadily, reaching a population of approximately 900 by April 1848, but nothing hinted at the population explosion that was to follow. Historian Barry Parr has referred to the California gold rush as the most extraordinary event to ever befall an American city in peacetime. In time, San Francisco’s winning combination of raw materials, healthful climate, and freedom would have attracted thousands of settlers even without the lure of gold. But the gleam of the soft metal is said to have compressed 50 years of normal growth into less than 6 months.


pages: 608 words: 184,703

Moon Oregon Trail Road Trip: Historic Sites, Small Towns, and Scenic Landscapes Along the Legendary Westward Route by Katrina Emery, Moon Travel Guides

Airbnb, bike sharing, California gold rush, car-free, crowdsourcing, desegregation, Donner party, glass ceiling, indoor plumbing, Kickstarter, Lyft, Mason jar, mass immigration, pez dispenser, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rosa Parks, trade route, transcontinental railway, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, urban planning, Works Progress Administration

While relations between the Sioux and the emigrants were neutral overall, individual prejudices on both sides contributed to a growing sense of unease. By 1849, the U.S. Army decided it needed a larger presence along the overland trails to protect emigrants from the perceived threat of attack, and purchased Fort Laramie to serve as a military outpost. Relations became especially strained during that year due to the California gold rush, as thousands of emigrants poured through the fort. Maffet Ledger drawing by Southern and Northern Cheyenne artists Tensions erupted near Fort Laramie on August 18, 1854, in what became known as the Grattan Fight, or Grattan Massacre. On that day, members of a nearby Sioux camp found a sick cow that had strayed from a wagon train, and innocently ate it for dinner.

Their final destination was the Great Salt Lake Basin, chosen by Brigham Young to be their new home. The trail was active 1846-1868, parting from the Oregon Trail for the south around Fort Bridger, Wyoming. As part of the migration, many Mormon converts from Europe traveled this route. Gold Rushers Single men were lured west by reports of gold, especially during the California Gold Rush of 1849, which increased traffic on the trail so much it led to a cholera epidemic. The California Trail aligned with the Oregon Trail, until the California-bound began breaking off, mostly in Idaho. The Rise of the Railroad It took 4-6 months to get people, wagons, and supplies overland from the edge of the frontier in Missouri to the coasts of Oregon and California.


pages: 202 words: 72,857

The Wealth Dragon Way: The Why, the When and the How to Become Infinitely Wealthy by John Lee

8-hour work day, Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, barriers to entry, Bernie Madoff, butterfly effect, buy low sell high, California gold rush, Donald Trump, financial independence, gentrification, high net worth, high-speed rail, intangible asset, Kickstarter, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, Maslow's hierarchy, multilevel marketing, negative equity, passive income, payday loans, reality distortion field, self-driving car, Snapchat, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, stocks for the long run, stocks for the long term, Tony Hsieh, Y2K

While you live and breathe, you have another chance. Whatever life has dealt you, you still have another chance. Never, never, never give up. Vince: Nothing speaks to me more on this point than the story about the man who gave up when he was three feet from finding gold. The story goes that a man from the East Coast wanted to get in on the California gold rush. He invested all his money in the necessary equipment, transported it all west, hired people to work for him and started digging. He kept digging for two years. He used up all his money, all his friends' money, got into debt and eventually gave up. He sold all his equipment to another guy and threw in the towel.


Wonders of the Universe by Brian Cox, Andrew Cohen

a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Albert Einstein, Albert Michelson, Apollo 11, Arthur Eddington, California gold rush, Cepheid variable, cosmic microwave background, dark matter, Dmitri Mendeleev, Eddington experiment, Eyjafjallajökull, Ford Model T, heat death of the universe, Higgs boson, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Johannes Kepler, Karl Jansky, Large Hadron Collider, Magellanic Cloud, Mars Rover, Neil Armstrong, Stephen Hawking, the scientific method, time dilation, trade route

If they are not formed within stellar furnaces, what could their origin possibly be? In the remote forests of northwestern California, the mountains still hide a secret that made the quiet pine woods the ultimate destination for fortune seekers only a century ago. Although they’re empty today, in the late nineteenth century this was the centre of the California gold rush. Hundreds of thousands of people arrived here, trying anything and everything to get rich, from simple panning to the most advanced mining techniques available. Gold worth billions of dollars was extracted, fuelling the rise of one of the world’s great cities, San Francisco. The insatiable appetite for gold has waned today, but in the forests around Lake Tahoe, the 16–1 mine remains one of the few gold mines still operating in the state of California.


pages: 236 words: 77,735

Rigged Money: Beating Wall Street at Its Own Game by Lee Munson

affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, backtesting, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, buy low sell high, California gold rush, call centre, Credit Default Swap, diversification, diversified portfolio, estate planning, fear index, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Flash crash, follow your passion, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, High speed trading, housing crisis, index fund, joint-stock company, junk bonds, managed futures, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, money market fund, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, National best bid and offer, off-the-grid, passive investing, Ponzi scheme, power law, price discovery process, proprietary trading, random walk, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, Savings and loan crisis, short squeeze, stocks for the long run, stocks for the long term, too big to fail, trade route, Vanguard fund, walking around money

Unlike people, earthships are types of homes that don’t need gold to survive; they are off the grid and made of old tires and beer bottles. I was searching for the meaning of money, but only found a warm hot spring. The book is a factual account of the 1857 sinking of the SS Central America. A passenger ship retuning from the California Gold Rush, it was carrying what was then around $2 million in gold. A few guys from Ohio decided to track it down in the 1980s. They found it, along with what had turned into a billion dollars’ worth of gold. Think about it. The currency on the ship was all but worthless today, but the gold remains.


pages: 247 words: 78,961

The Return of Marco Polo's World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-First Century by Robert D. Kaplan

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Admiral Zheng, always be closing, California gold rush, collective bargaining, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, failed state, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, friendly fire, Great Leap Forward, Haight Ashbury, high-speed rail, kremlinology, load shedding, mass immigration, megacity, military-industrial complex, no-fly zone, oil-for-food scandal, one-China policy, Parag Khanna, Pax Mongolica, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, the long tail, trade route, Westphalian system, Yom Kippur War

The elder Bush was no intellectual, but he intuitively grasped what the bookish DeVoto knew by travel, study in the Harvard library, and his own Utah upbringing: that America was a continent of such dimensions that to lead was not a choice but a fate. But Obama’s sensibility seems not to be continental. Continentalism, in Kennan’s estimation, is opposed to universalism. But I disagree. I believe that without one there is not the other. If you haven’t internalized moments like the California gold rush and westward expansion, you can’t fully grasp why America deserves to lead. Only by conquering the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains first could America defeat Hitler and Tojo second. Whereas the elder Bush made incessant phone calls to many world leaders from the start of his presidency—long before such crises as the collapse of the Soviet Empire and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait—Obama waits until he is buried in a crisis, and even then he often delegates such responsibilities.


pages: 686 words: 201,972

Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol by Iain Gately

barriers to entry, British Empire, California gold rush, corporate raider, Day of the Dead, delayed gratification, Deng Xiaoping, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, Fellow of the Royal Society, gentleman farmer, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Haight Ashbury, Hernando de Soto, imperial preference, invisible hand, joint-stock company, Jones Act, Louis Pasteur, megacity, music of the spheres, Norman Mailer, Peace of Westphalia, post-work, refrigerator car, Ronald Reagan, South Sea Bubble, spice trade, strikebreaker, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, traveling salesman, Upton Sinclair, V2 rocket, vertical integration, working poor

In the middle of the room a tall, lank man, with a dingy broadcloth coat, was haranguing the company in the style of the stump orator. With one hand he sawed the air, and with the other clutched firmly a brown jug of whisky, which he applied every moment to his lips, forgetting that he had drained the contents long ago. Three years after Parkman’s excursion, the California gold rush commenced. The prospect of digging a fortune out of the distant hills fired the imagination of all America, and much of Europe. People set off in their thousands, and then their tens of thousands, all animated by the dream of filling their pockets with nuggets that rumor had scattered across the Far West.

The tumult of Mexico, exaggerated by mescal, sweetened Burton’s perception of America, and in particular the last portion of its soil that he had touched. San Francisco, true to Richard Henry Dana’s prophecy, had become a considerable place, thanks to the gold rush. It is hard to overstate the impact of the California gold rush on the American and global economies. America had always been short of specie; and now its citizens were digging it by the sackful out of the California and Nevada mountains—$550 million worth, in 1850s prices, in the first decade alone. The rumor that America had not just free land but free gold, too, spread around the world, and people from Pacific and Atlantic nations set out for the new Eldorado.


pages: 601 words: 193,225

740 Park: The Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building by Michael Gross

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Bear Stearns, Bonfire of the Vanities, California gold rush, Carl Icahn, company town, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate raider, cuban missile crisis, Donald Trump, Glass-Steagall Act, Irwin Jacobs, it's over 9,000, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, junk bonds, McMansion, Michael Milken, mortgage debt, Norman Mailer, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, plutocrats, Ronald Reagan, sensible shoes, short selling, strikebreaker, The Predators' Ball, traveling salesman, Upton Sinclair, urban planning

I don’t think he got that thrill from banking.” In January 1925, Lee did his biggest real estate deal yet, teaming up with Carpenter (in his role as speculator and developer); Eliot Cross, the patrician architect who’d developed Sutton Place and co-founded the real estate giant Webb & Knapp; and Robert E. Dowling, the son of a California gold-rush mine owner and another major real estate operator. They bought two of the most valuable parcels of land on Park Avenue, the sites of Presbyterian Hospital on the full block between Seventieth and Seventy-first streets between Park and Madison avenues and the hospital’s nurses’ residence on the north side of Seventy-first Street.

Buying their house between his and the nurses’ residence was Lee’s most audacious move, for it made 740 a place where blood and money would cooperate for their common good. Brewster’s lineal ancestor “Elder” William Brewster, born in England in 1567 and jailed for his Pilgrim religious beliefs in 1607, had traveled aboard the Mayflower to the Plymouth Colony of Massachusetts in 1620. George Brewster was the son of Benjamin Brewster, who joined the California gold rush in 1849 and returned east in 1874. A mutton-chopped, bushy-eyebrowed eminence, Benjamin built the famous Rock Island Railroad and was one of the founders and trustees of the Standard Oil Company, part of the great monopoly run by John D. Rockefeller. Brewster was the president of the Keokuk and Des Moines Railroad, too, and owned a mansion at Fifty-fifth Street and Fifth Avenue when he died in 1897.


pages: 306 words: 79,537

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World (Politics of Place) by Tim Marshall

9 dash line, Admiral Zheng, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, British Empire, California gold rush, Charlie Hebdo massacre, colonial rule, cuban missile crisis, Deng Xiaoping, drone strike, European colonialism, facts on the ground, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Hans Island, Kickstarter, LNG terminal, market fragmentation, megacity, Mercator projection distort size, especially Greenland and Africa, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, Nelson Mandela, oil shale / tar sands, Scramble for Africa, South China Sea, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, trade route, transcontinental railway, Transnistria, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, zero-sum game

The Europeans had gone, the Mississippi basin was secure from land attack, the Pacific was reached, and it was obvious that the remaining Native American nations would be subdued: there was no threat to the United States. It was time to make some money, and then venture out across the seas to secure the approaches to the three coastlines of the superpower-to-be. The California gold rush of 1848–49 helped, but the immigrants were heading west anyway; after all, there was a continental empire to build, and as it developed, more immigrants followed. The Homestead Act of 1862 awarded 160 acres of federally owned land to anyone who farmed it for five years and paid a small fee.


pages: 305 words: 79,303

The Four: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Divided and Conquered the World by Scott Galloway

"Susan Fowler" uber, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, Apple II, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Bob Noyce, Brewster Kahle, business intelligence, California gold rush, Cambridge Analytica, cloud computing, Comet Ping Pong, commoditize, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, Didi Chuxing, digital divide, disintermediation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fake news, follow your passion, fulfillment center, future of journalism, future of work, global supply chain, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Hacker Conference 1984, Internet Archive, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jony Ive, Khan Academy, Kiva Systems, longitudinal study, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Network effects, new economy, obamacare, Oculus Rift, offshore financial centre, passive income, Peter Thiel, profit motive, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Robert Mercer, Robert Shiller, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, software is eating the world, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, supercomputer in your pocket, Tesla Model S, the long tail, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, undersea cable, vertical integration, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Wayback Machine, Whole Earth Catalog, winner-take-all economy, working poor, you are the product, young professional

Twenty-nine of the fifty wealthiest people on the planet live in the United States, and two-thirds of unicorns (private companies with $1 billion–plus valuations) are headquartered here.54,55 Sell the Picks Just as it’s better to own the land under a mine, it’s also good business to sell picks to the miners. The California Gold Rush proved that was true 170 years ago. Amazon proves it’s still true today. Amazon owns a lucrative mine: the firm divides its revenue between retail sales of consumer products (Amazon itself and Amazon Marketplace) and “Other,” the group that holds ad sales from Amazon Media Group and its cloud services (AWS).56 Most e-commerce firms can never get to profitability and, at some point, investors tire of a vision that’s “reheated Bezos.”


pages: 287 words: 81,970

The Dollar Meltdown: Surviving the Coming Currency Crisis With Gold, Oil, and Other Unconventional Investments by Charles Goyette

Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, buy and hold, California gold rush, currency manipulation / currency intervention, Deng Xiaoping, diversified portfolio, Elliott wave, fiat currency, fixed income, Fractional reserve banking, housing crisis, If something cannot go on forever, it will stop - Herbert Stein's Law, index fund, junk bonds, Lao Tzu, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, McMansion, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mortgage debt, National Debt Clock, oil shock, peak oil, pushing on a string, reserve currency, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, short selling, Silicon Valley, transaction costs

As gold became more plentiful (and cheaper), it took fewer silver coins to buy it; silver was relatively more valuable. Coins with the higher precious metals value, higher than the arbitrary government rate, in this case silver, would be hoarded or melted and sold; debts would be paid with the cheaper coinage. By 1853, five years after the California Gold Rush, Congress had to reduce the silver in the coinage to keep coins from disappearing. No artificial price or ratio can ever accommodate always changing supply/demand realities like the silver bonanza of the great Comstock Lode ten years later, much less the mushrooming demand for silver in our electronic and digital age.


pages: 362 words: 83,464

The New Class Conflict by Joel Kotkin

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alvin Toffler, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, back-to-the-city movement, Bob Noyce, Boston Dynamics, California gold rush, Californian Ideology, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, classic study, Cornelius Vanderbilt, creative destruction, crony capitalism, David Graeber, degrowth, deindustrialization, do what you love, don't be evil, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, Elon Musk, energy security, falling living standards, future of work, Future Shock, Gini coefficient, Google bus, Herman Kahn, housing crisis, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, labor-force participation, Larry Ellison, Lewis Mumford, low interest rates, low-wage service sector, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, mass affluent, McJob, McMansion, medical bankruptcy, microapartment, Nate Silver, National Debt Clock, New Economic Geography, new economy, New Urbanism, obamacare, offshore financial centre, Paul Buchheit, payday loans, Peter Calthorpe, plutocrats, post-industrial society, public intellectual, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, rent-seeking, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, Richard Florida, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Solyndra, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, tech worker, techlash, technoutopianism, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Thomas L Friedman, Tony Fadell, too big to fail, transcontinental railway, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban sprawl, Virgin Galactic, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, working poor, young professional

John Markoff, “Silicon Valley Reacts to Economy With a New Approach,” New York Times, April 21, 2001; Robert D. Hof, “Venture Capital’s Liquidators,” Bloomberg Businessweek, December 03, 2008, http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2008-12-03/venture-capitals-liquidators. 129. Paul Abrahams, “End of Second California Gold Rush Leaves the Valley in Shock,” Financial Times, May 9, 2001. 130. Robert Marquand, “Fast, Cheap, and in English, India Clerks for the World,” Christian Science Monitor, April 30, 1999. 131. Economic Policy Institute, “EPI Analysis Finds No Shortage of STEM Workers in the United States,” press release, April 24, 2013, http://www.epi.org/press/epi-analysis-finds-shortage-stem-workers; Joshua Wright, “Supply of Tech Workers Greater Than Estimated Demand,” New Geography, September 1, 2011, http://www.newgeography.com/content/002411-supply-tech-workers-greater-than-estimated-demand. 132.


pages: 309 words: 84,038

Bike Boom: The Unexpected Resurgence of Cycling by Carlton Reid

1960s counterculture, autonomous vehicles, Beeching cuts, bike sharing, California gold rush, car-free, cognitive dissonance, driverless car, Ford Model T, Haight Ashbury, Jane Jacobs, Kickstarter, military-industrial complex, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, Silicon Valley, Skype, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stop de Kindermoord, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Traffic in Towns by Colin Buchanan, urban planning, urban renewal, Whole Earth Catalog, Yom Kippur War

The film added that “finding a route to ride in safety is one of the biggest obstacles to pedal power, but the new English town of Stevenage incorporates twenty-five miles of tracks … without crossing the tracks of motorists.” CycleTouring, the magazine from the Cyclists’ Touring Club, warned: “Get Ready for the Bike Boom.” 1975 “There is a bicycle boom throughout the world,” wrote Richard Ballantine in the third edition of his best-selling Richard’s Bicycle Book. “In America it is like the 1849 California Gold Rush … and now there is a boom in Great Britain.” Ballantine wrote that line in 1973 when there most definitely was a boom; by the following year the boom was over. 1976 ITV broadcast a program to cash in on the 1970s bicycle boom. The Big Booming Bicycle Show was produced by Tyne-Tees Television, and aired a number of times on Saturday mornings in 1976.


pages: 282 words: 81,873

Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley by Corey Pein

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 4chan, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anne Wojcicki, artificial general intelligence, bank run, barriers to entry, Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL), Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, Build a better mousetrap, California gold rush, cashless society, colonial rule, computer age, cryptocurrency, data is the new oil, deep learning, digital nomad, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Douglas Hofstadter, driverless car, Elon Musk, Evgeny Morozov, Extropian, fail fast, fake it until you make it, fake news, gamification, gentrification, gig economy, Google bus, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Greyball, growth hacking, hacker house, Hacker News, hive mind, illegal immigration, immigration reform, independent contractor, intentional community, Internet of things, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Larry Ellison, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lean Startup, life extension, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, mutually assured destruction, Neal Stephenson, obamacare, Parker Conrad, passive income, patent troll, Patri Friedman, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer lending, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, platform as a service, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, post-work, public intellectual, Ray Kurzweil, regulatory arbitrage, rent control, RFID, Robert Mercer, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Ross Ulbricht, Ruby on Rails, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, Scientific racism, self-driving car, selling pickaxes during a gold rush, sharing economy, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, Singularitarianism, Skype, Snapchat, Social Justice Warrior, social software, software as a service, source of truth, South of Market, San Francisco, Startup school, stealth mode startup, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, tech bro, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, technological singularity, technoutopianism, telepresence, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, unit 8200, upwardly mobile, Vernor Vinge, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, X Prize, Y Combinator, Zenefits

One such go-between boasted prestigious affiliates including a noted member of the Harvard Angels investment club who was also a trustee of the Computer History Museum, as well as a partner from Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, a top corporate law firm established in the 1860s to cash in on the California gold rush. This outfit, called VC Taskforce, charged $105 for the chance to pitch an investor panel for two minutes, followed by eight minutes of questions and “feedback.” It occurred to me that if I ever tired of the founder’s life, I should hang a shingle as an investor and charge $630 an hour to sit around listening to other people’s ideas.


pages: 290 words: 84,375

China's Great Wall of Debt: Shadow Banks, Ghost Cities, Massive Loans, and the End of the Chinese Miracle by Dinny McMahon

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, bank run, business cycle, California gold rush, capital controls, crony capitalism, dark matter, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, eurozone crisis, financial innovation, fixed income, Gini coefficient, Global Witness, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, if you build it, they will come, income inequality, industrial robot, invisible hand, low interest rates, megacity, middle-income trap, military-industrial complex, money market fund, mortgage debt, new economy, peer-to-peer lending, Ponzi scheme, Ronald Reagan, short selling, Silicon Valley, subprime mortgage crisis, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, urban planning, working-age population, zero-sum game

As we trudged along outside rows of empty shop fronts, the only footprints in the early spring snow were my colleague’s and my own. In most parts of the world, a ghost town is a place where the community simply got up and left. The American West is dotted with them, places that sprang up overnight with the California gold rush and then dwindled just as quickly as the ore ran out and the miners moved on. Russia has thousands of what are known as “dead towns,” places that hollowed out with the end of the Soviet Union either because the military left or because state support for industries in far corners of the empire dried up.


pages: 432 words: 85,707

QI: The Third Book of General Ignorance (Qi: Book of General Ignorance) by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson

Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, Boris Johnson, British Empire, California gold rush, cognitive dissonance, Cornelius Vanderbilt, dark matter, double helix, epigenetics, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johannes Kepler, Kickstarter, music of the spheres, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, out of africa, Ronald Reagan, The Wisdom of Crowds, trade route

Originally entitled ‘The One-Horse Open Sleigh’, ‘Jingle Bells’ was the work of American composer James Lord Pierpont (1822–93), uncle of the financier J. P. Morgan. Pierpont’s father commissioned it for a Thanksgiving service. Pierpont led a wild life – at 14 he ran away to sea and joined a whaling ship. At 27 he left his wife and children in Boston to join the California gold rush. After re-inventing himself as a photographer, he lost all his possessions in a fire and moved to Savannah, Georgia, where he joined the Confederate army during the Civil War. Throughout this period he continued to write songs, ballads and dance tunes, including Confederate battle hymns and ‘minstrel’ songs for performance by white people with blacked-up faces.


pages: 291 words: 85,822

The Truth About Lies: The Illusion of Honesty and the Evolution of Deceit by Aja Raden

air gap, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, banking crisis, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, blockchain, California gold rush, carbon footprint, carbon-based life, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cryptocurrency, data science, disinformation, Donald Trump, fake news, intentional community, iterative process, low interest rates, Milgram experiment, mirror neurons, multilevel marketing, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, placebo effect, Ponzi scheme, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Silicon Valley, Steve Bannon, sugar pill, survivorship bias, theory of mind, too big to fail, transcontinental railway, Vincenzo Peruggia: Mona Lisa

The city of San Francisco sparked and then expanded like an explosion; and then, just as now, it was teeming with people looking to strike it rich. Some of them did, most of them didn’t. But anywhere there’s possibility, there’s hope; where there’s hope, there’s always fraud. And in the years following the California gold rush of 1848, fraudulent gold mines sprang up all over the west. One of the most common gold rush scams was the Bait-and-Switch practice of “salting” barren claims. Salting a mine involved planting an otherwise insignificant amount of gold in an area to create the illusion of native gold deposits.


pages: 801 words: 209,348

Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism by Bhu Srinivasan

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, American ideology, AOL-Time Warner, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Benchmark Capital, Berlin Wall, blue-collar work, Bob Noyce, Bonfire of the Vanities, British Empire, business cycle, buy and hold, California gold rush, Carl Icahn, Charles Lindbergh, collective bargaining, commoditize, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate raider, cotton gin, cuban missile crisis, Deng Xiaoping, diversification, diversified portfolio, Douglas Engelbart, Fairchild Semiconductor, financial innovation, fixed income, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, guns versus butter model, Haight Ashbury, hypertext link, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, information security, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, junk bonds, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, Louis Pasteur, Marc Andreessen, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, mortgage debt, mutually assured destruction, Norman Mailer, oil rush, peer-to-peer, pets.com, popular electronics, profit motive, punch-card reader, race to the bottom, refrigerator car, risk/return, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, strikebreaker, Ted Nelson, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the new new thing, The Predators' Ball, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, transcontinental railway, traveling salesman, Upton Sinclair, Vannevar Bush, Works Progress Administration, zero-sum game

O’Sullivan, “Annexation,” The United States Democratic Review, 17 (85) (July-August 1845): 5. formed the Associated Press: Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History, 1690–1960, 3rd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 251. proponents of Manifest Destiny: Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 703. John Sutter had made: H. W. Brands, The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream (New York: Doubleday, 2002), 3. “Gold! Gold! Gold!”: Ibid. $20 per day: William Tecumseh Sherman to Major H. S. Turner, August 25, 1848, quoted in The Sherman Letters: Correspondence Between General and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891, ed. Rachel Sherman Thorndike (London: Sampson Low, Marston, & Company, 1894), 42, 52.

Putnam’s Sons, 1935. Bradford, William. Of Plymouth Plantation: 1620–1647. Edited by Samuel Eliot Morison. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989. Brandeis, Louis D. Other People’s Money and How the Bankers Use It. Edited by Melvin I. Ufrosky. Boston: Bedford Books, 1995. Brands, H. W. The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream. New York: Doubleday, 2002. Brawley, Benjamin. A Social History of the American Negro. New York: Dover, 2001. Brinkley, Alan. The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century. New York: Vintage Books, 2011. Brinkley, Douglas. Cronkite. New York: Harper Perennial, 2013.


The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist

banks create money, barriers to entry, book value, British Empire, California gold rush, Cass Sunstein, colonial rule, cotton gin, creative destruction, desegregation, double helix, financial innovation, Joseph Schumpeter, manufacturing employment, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, mortgage debt, new economy, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, scientific management, Scientific racism, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, Thomas Malthus, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, vertical integration, Works Progress Administration

“Isthmus,” DeBow’s Review, July 1852, 43–52; Jere Robinson, “The South and the Pacific Railroad, 1845–1855,” Western Historical Quarterly 5 (1974): 163–186; Stacey L. Smith, “Remaking Slavery in a Free State: Masters and Slaves in Gold Rush California,” Pacific Historical Review 80 (2011): 28–63; Susan Lee Johnson, Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush (New York, 2000); John C. Parish, “A Project for a California Slave Colony in 1851,” Huntington Library Bulletin, no. 8 (1935): 171–175; Leonard L. Richards, The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War (New York, 2007). 41. Brown, Agents of Manifest Destiny, 174–218. 42. David Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861 (New York, 1976), 146–156; William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York, 1991). 43.


pages: 740 words: 217,139

The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution by Francis Fukuyama

Admiral Zheng, agricultural Revolution, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, California gold rush, cognitive dissonance, colonial rule, conceptual framework, correlation does not imply causation, currency manipulation / currency intervention, Day of the Dead, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, double entry bookkeeping, endogenous growth, equal pay for equal work, European colonialism, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Francisco Pizarro, Garrett Hardin, Hernando de Soto, hiring and firing, invention of agriculture, invention of the printing press, John Perry Barlow, Khyber Pass, land reform, land tenure, means of production, offshore financial centre, out of africa, Peace of Westphalia, principal–agent problem, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, Right to Buy, Scramble for Africa, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), spice trade, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game

Thomas, The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 1–2. 3 Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162 (1968): 1243–48. See also Richard Pipes, Property and Freedom (New York: Knopf, 1999), p. 89. 4 See, for example, Yoram Barzel, Economic Analysis of Property Rights (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 5 Such rights were said to have spontaneously emerged during the California gold rush of 1849–1850, when miners peacefully negotiated among themselves an allocation of the claims they had staked out. See Pipes, Property and Freedom, p. 91. This account ignores two important contextual factors: first, the miners were all products of an Anglo-American culture where respect for individual property rights was deeply embedded; second, these rights came at the expense of the customary rights to these territories on the part of the various indigenous peoples living there, which were not respected by the miners. 6 Charles K.

AusAid Australia; Aborigines of Austria Austro-Asiatic languages authoritarian regimes; accountability under; in China; electoral; in Latin America; in Middle East; modernization by; rule of law under; in Russia; in Stuart England autocracy autonomy; in China; of European cities; feudalism and; in France; institutional; in Ottoman Empire; of religious institutions Avignon, popes of Axelrod, Robert Aybak, Qutb-ud-din Ayn Jalut, Battle of Ayyubids Ayyvole merchant guild Azerbaijan Aztecs Ba’athists Bahri; Mamluk sultanate of Baker, Hugh Balkans Baluchistan Ban Biao Bangladesh Bank of England bao-jia system Baphaeon, Battle of Barlow, John Perry Barquq, Sultan Barro, Robert Barzel, Yoram Basij Basil II, Prince of Moscow Bates, Robert Batu Khan Baybars Becker, Gary Bede, Adam Bedouins Béla III, King of Hungary Béla IV, King of Hungary Benedict, Ruth Benedictine order Beowulf Berber tribesmen Berlin Wall, fall of Berman, Harold Bible Big Man Bimbisara, King of Magadha binding constraints Bindusara biology; evolutionary Bismarck, Otto von Black Army, Hungarian Blackstone, William Bloch, Marc Blum, Jerome Boas, Franz Bogotá Bohemia Bolivár, Simón Bolivia Bologna, University of Bolsheviks Bonnets Rouges uprising Boserup, Ester Bosnia Bourbons Brahmanism; corporate elites in; kinship in; limitations on literacy in; in Magadha empire; nonviolent doctrine of; rise of; social hierarchy of Brandenburg Brazil Brihadratha Britain; imperialism of (see also India, British rule in); Department for International Development of; monarchy of; Roman conquest of; see also England Bronze Age Buddhism; in China; in India bureaucracy; of Catholic church; in China ; in Denmark; in France; in Germany; in Hungary; in India; in Japan; of Mamluk sultanate; in Ottoman Empire; in Russia; in Spain; Umayyad Burji Mamluks Burke, Edmund Burma Busbecq, Ogier Ghiselin de Bushmen, Kalahari Byzantine Empire; Eastern church and caesaropapism in; eunuchs in; European trade with; kinship structures in; provincial administration system of; Turkish conquest of Caesar, Julius caesaropapism California gold rush Calvinism Canada Cannae, Battle of canon law Cao Cao Cao Pei Capetians capitalism; authoritarian; bourgeoisie and; global; property rights and; rise of capitation taxes Carneiro, Robert Carolingian Empire Carothers, Thomas Carpini, Archbishop caste system, Indian; British rule and; impact on individual freedom of; intermarriage and; patrimonialism and; state power limited by Castile Castro, Fidel Catherine II (the Great), Tsarina of Russia Catholic church; Brahmin authority compared to; celibacy of priesthood in; England and, ; in France; Gregorian reform of; in Hungary; kinship groups destroyed by; political allies of; property rights and; Protestant Reformation and popular grievances against; rule of law and; in Spain Catholic League Celtic tribes Central African Republic Chagnon, Napoleon Chandragupta Chang family Charlemagne Charles I, King of England Charles II, King of England Charles V, King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, King of France Charles XII, King of Sweden Chávez, Hugo Chengzu, Emperor of China Cheyenne Indians chiefdoms; in China; in India; in Oceania Chile chimpanzees China; absolutism in; agrarian society in; appanage in; “bad emperor” problem in; bureaucracy in; campaign against the family in; cities in; Communist, see People’s Republic of China; constraints on imperial power in; dynastic, see specific dynasties; economic development of; eunuchs in; European state-building compared with; feudalism in; founding myth of; Grand Canal in; Great Wall of; Han system in; human evolution in; hydraulic hypothesis of state formation in; imperial; Indian development compared with; kinship structures in; latifundia in; Legalism in; Mandate of Heaven in; Marx on; modernization in; Mongol invasion of; patrimonialism in; peasants in; per capita income in; political decay in; population of; reconsolidation of modern state in; religion in (see also Confucianism); trade networks in; tribalism in; usurpation of Empress Wu in; warfare and state building in; western colonization of Cholas Chosroes I, Emperor of Persia Christianity; conversion to; equality in; kinship structures undermined by; New World colonies; in Roman Empire; rule of law and; saints in; Scriptures of; see also Catholic church; Protestantism Christians; Crusaders; in Ottoman Empire; in Sasanian Empire; see also Christianity Christmas; secular celebrations of Chu, state of Chun Doo-Hwan, General Chun Qiu (Spring and Autumn Annals) Circassian Mamluks Citibank cities; Abbassid; American; Chinese; English; French; Greek; Hanseatic League; Hungarian; Indian; Latin American; Mamluk; Mauryan; Mongol destruction of; Ottoman; Russian; Spanish civil war; in China; in Denmark; in England, see English Civil War; in France; in Mexico; in United States Clark, Gregory classical republicanism Clement III, Pope Clovis Clunaic movement, Coke, Edward Colbert, Jean-Baptiste cold war Collier, Paul Colombia Columbus, Christopher Comanche Indians Common Law; accountability and; Indian law and; institutional adaptability of; Parliament and; property rights under Commons, English communications technology communism; collapse of; primitive; of women and children Communist Manifesto, The (Marx and Engels) Communist Party; Chinese; Soviet Communist regimes; see also People’s Republic of China; Soviet Union comuneros, revolt of Concordance of Discordant Canons (Gratian) concubinage Condé, Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Confucianism; antifemale ideology of; gentleman-scholar ideal of; during Han dynasty; Legalism versus; during Ming dynasty; during Northern Song dynasty; Rectification of Names in; taxation and Confucius Congregationalists Congress, U.S.


Americana by Bhu Srinivasan

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, American ideology, AOL-Time Warner, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Benchmark Capital, Berlin Wall, blue-collar work, Bob Noyce, Bonfire of the Vanities, British Empire, business cycle, buy and hold, California gold rush, Carl Icahn, Charles Lindbergh, collective bargaining, commoditize, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate raider, cotton gin, cuban missile crisis, Deng Xiaoping, diversification, diversified portfolio, Douglas Engelbart, Fairchild Semiconductor, financial innovation, fixed income, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, guns versus butter model, Haight Ashbury, hypertext link, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, information security, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, junk bonds, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, Louis Pasteur, Marc Andreessen, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, mortgage debt, mutually assured destruction, Norman Mailer, oil rush, peer-to-peer, pets.com, popular electronics, profit motive, punch-card reader, race to the bottom, refrigerator car, risk/return, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, strikebreaker, Ted Nelson, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the new new thing, The Predators' Ball, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, transcontinental railway, traveling salesman, Upton Sinclair, Vannevar Bush, Works Progress Administration, zero-sum game

O’Sullivan, “Annexation,” The United States Democratic Review, 17 (85) (July-August 1845): 5. formed the Associated Press: Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History, 1690–1960, 3rd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 251. proponents of Manifest Destiny: Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 703. John Sutter had made: H. W. Brands, The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream (New York: Doubleday, 2002), 3. “Gold! Gold! Gold!”: Ibid. $20 per day: William Tecumseh Sherman to Major H. S. Turner, August 25, 1848, quoted in The Sherman Letters: Correspondence Between General and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891, ed. Rachel Sherman Thorndike (London: Sampson Low, Marston, & Company, 1894), 42, 52.

Putnam’s Sons, 1935. Bradford, William. Of Plymouth Plantation: 1620–1647. Edited by Samuel Eliot Morison. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989. Brandeis, Louis D. Other People’s Money and How the Bankers Use It. Edited by Melvin I. Ufrosky. Boston: Bedford Books, 1995. Brands, H. W. The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream. New York: Doubleday, 2002. Brawley, Benjamin. A Social History of the American Negro. New York: Dover, 2001. Brinkley, Alan. The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century. New York: Vintage Books, 2011. Brinkley, Douglas. Cronkite. New York: Harper Perennial, 2013.


pages: 366 words: 94,209

Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity by Douglas Rushkoff

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Andrew Keen, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, benefit corporation, bitcoin, blockchain, Burning Man, business process, buy and hold, buy low sell high, California gold rush, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, centralized clearinghouse, citizen journalism, clean water, cloud computing, collaborative economy, collective bargaining, colonial exploitation, Community Supported Agriculture, corporate personhood, corporate raider, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, disintermediation, diversified portfolio, Dutch auction, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, Firefox, Flash crash, full employment, future of work, gamification, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global village, Google bus, Howard Rheingold, IBM and the Holocaust, impulse control, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, iterative process, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, loss aversion, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, medical bankruptcy, minimum viable product, Mitch Kapor, Naomi Klein, Network effects, new economy, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, passive investing, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, post-industrial society, power law, profit motive, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, reserve currency, RFID, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social graph, software patent, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, TaskRabbit, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Future of Employment, the long tail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transportation-network company, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, unpaid internship, Vitalik Buterin, warehouse robotics, Wayback Machine, Y Combinator, young professional, zero-sum game, Zipcar

As in any pyramid scheme, the real money gets made by those who get in early. So existing venture capitalists, as well as scores of freshly minted ones, came on the scene. This was the late 1990s, when Wired said we were in the “long boom,” and the Internet development landscape had taken on the quality of a second California Gold Rush. Finding an “angel” with ready cash was easier than finding a kid who knew how to mark up a Web page. Over the next decade, a basic playbook was established for how a startup gets to IPO or acquisition. Get an idea in college, find a programmer in the same dorm, build a prototype, write a business plan, present it at a conference, do an “angel round,” hire a couple more programmers to get to “minimum viable product,” raise a “Series A” round of investment, launch on the Web or App Store, achieve or manufacture huge numbers, write a new business plan with some scalable vision, raise a “Series B” round (if you absolutely need more funding), then get acquired or do an IPO.


pages: 257 words: 94,168

Oil Panic and the Global Crisis: Predictions and Myths by Steven M. Gorelick

California gold rush, carbon footprint, energy security, energy transition, flex fuel, Ford Model T, income per capita, invention of the telephone, Jevons paradox, meta-analysis, North Sea oil, nowcasting, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, price elasticity of demand, price stability, profit motive, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, statistical model, stock buybacks, Thomas Malthus

Because it is much denser than typical river sediments, much of the gold has remained in riverbeds, where it is easily found and extracted by panning or other more elaborate yet similarly mechanical approaches to separate the dense gold from the lighter river sediments. Gold in placer deposits was easy to find and extract, in the sense that it took hard work but little technology to mine it. Placer gold discoveries spawned the California gold rush of 1849, the Australian gold rush of 1851, and the Yukon Klondike gold rush of 1897.134 The easily mined gold in placer deposits can be represented as the region near the top of a resource pyramid, as shown in Figure 4.55. Of course, the placer deposits near the top of the pyramid were largely mined out over a century ago, so the pyramid represents “all” gold deposits that have been exploited to date as well as those that can be tapped in the future.


pages: 273 words: 93,419

Let them eat junk: how capitalism creates hunger and obesity by Robert Albritton

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", Bretton Woods, California gold rush, carbon tax, clean water, collective bargaining, computer age, corporate personhood, creative destruction, deindustrialization, Food sovereignty, Haber-Bosch Process, illegal immigration, immigration reform, invisible hand, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Kickstarter, land reform, late capitalism, means of production, military-industrial complex, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, planned obsolescence, price stability, profit maximization, profit motive, South Sea Bubble, the built environment, union organizing, Unsafe at Any Speed, upwardly mobile

This ideology of non-interference holds that one should be able to buy what one likes, where and when one likes, and as much as one likes, without so much as a glance from others. Consumption is arguably the activity our society deems most purely personal, outside the legitimate interest of society or government. Ironically it is considered even more private than sex.1 With a single-minded competitiveness reminiscent of the California gold rush, corporations are racing to stake their claim on the consumer group formerly known as children. What was once the purview of a few entertainment and toy companies has escalated into a gargantuan, multi-tentacled enterprise with a combined marketing budget estimated at over $15 billion annually – about 2.5 times more that what was spent in 1992.


pages: 401 words: 93,256

Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life by Rory Sutherland

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Alfred Russel Wallace, barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, Black Swan, Brexit referendum, butterfly effect, California gold rush, call centre, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, Cass Sunstein, cognitive dissonance, confounding variable, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Dava Sobel, delayed gratification, Donald Trump, double helix, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Easter island, Edward Jenner, Elon Musk, Firefox, Ford Model T, General Magic , George Akerlof, gig economy, Google Chrome, Google X / Alphabet X, Grace Hopper, Hyperloop, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, IKEA effect, information asymmetry, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, James Dyson, John Harrison: Longitude, loss aversion, low cost airline, Mason jar, Murray Gell-Mann, nudge theory, Peter Thiel, placebo effect, race to the bottom, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, Rory Sutherland, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, systems thinking, TED Talk, the map is not the territory, The Market for Lemons, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, ultimatum game, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, US Airways Flight 1549, Veblen good, work culture

However, in 2007, William Parker, Randy Bollinger and their colleagues at Duke University in North Carolina hypothesised that the appendix actually serves as a haven for bacteria in the digestive system that are valuable both in aiding digestion and in providing immunity from disease. So, just as miners in the California Gold Rush would guard a live sourdough yeast ‘starter’ in a pouch around their necks, the body has its own pouch to preserve something valuable. Research later showed that individuals whose appendix had been removed were four times more likely to suffer from clostridium difficile colitis, an infection of the colon.


pages: 408 words: 94,311

The Great Depression: A Diary by Benjamin Roth, James Ledbetter, Daniel B. Roth

bank run, banking crisis, book value, business cycle, buy and hold, California gold rush, classic study, collective bargaining, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deindustrialization, financial independence, Joseph Schumpeter, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, short selling, statistical model, strikebreaker, union organizing, urban renewal, Works Progress Administration

Speculation leads to fraudulent stock issues, embezzlement, new theories such as “new era.” 4. Then comes the crash or panic caused by over-expansion, fraud, embezzlement, & human greed. It is also interesting to note the dates of these panics. They seem to recur more frequently in last 35 years:1837-Panic caused by land craze and Western expansion 1857-California gold rush—new gold 1873-Post-Civil War. Too much R.R. expansion 1884-Gambling bankers 1893-Over-development big trusts—silver questions 1901-Too many mergers: U.S. Steel, Bethlehem; Youngstown Sheet & Tube 1907-Battling bankers—money panic 1914-Panic stopped by coming world war 1921-Primary post-war Panic 1929-New Era philosophy—fallacy that common stocks are best form of investment The intervals between panics are 20 years—16 yrs—11 years—9 years—8 years—6 years—7 years—7 years—8 years.


pages: 317 words: 101,074

The Road Ahead by Bill Gates, Nathan Myhrvold, Peter Rinearson

Albert Einstein, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Berlin Wall, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, Bob Noyce, Bonfire of the Vanities, business process, California gold rush, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, computer age, Donald Knuth, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, glass ceiling, global village, informal economy, invention of movable type, invention of the printing press, invention of writing, John von Neumann, knowledge worker, medical malpractice, Mitch Kapor, new economy, packet switching, popular electronics, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, SimCity, speech recognition, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Ted Nelson, telemarketer, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transaction costs, Turing machine, Turing test, Von Neumann architecture

This is quite different from the early, unchronicled days of the personal-computer industry. Today's frenzy can be intoxicating, especially for those who hope to be contenders, but the truth is that in this race everyone is barely at the starting line. When it finally is run, there will be many winners, some unexpected. One result of the California gold rush was the rapid economic development of the West. In 1848, only 400 settlers were drawn to California. Most were engaged in agriculture. Within one year the gold rush had attracted 25,000 settlers. A decade later, manufacturing was a much bigger part of California's economy than gold production, and the state's per capita wealth was the nation's highest.


pages: 370 words: 97,138

Beyond: Our Future in Space by Chris Impey

3D printing, Admiral Zheng, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, AltaVista, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Berlin Wall, Biosphere 2, Buckminster Fuller, built by the lowest bidder, butterfly effect, California gold rush, carbon-based life, Charles Lindbergh, Colonization of Mars, cosmic abundance, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, Dennis Tito, discovery of DNA, Doomsday Clock, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Eratosthenes, Great Leap Forward, Haight Ashbury, Hans Moravec, Hyperloop, I think there is a world market for maybe five computers, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, Late Heavy Bombardment, life extension, low earth orbit, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Mars Rover, Mars Society, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Neal Stephenson, Neil Armstrong, Nick Bostrom, ocean acidification, Oculus Rift, operation paperclip, out of africa, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, phenotype, private spaceflight, purchasing power parity, quantum entanglement, radical life extension, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, risk tolerance, Rubik’s Cube, Scaled Composites, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Searching for Interstellar Communications, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, Skype, Snow Crash, space junk, SpaceShipOne, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, supervolcano, technological singularity, telepresence, telerobotics, the medium is the message, the scientific method, theory of mind, There's no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home - Ken Olsen, Virgin Galactic, VTOL, wikimedia commons, world market for maybe five computers, X Prize, Yogi Berra

Even today, descendants of these early voyagers make their homes in inclement places. Consider, for example, the durability of the people who live at the hottest, highest, driest, and coldest places on Earth. The Timbisha tribe of Native Americans has lived near Furnace Creek in the Mojave Desert for more than a thousand years. Prospectors on their way to the California Gold Rush in the 1840s named this place Death Valley; in the summer, it can reach a scorching 134°F (57°C). The land is harsh, but until the traditional way of life was encroached upon in the last century, it provided the Timbisha with all they needed. The tribe traveled seasonally to harvest wild fruit and seeds.


pages: 391 words: 99,963

The Weather of the Future by Heidi Cullen

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, air freight, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, availability heuristic, back-to-the-land, bank run, California gold rush, carbon footprint, clean water, colonial rule, data science, Easter island, energy security, hindcast, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, Kickstarter, mass immigration, Medieval Warm Period, megacity, millennium bug, ocean acidification, out of africa, Silicon Valley, smart cities, trade route, urban planning, Y2K

This dead matter can’t get enough oxygen to break down completely, because everything is waterlogged. “It took 6,000 years for that peat deposit to build, as one layer of new plant material grew on top of previous layers of peat,” Lund says. Through this gradual process of flooding and rebuilding, a diverse, resilient ecosystem evolved. Then came the gold rush. It was actually during the California gold rush that farmers stumbled on the Delta and struck their own kind of gold. The peat in the Delta was capable of producing excellent crops. But to farm the organic-rich soils, farmers first needed to drain the islands. After 6,000 years of continual flooding and rebuilding, the Delta was, for the first time, being pinned down.


pages: 332 words: 97,325

The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator, Silicon Valley's Most Exclusive School for Startups by Randall Stross

affirmative action, Airbnb, AltaVista, always be closing, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Burning Man, business cycle, California gold rush, call centre, cloud computing, crowdsourcing, don't be evil, Elon Musk, Hacker News, high net worth, hockey-stick growth, index fund, inventory management, John Markoff, Justin.tv, Lean Startup, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, medical residency, Menlo Park, Minecraft, minimum viable product, Morris worm, Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, QR code, Richard Feynman, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, selling pickaxes during a gold rush, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social graph, software is eating the world, South of Market, San Francisco, speech recognition, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Startup school, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, TaskRabbit, transaction costs, Y Combinator

They worked on MongoHQ in the evenings and the wee hours of the morning while holding down day jobs. They took heart from “Selling Pickaxes During a Gold Rush,” a blog post published a couple of months earlier, in February, by Chris Dixon, a seed investor who was based in New York City but well known and respected in Silicon Valley.16 During the California gold rush, some of the most successful businesspeople—like Levi Strauss—didn’t mine for gold themselves but did well selling supplies to those who did. Today, Dixon argues, entrepreneurs who use the latest technology face a similar choice: they can sell to consumers—what Dixon calls “mining for gold”—or they can sell the software tools that other developers would use to create the consumer product—that is, “selling pickaxes.”


The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities by Mancur Olson

barriers to entry, British Empire, business cycle, California gold rush, collective bargaining, correlation coefficient, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, full employment, income per capita, Kenneth Arrow, market clearing, Norman Macrae, Pareto efficiency, Phillips curve, price discrimination, profit maximization, rent-seeking, Robert Solow, Sam Peltzman, search costs, selection bias, Simon Kuznets, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, transaction costs, urban decay, working poor

Thus, if we exclude erstwhile members of the Confederacy, a simple regression between years since statehood and rates of growth should provide a preliminary test of our model. If carried back into the nineteenth century, however, this test might be biased in favor of the model, since some states were then still being settled. The westward-moving frontier must have created disequilibria (the California gold rush might be the most dramatic example) with unusual rates of growth of total, if not per capita, income. The frontier is generally supposed to have disappeared by the end of the nineteenth century, but where agriculture and other industries oriented to natural resources are at issue, some disequilibria may have persisted into the present century.


pages: 331 words: 95,582

Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America by Conor Dougherty

Airbnb, bank run, basic income, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, business logic, California gold rush, carbon footprint, commoditize, death of newspapers, desegregation, do-ocracy, don't be evil, Donald Trump, edge city, Edward Glaeser, El Camino Real, emotional labour, fixed income, fixed-gear, gentrification, Golden Gate Park, Google bus, Haight Ashbury, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, illegal immigration, income inequality, Joan Didion, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, mass immigration, new economy, New Urbanism, passive income, Paul Buchheit, Peter Thiel, rent control, rent-seeking, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, self-driving car, sharing economy, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, software is eating the world, South of Market, San Francisco, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, universal basic income, urban planning, urban renewal, vertical integration, white flight, winner-take-all economy, working poor, Y Combinator, Yom Kippur War, young professional

In 1624, Massachusetts settlers arrived in ships full of ready-to-go walls and roofs that had been hauled over from England and were nailed together upon landing. British colonists to Australia, Africa, and India did the same thing, and over the next few centuries new versions of the idea seemed to pop up anywhere people needed to build lots of homes in a hurry—during the California gold rush, after the Chicago fire, and through America’s westward expansion. California was now living through another such situation, and the success of Europe and Asia, which both had well-established modular construction companies that built buildings like Legos, had long-ago demonstrated that a more efficient way was possible.


pages: 936 words: 252,313

Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease by Gary Taubes

Albert Einstein, California gold rush, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, cognitive dissonance, collaborative editing, Drosophila, Everything should be made as simple as possible, experimental subject, Gary Taubes, invention of agriculture, John Snow's cholera map, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, phenotype, placebo effect, Ralph Nader, randomized controlled trial, Richard Feynman, Robert Gordon, selection bias, seminal paper, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, twin studies, unbiased observer, Upton Sinclair

He also noted that the Pima had “the greatest abundance of food, and take care of it well, as we saw many of their storehouses full of pumpkins, melons, corn &c.” Life began to change dramatically the following year, when a wagon route was opened to California “by way of Tucson and the Pima villages.” This became the southernmost overland route for the California gold rush that began in 1849; tens of thousands of travelers passed through the Pima villages on the way west over the next decade. They relied on the Pima for food and supplies. With the arrival of Anglo-American and Mexican settlers in the late 1860s, the prosperity of the Pima came to an end, replaced by what the tribe referred to as “the years of famine.”

“Coronary Heart Disease—An Epidemic Related to Diet?” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. April; 37(4):669–81. Harper, A. H. 1971. Review of Physiological Chemistry. 13th edition. Los Altos, Calif.: Lange Medical Publications. Harris, B. B. 1960. The Gila Trail: The Texas Argonauts and the California Gold Rush. Ed. R. H. Dillon. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Harris, M. 1985. Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture. New York: Simon & Schuster. Harris, M., and E. B. Ross, eds. 1987. Food and Evolution: Toward a Theory of Human Food Habits. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Harrison, D.


pages: 394 words: 108,215

What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry by John Markoff

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Apple II, back-to-the-land, beat the dealer, Bill Duvall, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, Buckminster Fuller, California gold rush, card file, computer age, Computer Lib, computer vision, conceptual framework, cuban missile crisis, different worldview, digital divide, Donald Knuth, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dynabook, Edward Thorp, El Camino Real, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Fairchild Semiconductor, General Magic , general-purpose programming language, Golden Gate Park, Hacker Ethic, Hans Moravec, hypertext link, informal economy, information retrieval, invention of the printing press, Ivan Sutherland, Jeff Rulifson, John Markoff, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, Lewis Mumford, Mahatma Gandhi, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Mother of all demos, Norbert Wiener, packet switching, Paul Terrell, popular electronics, punch-card reader, QWERTY keyboard, RAND corporation, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Stallman, Robert X Cringely, Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, South of Market, San Francisco, speech recognition, Steve Crocker, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, technological determinism, Ted Nelson, The Hackers Conference, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thorstein Veblen, Turing test, union organizing, Vannevar Bush, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, William Shockley: the traitorous eight

Kepler’s bookstore on El Camino Real, just two miles north of the Stanford University campus, served as a beacon for an eclectic group of intellectuals who were outsiders in a community that was largely split in its economic dependence among Stanford, a fledgling electronics industry, and large military contractors like Lockheed. Woodside, a forested town just northwest of Stanford, was already a bedroom community and retreat, but for an earlier San Francisco financial elite with roots in the California Gold Rush. The Silicon Valley technology magnates hadn’t yet taken over the mansions and estates set among the redwoods. There was a small bohemia tucked away in nooks and crannies on the Peninsula, like the Perry Lane writers’ community, in a rustic cluster of cabins adjacent to the Stanford Golf Course.


pages: 431 words: 106,435

How the Post Office Created America: A History by Winifred Gallagher

British Empire, California gold rush, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, City Beautiful movement, clean water, collective bargaining, cotton gin, financial engineering, Ford Model T, glass ceiling, hiring and firing, indoor plumbing, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, New Urbanism, off-the-grid, pneumatic tube, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Republic of Letters, Silicon Valley, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transcontinental railway, traveling salesman, upwardly mobile, white flight, wikimedia commons, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration

they carried a very substantial portion: In The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon evokes the postal crisis of the 1840s and the rise of private mail services in the saga of Oedipa Maas, a Californian who gets caught up in a mystery upon becoming coexecutor of a former suitor’s estate. The dead man’s extensive philatelic collection includes some stamps possibly linked to an underground postal service called the Tristero, which had seemingly been vanquished by its Thurn und Taxis rival in the eighteenth century. The book’s title may refer to the California Gold Rush of 1849, when poor communications in the West became a vital national concern and encouraged private postal services. “a current of affection”: James Simmons, Remarks of Mr. Simmons, of Rhode Island, in Support of His Proposition to Reduce Postages to a Uniform Rate of Five Cents for a Single Letter, for All Distances (Washington, D.C.: J. & G.


pages: 366 words: 109,117

Higher: A Historic Race to the Sky and the Making of a City by Neal Bascomb

buttonwood tree, California gold rush, Charles Lindbergh, Everybody Ought to Be Rich, Ford Model T, hiring and firing, Lewis Mumford, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, pneumatic tube, Ralph Waldo Emerson, transcontinental railway, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, W. E. B. Du Bois, Works Progress Administration

The answer to this problem, however, was not to be solved in the city that first dared elevators. Instead, a city reeling from disaster found the solution. The man who solved the problem was William Le Baron Jenney, the son of a New England whaling captain. After sailing around the Cape Horn of Africa, joining the California gold rush, and serving as General William Tecumseh Sherman’s chief of engineers during his destructive sweep from Atlanta to the coast, Jenney settled in Chicago to practice architecture. He arrived in time to witness one of the most devastating conflagrations in history: the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.


pages: 334 words: 104,382

Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley by Emily Chang

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, "Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 4chan, Ada Lovelace, affirmative action, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Andy Rubin, Apollo 11, Apple II, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Benchmark Capital, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Burning Man, California gold rush, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean tech, company town, data science, David Brooks, deal flow, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Elon Musk, emotional labour, equal pay for equal work, fail fast, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, game design, gender pay gap, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Grace Hopper, Hacker News, high net worth, Hyperloop, imposter syndrome, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Khan Academy, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, Maui Hawaii, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, meritocracy, meta-analysis, microservices, Parker Conrad, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, post-work, pull request, reality distortion field, Richard Hendricks, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolodex, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, subscription business, Susan Wojcicki, tech billionaire, tech bro, tech worker, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, women in the workforce, Zenefits

By 2004—the year Google went public and Facebook was founded—the industry had recovered, and there were plenty of jobs to go around. Silicon Valley was resurrected as the dream destination where entrepreneurs—who fit a certain stereotype—could become millionaires overnight and lower-level employees could get rich simply by picking the right company to join. Tales of enormous fortunes spread, igniting yet another California gold rush. In 2010, the movie The Social Network further glamorized start-up life and established Mark Zuckerberg as the exemplum of what a successful founder looked like. And the men flocking to the epicenter of technology continued to vastly outnumber women. Today, it’s estimated there are more than half a million unfilled tech jobs, a number that is expected to balloon to one million by 2020.


pages: 432 words: 106,612

Trillions: How a Band of Wall Street Renegades Invented the Index Fund and Changed Finance Forever by Robin Wigglesworth

Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, asset allocation, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Big Tech, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Blitzscaling, Brownian motion, buy and hold, California gold rush, capital asset pricing model, Carl Icahn, cloud computing, commoditize, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate raider, COVID-19, data science, diversification, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, fear index, financial engineering, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, Henri Poincaré, index fund, industrial robot, invention of the wheel, Japanese asset price bubble, Jeff Bezos, Johannes Kepler, John Bogle, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, lockdown, Louis Bachelier, machine readable, money market fund, Myron Scholes, New Journalism, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, Performance of Mutual Funds in the Period, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, RAND corporation, random walk, risk-adjusted returns, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, rolodex, seminal paper, Sharpe ratio, short selling, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, subprime mortgage crisis, the scientific method, transaction costs, uptick rule, Upton Sinclair, Vanguard fund

., 88–89, 90–91 Bogle, William Yates, III “Bud,” 88–89, 90, 130, 133 Bogle Financial Markets Research Center, 132–33 Bogleheads, 15, 132 “Bogleisms,” 127–28 Bohr, Niels, 301 bond ETFs, 248, 271–73 bond funds, 275n bond indices, 259–62 Booth, David Gilbert, xii, 138, 139–46 at AG Becker, 141–43, 146 background of, 139–40 at Chicago, 50, 140–41 at DFA, 138, 144–51, 159–60, 162–63 Klotz’s departure, 156–59 at Wells Fargo, 70–71, 75, 138 Booth, Gilbert, 139 Booth School of Business, 157–58 Boston Celtics, 136 Boston Chicken, 137 Boston Globe, 114 Box, George, 51–52 Braham, Lewis, 89, 98n Branson, Richard, 295 Breakfast Club, The (film), 227 Breeden, Richard, 179–80 Brennan, Frank, 128–29 Brennan, Jack, xi, 120–21, 123, 125, 128–34, 240 background of, 128–29 schism with Bogle, 130–34 British East India Company, 300 Brooklyn Bridge, 150 Brown, Robert, 25 Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, 134–35 Buffett, Warren, ix, 83, 133, 267n Bogle and, 12–14, 19 on coin flips, 6–7 ESG push and, 294 on hedge funds, 1–3 on pension fund investing, 4–5, 7, 8 on professional fund managers, 4–8, 16–17 wager with Seides, 1–2, 3–4, 6, 9–11, 15–17, 267n bull markets, 5–6, 119, 121, 144–45 Burkart, David, 194n BusinessWeek, 35, 119 Butler, Dave, 136–48 background of, 136–37 at DFA, 137–39, 144–48, 163 California Golden Bears, 136 California Gold Rush, 57, 75 California State University, 206 Campbell, Gordon, 64–65 CANSLIM, 137, 152 “Can Stock Market Forecasters Forecast?” (Cowles), 27–28 capital asset pricing model (CAPM), 44–45, 74, 152, 153 Capital Group, 94, 123, 195–96 Carlyle, Thomas, 57–58 Carter, Jimmy, 115, 211 “Case for Mutual Fund Management, The” (Bogle), 86–87 cash index participation shares (CIPs), 173–74 Cessna Skymaster, 66 CFAs (Chartered Financial Analysts), 281–82 “Challenge to Judgment” (Samuelson), 106–7, 109 Chamberlain, Wilt, 56 Charles Schwab, 162n Chase Investors Management Corp., 83 Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), 147 Chicago Board Options Exchange, 173 Chicago school of economics.


The Rough Guide to Chile by Melissa Graham, Andrew Benson

Atahualpa, California gold rush, call centre, centre right, company town, cuban missile crisis, Easter island, feminist movement, Francisco Pizarro, it's over 9,000, Murano, Venice glass, sensible shoes, sustainable-tourism, three-masted sailing ship, trade route, union organizing, women in the workforce

For over three hundred years, Chiloé was isolated from mainland Chile due to the fierce resistance of the Mapuche to European colonists. As a result, the slow pace of island life saw little change. Ancud was the last stronghold of the Spanish empire during the wars of Independence, before the final defeat by the pro-independence forces in 1826. In spite of being used as a stopover during the California Gold Rush, Chiloé remained relatively isolated until the end of the twentieth century, though now it draws scores of visitors with its unique blend of architecture, cuisine and famous myths and legends. More than 150 eighteenth- and nineteenth-century wooden churches and chapels dot the land. Chiloé is also one of the few places in the country where you can still see palafitos, precarious but picturesque timber houses on stilts, which were once the traditional dwellings of most of the fishermen of southern Chile.

."(&--"/&4 $VUUFS$PWF 1FOÓOTVMB $PSEPWB 3ÓP"NBSJMMP 3&4&37" /"$*0/"-"(6/"1"33*--"3 *TMB4BOUB*OÏT *TMB.BHEBMFOB 1FOHVJO4BODUVBSZ 5*&33"%&- '6&(0 1PSWFOJS 1VFSUP)BNCSF #BIÓB*OÞUJM $BNFSØO 'VFSUF#VMOFT &TUBODJB4BO+VBO $BCP'SPXBSE *TMB%BXTPO 414 &TUBODJB4BO (SFHPSJP 3ÓP7FSEF LZSJOH 4FOP4 3&4&37"/"$*0/"*TMB $0 "-"$"-6'&4 3JFTDP 03*&4 1FOHVJO 4BODUVBSZ 3 & $FSSP *-Z 3% .U1JSÈNJEF "UBMBZB XB 1VOUB U $FSSP $0 N 0 N -BESJMMFSP P "SFOBT 4FO &TUSFDIPEF SOUTHERN PATAGONIA 4FSSBOP (MBDJFS / *TMB 8JDLIBN war over the territory, not for the last time. From 1849, Punta Arenas was boosted by the California Gold Rush; while it didn’t last long, the introduction of sheep farming created sprawling estancias (ranches) and brought great wealth to their owners in the late nineteenth century. Wool has now been replaced by oil, commercial salmon farming and tourism as the region’s main resources. The Chileans call the area the province of Magallanes, in the explorer’s honour, and it’s one of the least inhabited areas in Chile.


Western USA by Lonely Planet

airport security, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, Apple II, Asilomar, back-to-the-land, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Biosphere 2, Burning Man, California gold rush, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, Charles Lindbergh, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cotton gin, Donner party, East Village, edge city, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Frank Gehry, global village, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, haute couture, haute cuisine, illegal immigration, intermodal, Joan Didion, Kickstarter, Loma Prieta earthquake, machine readable, Mahatma Gandhi, Mars Rover, Maui Hawaii, off grid, off-the-grid, retail therapy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, South of Market, San Francisco, starchitect, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, supervolcano, trade route, transcontinental railway, Upton Sinclair, urban planning, Virgin Galactic, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration, young professional, Zipcar

History The hunter-gatherer existence of the Gabrieleño and Chumash peoples ended with the arrival of Spanish missionaries and pioneers in the late 18th century. Spain’s first civilian settlement here (1781), El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles, remained an isolated farming outpost for decades. LA was incorporated as a California city in 1850, and by 1830 its population had swollen thanks to the collapse of the Northern California gold rush, the arrival of the transcontinental railroad, the citrus industry, the discovery of oil, the launch of the port of LA, the birth of the movie industry and the opening of the California Aqueduct. The city’s population has boomed from some 1.5 million in 1950 to almost four million today. LA’s growth has caused problems, including suburban sprawl and air pollution – though thanks to aggressive enforcement, smog levels have fallen annually since records have been kept.

The Visitor Services Center ( 510-642-5215; http://visitors.berkeley.edu; 101 Sproul Hall; tours 10am Mon-Sat, 1pm Sun) has info and leads free campus tours (reservations required). Cal’s landmark is the 1914 Sather Tower (also called the Campanile), with elevator rides ($2) to the top. The Bancroft Library displays the small gold nugget that started the California gold rush in 1848. Leading to the campus’s south gate, Tele-graph Avenue is as youthful and gritty as San Francisco’s Haight St, packed with cafes, cheap eats, record stores and bookstores. UC Berkeley Art Museum MUSEUM ( 510-642-0808; www.bampfa.berkeley.edu; 2626 Bancroft Way; adult/child $10/7; 11am-5pm Wed-Sun) A campus highlight with 11 galleries showcasing a wide range of works, from ancient Chinese to cutting-edge contempor-ary.


pages: 939 words: 274,289

The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace by H. W. Brands

California gold rush, clean water, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, disinformation, industrial cluster, long peace, Monroe Doctrine, retrograde motion, strikebreaker, Suez canal 1869, transcontinental railway

He arrived amid mourning for Henry Clay, whose recent passing betokened an end of both the Whig party, which Clay had led for twenty years, and the spirit of compromise for which the Kentucky senator was famous. “Mr. Clay’s death produced a feeling of regret that could hardly be felt for any other man,” Grant wrote. The California gold rush revolutionized travel from America’s East to its Far West. The impecunious still trudged across the plains and mountains, but those with even a bit more money traveled by steamship to Panama, traversed the isthmus and caught another steamer to San Francisco. The marine legs of the journey were swift and comparatively comfortable.

Seward, William, 13.1, 18.1, 38.1, 42.1 attempted assassination of co-presidency proposal of Emancipation Proclamation and Fort Sumter crisis and purchase of Alaska and Seymour, Horatio, 56.1, 56.2, 56.3 Sheets, Lewis Shenandoah Valley campaign, 44.1, 45.1, 47.1 Sheridan, Philip, prl.1, 36.1, 41.1, 44.1, 48.1, 48.2, 50.1, 53.1, 53.2, 54.1, 77.1, 79.1, 79.2, 79.3, 80.1, 80.2, 84.1, 87.1 in Appomattox campaign, 48.1, 49.1 on Grant Louisiana electoral conflict and Mexico crisis and in Shenandoah Valley campaign on war Sherman, Ellen, 43.1, 43.2 Sherman, John, 13.1, 18.1, 18.2, 24.1, 40.1, 56.1, 58.1, 60.1, 65.1, 77.1, 82.1 Sherman, William Tecumseh, prl.1, 7.1, 31.1, 31.2, 33.1, 36.1, 39.1, 39.2, 41.1, 45.1, 50.1, 50.2, 54.1, 58.1, 62.1, 66.1, 77.1, 77.2, 78.1, 79.1, 79.2, 80.1, 80.2, 81.1, 85.1, 86.1, 87.1, 87.2 in Atlanta campaign banking career of, 10.1, 13.1 California gold rush and Cameron’s conversation with Chase’s correspondence with, 27.1, 29.1 at Chattanooga, 36.1, 36.2 at Chickasaw Bayou on contraband cotton trade Dana’s admiration for 1872 election and in European tour at First Bull Run Fort Pillow incident and Grant’s correspondence with, 47.1, 48.1, 48.2, 49.1, 50.1, 53.1, 54.1, 55.1, 56.1, 57.1, 65.1, 80.1 on Grant’s leadership style Halleck’s correspondence with Indian wars and Lincoln’s encounters with, 18.1, 18.2 memoir of in Meridian campaign promoted to major general on reconstruction reputed mental disability of, 24.1, 25.1 at Shiloh, 24.1, 24.2, 24.3 on slavery question Stanton’s public humiliation of, 50.1, 51.1 total war concept of in Vicksburg campaign, 30.1, 30.2, 30.3, 31.1, 31.2, 32.1 Willie Sherman’s death and Sherman, Willie (son) Sherman’s march: bummers in in Carolinas and Virginia, 47.1, 47.2, 48.1, 48.2 destruction of Atlanta in freed blacks and through Georgia, 46.1, 46.2, 47.1, 47.2 idea for Lunt plantation in preparations for Savannah taken in Shiloh, Battle of, prl.1, 24.1, 38.1, 58.1, 80.1 Buell’s arrival in casualties in, 25.1 criticism of Grant in aftermath of Grant in, 24.1, 24.2 Grant’s articles on in Grant’s memoirs, 24.1, 25.1 Johnston’s proposal of onset of Sherman in, 24.1, 24.2, 24.3 surprise achieved in Union counterattack in Union retreat in Wallace’s lost division in, 24.1, 24.2 Siam (Thailand) Sickles, Daniel Simonton, William Sioux Indians, 55.1, 55.2, 66.1, 77.1 Sitting Bull slaves, slavery, 1.1, 7.1, 11.1, 18.1, 19.1, 52.1, 52.2 arming of, 35.1, 40.1, 47.1 British abolition of cotton industry and Dominican annexation debate and Dred Scott decision and after the Emancipation Proclamation escaped Frémont’s emancipation decree and fugitive slave law and, 7.1, 27.1 Grant’s ownership of, 10.1, 12.1 in Greeley’s open letter Harpers Ferry raid and immunity to malaria of Kansas-Nebraska Act and, 9.1, 9.2 Kansas violence and Lincoln’s view of North-South boundary of Pottawatamie massacre and Sherman’s view of Texas debate on three-fifths rule and, 52.1, 52.2 Wilmot Proviso and see also African Americans Smith, Charles F., 21.1, 22.1, 22.2, 23.1, 23.2, 24.1 Smith, Dr.


The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape by James Howard Kunstler

A Pattern Language, blue-collar work, California gold rush, car-free, City Beautiful movement, corporate governance, Donald Trump, financial independence, fixed income, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, Frank Gehry, gentrification, germ theory of disease, indoor plumbing, It's morning again in America, jitney, junk bonds, land tenure, Lewis Mumford, mass immigration, means of production, megastructure, Menlo Park, new economy, oil shock, Peter Calthorpe, place-making, plutocrats, postindustrial economy, Potemkin village, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Skinner box, Southern State Parkway, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, Whole Earth Review, working poor, Works Progress Administration, yellow journalism

Its rustic inns for country lawyers evolved into proper hotels for families, and city folk of means would come to stay for weeks at a time, or even for the summer. Men who had made fortunes elsewhere bought homes in the village, most notably Frederick Billings, a Woodstock boy who went west in the California gold rush, learned law out there, and ended up President of the Northern Pacific Railroad. He returned to his hometown in his later years and became its great benefactor. The Bill­ ings connection persists to this day, since his granddaughter married Laurance Rockefeller, grandson of John D. the first. � When people visit Woodstock today, what they see there is a com­ munity much influenced by two great family fortunes, and an economy based in almost every way on resources that are not local.


pages: 441 words: 113,244

Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity From Politicians by Joe Quirk, Patri Friedman

3D printing, access to a mobile phone, addicted to oil, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, barriers to entry, biodiversity loss, Biosphere 2, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, business climate, business cycle, business process, California gold rush, Celtic Tiger, Charles Lindbergh, clean water, Colonization of Mars, Dean Kamen, Deng Xiaoping, drone strike, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, export processing zone, failed state, financial intermediation, Garrett Hardin, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, happiness index / gross national happiness, income inequality, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Kickstarter, low skilled workers, Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, megaproject, minimum wage unemployment, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, new economy, obamacare, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), open borders, Patri Friedman, paypal mafia, peak oil, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, price stability, profit motive, radical decentralization, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, standardized shipping container, stem cell, TechCrunch disrupt, TED Talk, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, undersea cable, young professional

For Ted Johnson, this is just the beginning. “I dream of thousands of floating OTEC ships roaming the seas of the world providing an inexhaustible supply of clean energy, fuel, and water, for all people of the world.” Imagine millions of blue jobs causing a mass emigration comparable to the California Gold Rush. Patrick Takahashi believes it’s a no-brainer. Hopefully, seasteading enthusiasts will become OTEC enthusiasts, as we OTEC enthusiasts become seasteading enthusiasts. I think bringing us all together, we can really be successful, in the rather short term . . . Let’s see if we can work together and really go off in a much faster pace.”


pages: 464 words: 116,945

Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism by David Harvey

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alvin Toffler, bitcoin, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business climate, California gold rush, call centre, central bank independence, Charles Babbage, classic study, clean water, cloud computing, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, company town, cotton gin, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, death from overwork, deindustrialization, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, drone strike, end world poverty, falling living standards, fiat currency, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, Food sovereignty, Frank Gehry, future of work, gentrification, global reserve currency, Great Leap Forward, Guggenheim Bilbao, Gunnar Myrdal, Herbert Marcuse, income inequality, informal economy, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Just-in-time delivery, knowledge worker, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, market clearing, Martin Wolf, means of production, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Money creation, Murray Bookchin, new economy, New Urbanism, Occupy movement, peak oil, phenotype, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, quantitative easing, rent-seeking, reserve currency, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, scientific management, short selling, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, wages for housework, Wall-E, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population

To begin with these metals were relatively scarce and there is a fairly constant accumulated supply. I cannot go into my back yard and dig up some gold or silver whenever I want. The supply of the precious metals is relatively inelastic, so they maintain their relative value against all other commodities over time (though bursts of production activity, like the California gold rush, did create some problems). Most of the world’s gold is already mined and above ground. Second, these metals do not oxidise and deteriorate (as would happen if we chose raspberries or potatoes as our money commodity): this means that they maintain their physical characteristics over the time of a market transaction and, even more importantly, they can function relatively safely as a long-term store of value.


pages: 361 words: 110,233

The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide by Steven W. Thrasher

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, California gold rush, carbon footprint, Chelsea Manning, clean water, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, David Graeber, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, drug harm reduction, East Village, Edward Jenner, ending welfare as we know it, European colonialism, Ferguson, Missouri, food desert, gentrification, George Floyd, global pandemic, informal economy, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, mandatory minimum, mass incarceration, means of production, medical bankruptcy, moral panic, Naomi Klein, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, peak TV, pill mill, QR code, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, Saturday Night Live, Scramble for Africa, Silicon Valley, social distancing, the built environment, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, Upton Sinclair, War on Poverty, white flight, working poor

The state will relax its boundaries to welcome various immigrants into this underclass at certain times and then will demonize those same groups when capital has lost its need for them. The justification for later quarantining these groups, curbing the migration of their families, or expelling them is often viruses. For instance, Chinese workers were welcomed to help with the California gold rush of the mid-nineteenth century and then, during the U.S. Civil War, to help build the Transcontinental Railroad. It was dangerous work and, as the Guardian put it, Chinese workers “were paid less than American workers and lived in tents, while white workers were given accommodation in train cars.”


pages: 476 words: 129,209

The Great Halifax Explosion: A World War I Story of Treachery, Tragedy, and Extraordinary Heroism by John U. Bacon

British Empire, California gold rush, clean water, discovery of penicillin, housing crisis, index card, Louis Pasteur, mass immigration, transcontinental railway, yellow journalism

In 1992, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, which has since been absorbed by Halifax, opened a grade school named for the CSS Tallahassee. Chapter 4 Waking Up Just in Time 1865–1914 From Halifax’s birth in 1749 through 1865, Haligonians had ridden a wonderful wave of wealth by supplying materials, people, and transport for wars around the world, mass migrations, and even the California Gold Rush. But after the American Civil War, Halifax struggled, and the Americans were none too eager to help the people who had helped the Confederates. Instead, talk resumed in New England papers of annexing British North America. This perpetual fear of an American invasion pushed British North America to set up a central government among Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the “Province of Canada,” present-day Quebec and Ontario, in 1867.


pages: 456 words: 123,534

The Dawn of Innovation: The First American Industrial Revolution by Charles R. Morris

air freight, American ideology, British Empire, business process, California gold rush, Charles Babbage, clean water, colonial exploitation, computer age, Cornelius Vanderbilt, cotton gin, Dava Sobel, en.wikipedia.org, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, glass ceiling, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, Ida Tarbell, if you build it, they will come, interchangeable parts, Isaac Newton, Jacquard loom, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, John Harrison: Longitude, joint-stock company, lone genius, manufacturing employment, megaproject, new economy, New Urbanism, old age dependency ratio, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, purchasing power parity, QWERTY keyboard, refrigerator car, Robert Gordon, scientific management, spinning jenny, Stephen Hawking, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, transcontinental railway, traveling salesman, undersea cable

Cunard commissioned two big new ships, the Asia and the Africa, which were a marked improvement. But they did not decisively trump the Americans until the launch of the very large and very fast Persia in 1855. 47 Cornelius Vanderbilt, in the meantime, had been gaining experience as an ocean steamship operator by running a lucrative Pacific line to take advantage of the California Gold Rush. The route went from New York to a port on the coast of Nicaragua. Passengers then embarked on a combined river-lake-transit road trip across the peninsula to meet steamships to San Francisco. His first ship commissioned for the East Coast leg was the Prometheus, which in 1850 made the 5,600-mile run, including stops at Havana on the way down and at New Orleans on the way back, in the extraordinary time of nineteen days, while consuming about a third less coal than any comparably sized ship would have required.48 The secret of the Prometheus’s performance was the engine.


pages: 412 words: 122,952

Day We Found the Universe by Marcia Bartusiak

Albert Einstein, Albert Michelson, Arthur Eddington, California gold rush, Cepheid variable, Copley Medal, cosmic microwave background, cosmological constant, Eddington experiment, Edmond Halley, Edward Charles Pickering, Fellow of the Royal Society, fudge factor, Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis, Harvard Computers: women astronomers, horn antenna, invention of the telescope, Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, Magellanic Cloud, Occam's razor, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, Pluto: dwarf planet, William of Occam

Arriving in San Francisco by ship in 1848, just as California was about to secede from Mexico, he came ashore with $30,000 in gold doubloons and six hundred pounds of Peruvian chocolate made by his friend Domingo Ghirardelli. Wasting no time, Lick quickly put his incisive business acumen to work. He shrewdly used his gold to purchase real estate in San Francisco, then just a scrubby town with scarcely a thousand inhabitants. When residents started heading to the hills to make their fortune in the California gold rush, Lick was there to provide them with a stake by buying up their town land at bargain prices. He also bought a gristmill, greatly expanding it, and built California's first great luxury hotel, the opulent Lick House, which occupied an entire city block (and was later destroyed in the fire that tore through San Francisco after its horrific 1906 earthquake).


pages: 453 words: 122,586

Samuelson Friedman: The Battle Over the Free Market by Nicholas Wapshott

2021 United States Capitol attack, Alan Greenspan, bank run, basic income, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, business cycle, California gold rush, collective bargaining, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Donald Trump, double helix, en.wikipedia.org, fiat currency, financial engineering, fixed income, floating exchange rates, full employment, God and Mammon, greed is good, Gunnar Myrdal, income inequality, indoor plumbing, invisible hand, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, laissez-faire capitalism, light touch regulation, liquidity trap, lockdown, low interest rates, Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman, market bubble, market clearing, mass immigration, military-industrial complex, Money creation, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, new economy, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, Philip Mirowski, Phillips curve, price mechanism, price stability, public intellectual, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, rent control, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, seminal paper, Simon Kuznets, social distancing, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, urban renewal, War on Poverty, We are all Keynesians now, Works Progress Administration, zero-sum game

28 October 1968, p. 104. https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/friedman_images/Collections/2016c21/NW_10_28_1968.pdf. 31.Ibid. 32.These include: 1819, the first U.S. financial crisis; 1836, U.S. real estate speculation causes stock markets to crash in the U.K., Europe, then the U.S. The Panic of 1857, when the increase in money supply caused by the California Gold Rush dried up, a U.S. credit crisis crashed equity prices. 1866, “Black Friday” caused by railroad speculation. A bank panic led to a shortage of credit. 1907, U.S. bank panic spreads to France and Italy after stock market collapse. 1921, Commodity prices crash. 1929, the “Great Depression” starts after U.S. equities crash. 33.Friedman, “Whose Money Is It Anyway?”


Stocks for the Long Run, 4th Edition: The Definitive Guide to Financial Market Returns & Long Term Investment Strategies by Jeremy J. Siegel

addicted to oil, Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, backtesting, behavioural economics, Black-Scholes formula, book value, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, buy low sell high, California gold rush, capital asset pricing model, cognitive dissonance, compound rate of return, correlation coefficient, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, diversification, diversified portfolio, dividend-yielding stocks, dogs of the Dow, equity premium, equity risk premium, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, Everybody Ought to Be Rich, fixed income, German hyperinflation, implied volatility, index arbitrage, index fund, Isaac Newton, it's over 9,000, John Bogle, joint-stock company, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, machine readable, market bubble, mental accounting, Money creation, Myron Scholes, new economy, oil shock, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, popular capitalism, prediction markets, price anchoring, price stability, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, random walk, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, short selling, South Sea Bubble, stock buybacks, stocks for the long run, subprime mortgage crisis, survivorship bias, technology bubble, The Great Moderation, The Wisdom of Crowds, transaction costs, tulip mania, uptick rule, Vanguard fund, vertical integration

Unfortunately, we didn’t make much on those stocks, but we didn’t lose either. I think we’re on the right track now. Those Internet companies weren’t making any money. All the new firms we now own form the backbone of the Internet and all are profitable. Allan told me an important principle: Do you know who made the most money in the California Gold Rush of the 1850s? Not the gold miners. Oh, some of the early diggers found gold, but most found nothing. The real winners from the Gold Rush were those that sold supplies to the miners—pick axes, boots, pans, and hiking gear. The lesson is very clear, most of the Internet companies are going to fail, but those supplying the backbone of the Internet—the routers, software, and fiber optic cables—will be the big winners.


pages: 389 words: 131,688

The Impossible Climb: Alex Honnold, El Capitan, and the Climbing Life by Mark Synnott

blue-collar work, California gold rush, Google Earth, index fund, Nate Silver, Skype, South China Sea, Steve Jobs, technological singularity, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, trade route, Y2K

Before the tourist hotels and the guided nature walks led by the famous naturalist John Muir in the 1870s, Yosemite Valley was home to a polyglot tribe of Native Americans (mostly Miwoks, Paiutes, and Monos) who called the place Ahwahnee (which means “Gaping Mouth”) and themselves Ahwahneechee (“those who live in the Gaping Mouth”). The troubles began when a carpenter named James W. Marshall found flakes of gold in the American River in 1848. This discovery set off the California gold rush, which drove tens of thousands of fortune hunters into the Sierra Nevada. Conflicts between the prospectors and the indigenous tribes who lived in these mountains soon followed. By 1850, the natives living in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada were becoming increasingly concerned about how many white settlers were moving into the region.


pages: 436 words: 76

Culture and Prosperity: The Truth About Markets - Why Some Nations Are Rich but Most Remain Poor by John Kay

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, Barry Marshall: ulcers, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bletchley Park, business cycle, California gold rush, Charles Babbage, complexity theory, computer age, constrained optimization, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, double helix, Dr. Strangelove, Dutch auction, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, electricity market, equity premium, equity risk premium, Ernest Rutherford, European colonialism, experimental economics, Exxon Valdez, failed state, Fairchild Semiconductor, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, George Akerlof, George Gilder, Goodhart's law, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, Gunnar Myrdal, haute couture, Helicobacter pylori, illegal immigration, income inequality, industrial cluster, information asymmetry, intangible asset, invention of the telephone, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, John Meriwether, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, Larry Ellison, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, Mahatma Gandhi, market bubble, market clearing, market fundamentalism, means of production, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, Naomi Klein, Nash equilibrium, new economy, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, pets.com, Phillips curve, popular electronics, price discrimination, price mechanism, prisoner's dilemma, profit maximization, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, random walk, rent-seeking, Right to Buy, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, second-price auction, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, South Sea Bubble, Steve Jobs, Stuart Kauffman, telemarketer, The Chicago School, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, the new new thing, The Predators' Ball, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, total factor productivity, transaction costs, tulip mania, urban decay, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, work culture , yield curve, yield management

.: Citadel Press. Robbins, L. C. 1935. An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science. London: Macmillan. Rogoff, K., and]. Zettelmayer. 2002. "Early Ideas on Sovereign Bankruptcy Reorganization: A Survey." IMFWorkingPaper 2/57. { 406} Bibliography Rohrbough, M. J. 1997. Days of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the American Nation. Berkeley and London: University of California Press. Rorty, R 1979. Philosophy and the MirrorofNature. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rosenstein-Rodan, P. N. 1943. "Problems oflndustrialization ofEastern and Southeastern Europe." Economic journal 53 Gune-September): 202-11. ---. 1961.


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The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order by Paul Vigna, Michael J. Casey

Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, altcoin, Apple Newton, bank run, banking crisis, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, blockchain, Bretton Woods, buy and hold, California gold rush, capital controls, carbon footprint, clean water, Cody Wilson, collaborative economy, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Columbine, Credit Default Swap, cross-border payments, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, decentralized internet, disinformation, disintermediation, Dogecoin, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, Firefox, Flash crash, Ford Model T, Fractional reserve banking, Glass-Steagall Act, hacker house, Hacker News, Hernando de Soto, high net worth, informal economy, intangible asset, Internet of things, inventory management, Joi Ito, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Kuwabatake Sanjuro: assassination market, litecoin, Long Term Capital Management, Lyft, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, McMansion, means of production, Menlo Park, mobile money, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, new economy, new new economy, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, payday loans, Pearl River Delta, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, price stability, printed gun, profit motive, QR code, RAND corporation, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Robert Shiller, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, seigniorage, shareholder value, sharing economy, short selling, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart contracts, special drawing rights, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, Ted Nelson, The Great Moderation, the market place, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, transaction costs, tulip mania, Turing complete, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, underbanked, Vitalik Buterin, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator, Y2K, zero-sum game, Zimmermann PGP

It includes visits to the mountains of Utah, the beaches of Barbados, schools in Afghanistan, and start-ups in Kenya. The world of cryptocurrencies comprises venture-capital royalty, high school dropouts, businessmen, utopians, anarchists, students, humanitarians, hackers, and Papa John’s pizza. It’s got parallels with the financial crisis, and the new sharing economy, and the California gold rush, and before it’s all over, we may have to endure an epic battle between a new high-tech world and the old low-tech world that could throw millions out of work, while creating an entirely new breed of millionaires. Are you ready to jump down the bitcoin rabbit hole? One FROM BABYLON TO BITCOIN The eye has never seen, nor the hand touched a dollar.


pages: 517 words: 139,477

Stocks for the Long Run 5/E: the Definitive Guide to Financial Market Returns & Long-Term Investment Strategies by Jeremy Siegel

Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, backtesting, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black-Scholes formula, book value, break the buck, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, buy low sell high, California gold rush, capital asset pricing model, carried interest, central bank independence, cognitive dissonance, compound rate of return, computer age, computerized trading, corporate governance, correlation coefficient, Credit Default Swap, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Deng Xiaoping, discounted cash flows, diversification, diversified portfolio, dividend-yielding stocks, dogs of the Dow, equity premium, equity risk premium, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, Everybody Ought to Be Rich, Financial Instability Hypothesis, fixed income, Flash crash, forward guidance, fundamental attribution error, Glass-Steagall Act, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, implied volatility, income inequality, index arbitrage, index fund, indoor plumbing, inflation targeting, invention of the printing press, Isaac Newton, it's over 9,000, John Bogle, joint-stock company, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, machine readable, market bubble, mental accounting, Minsky moment, Money creation, money market fund, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, new economy, Northern Rock, oil shock, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, price anchoring, price stability, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, random walk, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, stocks for the long run, survivorship bias, technology bubble, The Great Moderation, the payments system, The Wisdom of Crowds, transaction costs, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, uptick rule, Vanguard fund

Unfortunately, we didn’t make much on those stocks, but we didn’t lose either. I know we’re on the right track now. Those Internet companies weren’t making any money. All the new firms we now own form the backbone of the Internet, and all are profitable. Allan told me an important principle: Do you know who made the most money in the California gold rush of the 1850s? Not the gold miners. Some of the early diggers found gold, but most found nothing. The real winners from the gold rush were those who sold supplies to the miners—pickaxes, boots, pans, and hiking gear. The lesson is very clear; most of the Internet companies are going to fail, but those supplying the backbone of the Internet—those supplying the routers, software, and fiber-optic cables—will be the big winners.


pages: 1,106 words: 335,322

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow

business cycle, California gold rush, classic study, collective bargaining, Cornelius Vanderbilt, death of newspapers, delayed gratification, double entry bookkeeping, endowment effect, family office, financial independence, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, George Santayana, God and Mammon, Gregor Mendel, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, invisible hand, Joseph Schumpeter, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, Menlo Park, New Journalism, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, passive investing, plutocrats, price discrimination, profit motive, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Ralph Waldo Emerson, refrigerator car, Suez canal 1869, The Chicago School, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thorstein Veblen, transcontinental railway, traveling salesman, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, vertical integration, W. E. B. Du Bois, white picket fence, yellow journalism

Just as the Rockefellers were moving from Moravia to Owego, hordes of frantic men swarmed across the continent, sailed around South America, or slogged across the Isthmus of Panama, hell-bent to reach California. The pandemonium foreshadowed the petroleum craze in western Pennsylvania a decade later. Though the gold rush proved a snare and a delusion for most miners, the occasional success stories nonetheless inflamed the popular imagination. Mark Twain singled out the California gold rush as the watershed event that sanctified a new money worship and debased the country’s founding ideals. Before he left Owego, John secured a first-rate education, then a rarity in rural America, where few children attended secondary school. At first, the Rockefeller children went to a schoolhouse a short walk from their house; due to the family’s straitened circumstances, a friendly neighbor purchased their textbooks.

On January 1, 1872, the Standard Oil executive committee, bracing for the tumultuous events ahead, boosted the firm’s capital from $1 million to $2.5 million and then to $3.5 million the next day.16 Among the new shareholders were several luminaries of Cleveland banking, including Truman P. Handy, Amasa Stone, and Stillman Witt. An intriguing new investor was Benjamin Brewster, a direct descendant of Elder Brewster of the Plymouth colony, who had made a fortune with Oliver Jennings during the California gold rush. It was a sign of Rockefeller’s exceptional self-confidence that he gathered strong executives and investors at this abysmal time, as if the depressed atmosphere only strengthened his resolve. “We were gathering information which confirmed us in the idea that to enlarge our own Standard Oil of Ohio and actually take into partners with us the refining interest would accomplish the protection of the oil industry as a whole.” 17 On January 1, 1872, the executive committee made its historic decision to purchase “certain refining properties in Cleveland and elsewhere.” 18 This seemingly innocuous resolution was the opening shot of a bloody skirmish that historians came to label the Cleveland Massacre.


Hawaii by Jeff Campbell

airport security, big-box store, California gold rush, carbon footprint, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, commoditize, company town, creative destruction, Drosophila, Easter island, G4S, haute couture, land reform, lateral thinking, low-wage service sector, machine readable, Maui Hawaii, off-the-grid, Peter Pan Syndrome, polynesian navigation, risk/return, sustainable-tourism, upwardly mobile, urban sprawl, wage slave, white picket fence

So bountiful is Kula’s rich volcanic soil that it produces most of the onions, lettuce and strawberries grown in Hawaii. The key to these bountiful harvests is the elevation. At 3000ft, Kula’s cool nights and sunny days are ideal for growing all sorts of crops. Kula’s farmers first gained fame during the California gold rush of the 1850s, when they shipped so many potatoes out to West Coast miners that Kula became known as ‘Nu Kaleponi,’ the Hawaiian pronunciation for New California. In the late 19th century Portuguese and Chinese immigrants who had worked off their contracts on the sugar plantations also moved up to Kula and started small farms, giving Kula the multicultural face it wears today.

Tours The Nature Conservancy (553-5236; www.nature.org/hawaii; Moloka’i Industrial Park, 23 Pueo Pl, Kualapu’u; suggested donation $25) leads excellent monthly guided hikes of Mo’omomi. Transportation is provided to and from the preserve. Reservations are required and spots fill up far in advance so get in early. Return to beginning of chapter KALA’E Rudolph Wilhelm Meyer, a German immigrant who had plans to make it big in the California gold rush, stopped off in Hawai’i en route (he was going the long way around). He never left, and married a member of Hawaiian royalty who had huge tracts of land on Moloka’i. Meyer busied himself growing potatoes and cattle for export, serving as overseer of the Kalaupapa leprosy settlement and as manager of King Kamehameha V’s ranch lands.


Hawaii Travel Guide by Lonely Planet

Airbnb, back-to-the-land, big-box store, bike sharing, British Empire, California gold rush, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, Charles Lindbergh, company town, Easter island, Food sovereignty, haute cuisine, high-speed rail, James Watt: steam engine, Kula ring, land reform, Larry Ellison, machine readable, Maui Hawaii, off-the-grid, Peter Pan Syndrome, polynesian navigation, Silicon Valley, tech billionaire

Besides books there is an intriguing selection of ukuleles. 7Shopping Kupu A‘eGIFTS, CLOTHING ( MAP GOOGLE MAP ; %808-646-0705; cnr Hwy 460 & Hwy 470; h10am-2pm Mon-Sat) A small but exquisite shop filled with locally made goods, including lovely batik, silk-screen clothes and various original Hawaiian clothing. Kalaʻe Rudolph Wilhelm Meyer, a German immigrant who had plans to make it big in the California gold rush, stopped off in Hawaii en route (he was going the long way around) and never left. He married a member of Hawaiian royalty who had huge tracts of land on Molokaʻi and busied himself growing potatoes and cattle for export, serving as overseer of the Kalaupapa settlement and as manager of King Kamehameha V's ranch lands.

After annexing Hawaii in 1898, US restrictions on Chinese and Japanese immigration made Oʻahu’s plantation owners turn to Puerto Rico, Korea and the Philippines for laborers. Different immigrant groups, along with the shared pidgin language they developed, created a unique plantation community that ultimately transformed Hawaii into the multicultural, multiethnic society it is today. During California's Gold Rush and later the US Civil War, sugar exports to the mainland soared, making plantation owners wealthier and more powerful. Five sugar-related holding companies, known as the Big Five, came to dominate all aspects of the industry: Castle & Cooke, Alexander & Baldwin, C Brewer & Co, American Factors (today Amfac, Inc), and Theo H Davies & Co.


pages: 519 words: 148,131

An Empire of Wealth: Rise of American Economy Power 1607-2000 by John Steele Gordon

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, buttonwood tree, California gold rush, Charles Babbage, clean water, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, cotton gin, cuban missile crisis, disintermediation, double entry bookkeeping, failed state, Fairchild Semiconductor, financial independence, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global village, Ida Tarbell, imperial preference, industrial research laboratory, informal economy, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, it's over 9,000, Jacquard loom, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, junk bonds, lone genius, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, margin call, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, megaproject, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, new economy, New Urbanism, postindustrial economy, price mechanism, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, rent control, rent-seeking, reserve currency, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, spinning jenny, Suez canal 1869, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, three-masted sailing ship, trade route, transaction costs, transcontinental railway, undersea cable, vertical integration, Yom Kippur War

Ogden Mills, who would make a fortune in banking in the gold rush, found three thousand people waiting for passage to the gold fields and no northbound ships at all. He finally took a passage south looking for a ship to charter and had to go as far as Callao, in Peru, to find one. His journey from New York to California ended up taking six months as well. Politically, the California gold rush pushed the country’s center of gravity sharply westward. In 1850 the population center of the United States—east of Baltimore in 1790—was located near Parkersburg, Virginia (now West Virginia). But as early as 1851, as gold fever was still epidemic, John L. B. Soule wrote in the Terre Haute Express, “Go west, young man, go west!”


pages: 632 words: 159,454

War and Gold: A Five-Hundred-Year History of Empires, Adventures, and Debt by Kwasi Kwarteng

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, Atahualpa, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, California gold rush, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, centre right, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of the americas, Etonian, eurozone crisis, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, Francisco Pizarro, full employment, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, income inequality, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, it's over 9,000, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, labour market flexibility, land bank, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, market bubble, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, oil shock, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, quantitative easing, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, South Sea Bubble, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez canal 1869, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, War on Poverty, Yom Kippur War

As Faisal’s closest adviser, he had been showered with gifts and favours by a grateful King and it was fitting that when the King was shot he lay dying in Yamani’s arms. It was after the Saudi oil embargo to the United States had ended in the spring of 1974 that the boom time really came to Saudi Arabia. From 1974 until well into 1976, ‘with oil flowing like Manna from heaven, Saudi Arabia was the California gold rush in spades’.25 The Saudis themselves were spending their new-found wealth with abandon. Sir John Witton, a British diplomat who arrived at the Embassy in Riyadh in 1976, remembered how ‘Saudi prosperity manifested itself in a total blockage of the ports.’ He spoke of the ‘incredible sight’ of ‘hundreds of ships queuing off Jeddah, waiting to unload’.


pages: 535 words: 151,217

Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World's Superpowers by Simon Winchester

9 dash line, Albert Einstein, Boeing 747, BRICs, British Empire, California gold rush, classic study, colonial rule, company town, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Easter island, Frank Gehry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Kwajalein Atoll, land tenure, Larry Ellison, Loma Prieta earthquake, Maui Hawaii, Monroe Doctrine, ocean acidification, oil shock, polynesian navigation, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, The Day the Music Died, three-masted sailing ship, trade route, transcontinental railway, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, undersea cable, uranium enrichment

As with the short-tailed albatross in Japan, the experiment has shown that with effort and imagination, some of the damage done by man can occasionally be reversed. 5 One of the first Japanese to live in America, Nakahama Manjiro, was wrecked on Torishima in 1841, only to be rescued by an American whaling boat and taken to New Bedford, Massachusetts—where he went to an American school, learned English, and eventually returned to Japan to act as interpreter during the country’s reluctant opening up to the West. He was probably the first Japanese to take a train or ride in a steam-powered ship, or to take part in the California gold rush. 6 The calms here so slow down ships that, on passage through them, many sailors worked out what was called the “dead horse,” the period for which they had been paid wages in advance, so they celebrated by hauling a piñata-like stuffed horse up the mast and then casting it out to sea. Polluting this part of the ocean has a long history. 7 The Kiribatians are not alone.


pages: 582 words: 160,693

The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State by James Dale Davidson, William Rees-Mogg

affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, bank run, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, borderless world, British Empire, California gold rush, classic study, clean water, colonial rule, Columbine, compound rate of return, creative destruction, Danny Hillis, debt deflation, ending welfare as we know it, epigenetics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, feminist movement, financial independence, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, George Gilder, Hernando de Soto, illegal immigration, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, information retrieval, Isaac Newton, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, market clearing, Martin Wolf, Menlo Park, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, new economy, New Urbanism, Norman Macrae, offshore financial centre, Parkinson's law, pattern recognition, phenotype, price mechanism, profit maximization, rent-seeking, reserve currency, road to serfdom, Ronald Coase, Sam Peltzman, school vouchers, seigniorage, Silicon Valley, spice trade, statistical model, telepresence, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, trade route, transaction costs, Turing machine, union organizing, very high income, Vilfredo Pareto

Hirshleifer notes that anarchy can be analyzed: "intertribal or international systems also have their regularities and systematic analyzable patterns." "4 In other words, just as "chaos" in mathematics can entail an intricate and highly ordered form of organization, so "anarchy" is not entirely formless or disordered. Hirshleifer analyzes a number of anarchic settings. These include, in addition to relations among sovereignties, gang warfare in Prohibition-era Chicago and "miners versus claim jumpers in the California gold rush." Note that even though California was part of the United States by the onset of the gold rush in 1849, conditions in the goldfields were properly described as anarchy. As Hirshleifer notes, "[T]he official organs of law were impotent." "' He argues that topographical conditions in the mountainous camps, plus effective vigilante organization by miners to combat claim jumpers, made it difficult for gangs of outsiders to seize gold mines, in spite of the lack of effective law enforcement.


pages: 482 words: 147,281

A Crack in the Edge of the World by Simon Winchester

Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, Asilomar, butterfly effect, California gold rush, content marketing, Easter island, Elisha Otis, Golden Gate Park, index card, indoor plumbing, lateral thinking, Loma Prieta earthquake, Menlo Park, Neil Armstrong, place-making, risk tolerance, San Francisco homelessness, Silicon Valley, South of Market, San Francisco, supervolcano, The Chicago School, transcontinental railway, wage slave, Works Progress Administration

I have only a community of women left, and a gang of prisoners, with here and there a soldier, who will give his captain the slip at the first chance. I don’t blame the fellow a whit; seven dollars a month, while others are making two or three hundred a day! That is too much for human nature to stand. 7. In the early, crazy days of the California Gold Rush most miners conducted placer mining, as in this later photograph – looking for the ‘bloom’ of gold flakes in the river sediment they caught in flat pans. Later massive hoses were used to break up rocks and flush out the gold, at immense environmental cost. From all America, and from all across the world, they raced to the foothills of the Sierra Mountains.


Investment: A History by Norton Reamer, Jesse Downing

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, asset allocation, backtesting, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, book value, break the buck, Brownian motion, business cycle, buttonwood tree, buy and hold, California gold rush, capital asset pricing model, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, colonial rule, Cornelius Vanderbilt, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, debt deflation, discounted cash flows, diversified portfolio, dogs of the Dow, equity premium, estate planning, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial innovation, fixed income, flying shuttle, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, Henri Poincaré, Henry Singleton, high net worth, impact investing, index fund, information asymmetry, interest rate swap, invention of the telegraph, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, John Bogle, joint-stock company, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, land tenure, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, Louis Bachelier, low interest rates, managed futures, margin call, means of production, Menlo Park, merger arbitrage, Michael Milken, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, negative equity, Network effects, new economy, Nick Leeson, Own Your Own Home, Paul Samuelson, pension reform, Performance of Mutual Funds in the Period, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, price mechanism, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, random walk, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, Robert Shiller, Sand Hill Road, Savings and loan crisis, seminal paper, Sharpe ratio, short selling, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, statistical arbitrage, survivorship bias, tail risk, technology bubble, Teledyne, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, time value of money, tontine, too big to fail, transaction costs, two and twenty, underbanked, Vanguard fund, working poor, yield curve

The new organization was called the “New York Stock & Exchange Board.”70 Three decades later, the traders who continued to trade in the streets of New York outside Water Street and Wall Street came to be called curbstone brokers. Typically, the curbstone brokers would be heavily involved in making markets in higher-risk firms, like turnpike or railroad companies. The California Gold Rush of the 1840s only drove business further for these curbstone brokers, with mining companies being added to the mix. By 1859, oil was discovered in western Pennsylvania and oil stocks began trading among the brokers as well.71 In 1863, the New York Stock & Exchange Board’s name was shortened to the New York Stock Exchange, or NYSE.


pages: 459 words: 144,009

Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis by Jared Diamond

anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, Berlin Wall, British Empire, California gold rush, carbon tax, clean water, correlation coefficient, cuban missile crisis, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Gini coefficient, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, interchangeable parts, invention of writing, Jeff Bezos, low interest rates, medical malpractice, mutually assured destruction, Nelson Mandela, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, post-work, purchasing power parity, rising living standards, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, The Spirit Level, Timothy McVeigh, traffic fines, transcontinental railway, women in the workforce, World Values Survey

Insofar as we Americans think of Indonesia at all, our image is of a developing country with pleasant tourist attractions, especially the scenery and beaches and Hindu temples of Bali, the world’s richest coral reefs and best scuba diving and snorkeling, and beautiful batik textiles. My first trip to Indonesia was in 1979, when I began my visit by staying in a hotel whose lobby walls were decorated with paintings telling the story of Indonesian history. In the United States a similar exhibit might display paintings of the American Revolution, the Civil War, the California gold rush, the transcontinental railroads, and other such subjects from 150 to 250 years ago. But in that Indonesian hotel lobby, all of the paintings showed events of just the previous 35 years. The event that was the subject of most paintings was termed the 1965 Communist Revolt. Paintings, and explanatory text below them, vividly depicted how communists tortured and killed seven generals; and how one of the generals that the communists tried to kill managed to escape from his house over a wall, but his five-year-old daughter was shot by accident and died a few days later.


pages: 653 words: 155,847

Energy: A Human History by Richard Rhodes

Albert Einstein, animal electricity, California gold rush, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, Copley Medal, dark matter, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, demographic transition, Dmitri Mendeleev, Drosophila, Edmond Halley, energy transition, Ernest Rutherford, Fellow of the Royal Society, flex fuel, Ford Model T, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, Great Leap Forward, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, joint-stock company, Menlo Park, Michael Shellenberger, Mikhail Gorbachev, new economy, nuclear winter, off-the-grid, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, Ralph Nader, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, Simon Kuznets, tacit knowledge, Ted Nordhaus, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, tontine, Tragedy of the Commons, uranium enrichment, urban renewal, Vanguard fund, working poor, young professional

On 21 September his Camels lifted the whale ship Constitution over the bar and out to sea. More dramatically, on 15 October they brought in a loaded whale ship. Other troubles plagued Nantucket in the 1840s and 1850s: a disastrous fire in 1846, which burned down the waterfront and the center of town; the California gold rush of 1848 to 1855, which drained the island of some eight hundred vigorous young sailors eager to pan for gold. Many crews from America’s whaling ports jumped ship on the West Coast in those years, officers among them. Many in the gold rush years signed on in the first place for a free ticket to California.


pages: 527 words: 147,690

Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection by Jacob Silverman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Aaron Swartz, Airbnb, airport security, Amazon Mechanical Turk, augmented reality, basic income, Big Tech, Brian Krebs, California gold rush, Californian Ideology, call centre, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, company town, context collapse, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, data science, deep learning, digital capitalism, disinformation, don't be evil, driverless car, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Evgeny Morozov, fake it until you make it, feminist movement, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Flash crash, game design, global village, Google Chrome, Google Glasses, Higgs boson, hive mind, Ian Bogost, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, information retrieval, Internet of things, Jacob Silverman, Jaron Lanier, jimmy wales, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, late capitalism, Laura Poitras, license plate recognition, life extension, lifelogging, lock screen, Lyft, machine readable, Mark Zuckerberg, Mars Rover, Marshall McLuhan, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, Minecraft, move fast and break things, national security letter, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, optical character recognition, payday loans, Peter Thiel, planned obsolescence, postindustrial economy, prediction markets, pre–internet, price discrimination, price stability, profit motive, quantitative hedge fund, race to the bottom, Ray Kurzweil, real-name policy, recommendation engine, rent control, rent stabilization, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Snapchat, social bookmarking, social graph, social intelligence, social web, sorting algorithm, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, TED Talk, telemarketer, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, unpaid internship, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, yottabyte, you are the product, Zipcar

MarketPsy Capital also briefly ran a hedge fund relying on social-media data before liquidating the fund and deciding to focus on selling its social-media analysis directly to clients. (Investors, some shaken by the recession, were reportedly leery of putting their money in such novel investment funds.) Most hedge funds looking at social-media data seem to be taking this kind of approach, buying packages of analysis from third-party firms. As the proverb about the California gold rush goes, it often pays more to sell the shovels than to use them to dig. But at least twelve quantitative hedge funds pay a firm called Gnip to pipe all of the over 500 million or so tweets produced each day directly into their platforms. Sentiment analysis is a perfect product for a tech industry awash in data and searching for ways to make money off it.


Guns, germs, and steel: the fates of human societies by Jared M. Diamond

affirmative action, Atahualpa, British Empire, California gold rush, correlation does not imply causation, cotton gin, cuban missile crisis, discovery of the americas, Easter island, European colonialism, founder crops, Francisco Pizarro, Great Leap Forward, Hernando de Soto, invention of movable type, invention of the wheel, invention of writing, James Watt: steam engine, Maui Hawaii, QWERTY keyboard, the scientific method, trade route

Smaller native societies were destroyed more casually, by small-scale raids and murders carried out by private citizens. For instance, California's native hunter-gatherers initially numbered about 200,000 in aggregate, but they were splintered among a hundred tribelets, none of which required a war to be defeated. Most of those tribelets were killed off or dispossessed during or soon after the California gold rush of 1848-52, when large numbers of immigrants flooded the state. As one example, the Yahi tribelet of northern California, numbering about 2,000 and lacking firearms, was destroyed in four raids by armed white settlers: a dawn raid on a Yahi village carried out by 17 settlers on August 6, 1865; a massacre of Yahis surprised in a ravine in 1866; a massacre of 33 Yahis tracked to a cave around 1867; and a final massacre of about 30 Yahis trapped in another cave by 4 cowboys around 1868.


San Francisco by Lonely Planet

airport security, Albert Einstein, Apple II, back-to-the-land, banking crisis, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Burning Man, California gold rush, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, David Brooks, David Sedaris, Day of the Dead, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, G4S, game design, glass ceiling, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, Joan Didion, Larry Ellison, Loma Prieta earthquake, machine readable, Mason jar, messenger bag, New Urbanism, off-the-grid, retail therapy, San Francisco homelessness, Silicon Valley, South of Market, San Francisco, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, transcontinental railway, urban sprawl, Whole Earth Catalog, Zipcar

But while New York’s Metropolitan Opera is larger in size and reputation, SF takes big, bold risks. You’d never guess San Francisco’s opera roots go back to the 19th century from its more avant-garde productions, such as Dangerous Liaisons, Harvey Milk, Dead Man Walking and the definitive revival of Puccini’s California Gold Rush opera The Girl of the Golden West featuring Pavarotti successor Salvatore Licitra. The company has seen its share of megawatt divas: Leontyne Price made her debut here during the ’50s, and the recent recurring favorite is Renée Fleming, whose dulcet tones you may recognize from a dozen CDs and The Lord of the Rings movie soundtrack.


pages: 668 words: 159,523

Coffeeland: One Man's Dark Empire and the Making of Our Favorite Drug by Augustine Sedgewick

affirmative action, Alfred Russel Wallace, British Empire, business cycle, California gold rush, classic study, collective bargaining, Day of the Dead, European colonialism, export processing zone, family office, Fellow of the Royal Society, Food sovereignty, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Honoré de Balzac, imperial preference, Joan Didion, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, land reform, land tenure, Louis Pasteur, mass immigration, Monroe Doctrine, Philip Mirowski, race to the bottom, refrigerator car, scientific management, the scientific method, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trade route, vertical integration, wage slave, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

McWilliams began to “spend long hours in the library” and “make forays into the San Joaquin Valley to see . . . just what went on in the fields and in the labor camps.” There, beneath the surface of that “quiet word,” agriculture, he found a clamorous “large-scale, intensive, diversified, mechanized” race to the bottom. In his 1939 book Factories in the Field, McWilliams described how, beginning around 1870, after the California gold rush had slowed down, a new class of “industrial agriculturalists” took over California’s land and economy. They made water flow backward, conjured gardens from wastelands, and in the process became as rich as sheikhs. The source of their extraordinary power and wealth was a “miserable . . . intimidated . . . starving, destitute” army of migrant laborers, the latest group of new arrivals always pitted against the previous.


San Francisco by Lonely Planet

airport security, Albert Einstein, Apple II, back-to-the-land, banking crisis, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Burning Man, California gold rush, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, David Brooks, David Sedaris, Day of the Dead, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, G4S, game design, glass ceiling, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, Joan Didion, Larry Ellison, Loma Prieta earthquake, machine readable, Mason jar, messenger bag, New Urbanism, off-the-grid, retail therapy, San Francisco homelessness, Silicon Valley, South of Market, San Francisco, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, transcontinental railway, urban sprawl, Whole Earth Catalog, Zipcar

But while New York’s Metropolitan Opera is larger in size and reputation, SF takes big, bold risks. You’d never guess San Francisco’s opera roots go back to the 19th century from its more avant-garde productions, such as Dangerous Liaisons, Harvey Milk, Dead Man Walking and the definitive revival of Puccini’s California Gold Rush opera The Girl of the Golden West featuring Pavarotti successor Salvatore Licitra. The company has seen its share of megawatt divas: Leontyne Price made her debut here during the ’50s, and the recent recurring favorite is Renée Fleming, whose dulcet tones you may recognize from a dozen CDs and The Lord of the Rings movie soundtrack.


Animal Spirits by Jackson Lears

1960s counterculture, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, behavioural economics, business cycle, buy and hold, California gold rush, clockwork universe, conceptual framework, Cornelius Vanderbilt, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, Doomsday Clock, double entry bookkeeping, epigenetics, escalation ladder, feminist movement, financial innovation, Frederick Winslow Taylor, George Akerlof, George Santayana, heat death of the universe, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, Ida Tarbell, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Lewis Mumford, lifelogging, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral hazard, Norman Mailer, plutocrats, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Scientific racism, short selling, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, source of truth, South Sea Bubble, Stanislav Petrov, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, Strategic Defense Initiative, surveillance capitalism, the market place, the scientific method, The Soul of a New Machine, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transcontinental railway, W. E. B. Du Bois, Whole Earth Catalog, zero-sum game

As Kit Kelvin wrote in The Knickerbocker in 1849: “In the inordinate hope of success our vision is blinded; our ear deaf to the voice that would warn us … A fearful leprosy permeates our organism. It is madness! Shudder at the idea as we may, we all have it, a mental element innate.” This “mental element” produced the Mississippi scheme, the South Sea scheme—and now, Kelvin sighed, we confront the consequences of the California gold rush: “Mania’s haggard face is staring at us through our windows—we meet it in the streets. While it tempts the rich man to an increment of wealth, it lures the poor laborer from his spade … throws the golden apple in the path of the husband, and robs the wife of a protector and supporter. Seriously, what is to be the result of the vast Gold Mania of 1848?”


pages: 510 words: 163,449

How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It by Arthur Herman

British Empire, California gold rush, classic study, creative destruction, do-ocracy, Edward Jenner, financial independence, gentleman farmer, global village, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Joan Didion, joint-stock company, laissez-faire capitalism, land tenure, mass immigration, means of production, new economy, New Urbanism, North Sea oil, oil shale / tar sands, Republic of Letters, Robert Mercer, spinning jenny, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, tontine, transcontinental railway, trickle-down economics, urban planning, urban renewal, vertical integration, working poor

Then, in January 1848, a Scottish immigrant named James Wilson Marshall was inspecting the mill race of John Sutter’s mill not far from San Francisco, when “my eye was caught by something shining in the bottom of the ditch. . . . I reached my hand down and picked it up. It made my heart thump, for I was certain it was gold. The piece was about half the size and shape of a pea. Then I saw another. . . .” Marshall raced back to the mill, shouting, “Boys, I believe I have found a gold mine.” So he had. The California Gold Rush not only brought thousands of new residents, including Scots, but also changed the very nature of success in America. It offered instant wealth for the asking—by 1857, total production of gold reached over $500 million, almost all of it going to private individuals. Riches, for those who were quick or cunning or lucky enough to find them, became the promise of California and the West.


A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century by Witold Rybczynski

California gold rush, City Beautiful movement, clean water, cotton gin, David Brooks, fail fast, gentleman farmer, Golden Gate Park, hiring and firing, joint-stock company, Lewis Mumford, Louis Pasteur, New Urbanism, place-making, scientific management, three-masted sailing ship, transcontinental railway, urban planning, urban renewal

The property covered seventy square miles and included six mines, two towns, a railroad, and a tenant population of about seven thousand. The previous owner was none other than General John C. Frémont. The Mariposa Estate was originally a Spanish land grant—Las Mariposas. Frémont, a key participant in the annexation of Upper California, had acquired the land two years before the great California gold rush. The estate was located astride the fabled Mother Lode, and Frémont became a rich man. Nevertheless, his political activities at the state and national levels—he ran unsuccessfully for president—ate up his fortune. In 1863, more than a million and a half dollars in debt, he sold the estate to Morris Ketchum, a millionaire New York banker.


Frommer's San Diego 2011 by Mark Hiss

airport security, California gold rush, car-free, Charles Lindbergh, Day of the Dead, desegregation, Donald Trump, East Village, El Camino Real, gentrification, glass ceiling, machine readable, New Journalism, Norman Mailer, Skype, South of Market, San Francisco, sustainable-tourism, transcontinental railway, urban renewal, white picket fence, Works Progress Administration

Americanized Mexican food is ubiquitous, but for a taste of the real Mexico, try El Agave Tequileria (p. 112), or head south of the border. While in Tijuana, be sure to visit the excellent Centro Cultural Tijuana (p. 276), which covers the history, contemporary art, culture, and performing arts of Baja California and the rest of Mexico. Initially lured by the California gold rush in the 1850s, a small Chinese community came to live in San Diego and controlled much of the fishing industry until 1890; Chinese also helped build (and later staff) the Hotel del Coronado. Chinatown—downtown, south of Market Street—eventually merged with the rough-andtumble Stingaree, San Diego’s red-light district.


pages: 741 words: 164,057

Editing Humanity: The CRISPR Revolution and the New Era of Genome Editing by Kevin Davies

23andMe, Airbnb, Anne Wojcicki, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Asilomar, bioinformatics, California gold rush, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, discovery of DNA, disinformation, Doomsday Clock, double helix, Downton Abbey, Drosophila, Edward Jenner, Elon Musk, epigenetics, fake news, Gregor Mendel, Hacker News, high-speed rail, hype cycle, imposter syndrome, Isaac Newton, John von Neumann, Kickstarter, life extension, Mark Zuckerberg, microbiome, Mikhail Gorbachev, mouse model, Neil Armstrong, New Journalism, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, phenotype, QWERTY keyboard, radical life extension, RAND corporation, Recombinant DNA, rolodex, scientific mainstream, Scientific racism, seminal paper, Shenzhen was a fishing village, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Skype, social distancing, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, TED Talk, the long tail, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, traumatic brain injury, warehouse automation

At the appeal hearing in April 2018, UC’s lawyer Donald Verrilli, a former U.S. solicitor general, argued that if Doudna and colleagues hadn’t demonstrated the feasibility of genome editing in higher organisms, the multiple publications in early 2013 would have used different techniques. “This was like the California Gold Rush,” Verrilli said. The competing researchers were all trying to demonstrate genome editing first. “If they thought making changes was necessary, they would have.”18 But the three judges didn’t bite. “You start with the common technology,” declared Judge Kimberly Moore. She highlighted statements by Doudna and others expressing frustration about getting CRISPR to work in human cells.


pages: 1,540 words: 400,759

Fodor's California 2014 by Fodor's

1960s counterculture, active transport: walking or cycling, affirmative action, Asilomar, Bay Area Rapid Transit, big-box store, Blue Bottle Coffee, California gold rush, car-free, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Donner party, Downton Abbey, East Village, El Camino Real, Frank Gehry, gentrification, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, high-speed rail, housing crisis, Kickstarter, Maui Hawaii, messenger bag, Mikhail Gorbachev, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, off-the-grid, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, South of Market, San Francisco, trade route, transcontinental railway, urban renewal, urban sprawl, white picket fence, Works Progress Administration, young professional

Amador City’s 1879 Imperial Hotel places you firmly in the past for the night. Day 6: Gold Country North In Placerville, a mineshaft invites investigation at Hangtown’s Gold Bug Mine, while Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park encompasses most of Coloma and preserves the spot where James Marshall’s 1849 find set off the California gold rush. Old Town Auburn, with its museums and courthouse, makes a good lunch stop, but if you hold out until you reach Grass Valley you can try authentic miners’ pasties. A tour of Empire Mine State Historic Park takes you into a mine, and a few miles away horse-drawn carriages ply the narrow, shop-lined streets of downtown Nevada City.

Previous Chapter | Beginning of Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents Previous Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents Coloma | Auburn | Grass Valley | Nevada City Gold has had a significant presence along this northern stretch of Highway 49, whose highlights include the bucolic Empire State Historic Park and Coloma, where the discovery of a few nuggets triggered the gold rush. Previous Map | Next Map | California Maps Coloma 8 miles northwest of Placerville. The California gold rush started in Coloma. “My eye was caught with the glimpse of something shining in the bottom of the ditch,” James Marshall recalled. Marshall himself never found any more “color,” as gold came to be called. Getting Here and Around A car is the only practical way to get to Coloma, via Highway 49.


pages: 692 words: 189,065

The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall by Mark W. Moffett

affirmative action, Anthropocene, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, California gold rush, classic study, cognitive load, delayed gratification, demographic transition, Easter island, eurozone crisis, George Santayana, glass ceiling, Howard Rheingold, invention of agriculture, invention of writing, Kevin Kelly, labour mobility, land tenure, long peace, Milgram experiment, mirror neurons, Oklahoma City bombing, out of africa, phenotype, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald Reagan, shared worldview, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, the strength of weak ties, Timothy McVeigh, World Values Survey

Whenever I visit an intrepid friend there, he drives us at high speed over harrowing backstreets to avoid shootings by motorizados along the highway. Despite it all, he loves the place. The surprising fact is that Venezuelans show every bit as much attachment to and pride in their nation as Americans show in theirs.14 Societies have survived worse. For example, during the California gold rush the homicide rate was dramatically higher than that of modern-day Venezuela. While disagreements and disagreeableness can fray the fabric of societies, their positive counterpart, cooperation, does not necessarily knit societies together or separate them from other societies. This is true even when cooperation contributes to the social capital that builds up among the members and enhances the productivity of the whole.


California by Sara Benson

airport security, Albert Einstein, Apple II, Asilomar, back-to-the-land, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Berlin Wall, Blue Bottle Coffee, Burning Man, buy and hold, California gold rush, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, Columbine, company town, dark matter, Day of the Dead, desegregation, Donald Trump, Donner party, East Village, El Camino Real, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, Frank Gehry, gentrification, global village, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, haute cuisine, Joan Didion, Khyber Pass, Loma Prieta earthquake, low cost airline, machine readable, McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, McMansion, means of production, megaproject, Menlo Park, Neil Armstrong, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, off-the-grid, planetary scale, retail therapy, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, South of Market, San Francisco, SpaceShipOne, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, the new new thing, trade route, transcontinental railway, Upton Sinclair, urban sprawl, Wall-E, white picket fence, Whole Earth Catalog, working poor, Works Progress Administration, young professional

At the junction of Hwy 49s and 140 is the info-laden Mariposa County Visitor Center ( 209-966-7081, 866-425-3366; www.homeofyosemite.com; 5158 Hwy 41; 7am-8pm Mon-Sat, 8am-5pm Sun summer, 8am-5pm Mon-Sat winter), which has friendly staff and racks of brochures. Rock hounds should drive to the Mariposa County Fairgrounds, 2 miles south of town on Hwy 49, to see the 13-pound ‘Fricot Nugget’ – the largest crystalized gold specimen from the California Gold Rush era – and other gems and machinery at the California State Mining & Mineral Museum ( 209-742-7625; admission $3; 10am-6pm May-Sep, 10am-4pm Wed-Mon Oct-Apr). An exhibit on glow-in-the-dark minerals is also very cool. Beautifully spruced up with a bold splash of psychedelic purple and dusty orange paint, River Rock Inn ( 966-5793, 800-627-8439; www.riverrockncafe.com; 4993 7th St; r incl breakfast $69-92; ) claims to be the oldest motel in town.

At the time of the Mexican-American War (1846–48), American soldiers encountered some resistance from General Andrés Pico and other Mexican commanders, but eventually LA came under US rule along with the rest of California. The city was incorporated on April 4, 1850. A series of seminal events caused LA’s population to swell to two million by 1930: the collapse of the Northern California Gold Rush in the 1850s, the arrival of the transcontinental railroad in the 1870s, the birth of the citrus industry in the late 1800s, the discovery of oil in 1892, the launch of the port of LA in 1907, the birth of the movie industry in 1908 and the opening of the LA Aqueduct in 1913. Aside from motion pictures, few industries have had as strong an impact on LA as aviation.


Central America by Carolyn McCarthy, Greg Benchwick, Joshua Samuel Brown, Alex Egerton, Matthew Firestone, Kevin Raub, Tom Spurling, Lucas Vidgen

airport security, Bartolomé de las Casas, California gold rush, call centre, centre right, clean water, cognitive dissonance, company town, currency manipulation / currency intervention, Day of the Dead, digital map, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, failed state, Francisco Pizarro, Frank Gehry, haute cuisine, illegal immigration, Joan Didion, land reform, liberation theology, low cost airline, Mahatma Gandhi, megaproject, Monroe Doctrine, off-the-grid, Ronald Reagan, Skype, Suez canal 1869, sustainable-tourism, the long tail, trade route, transcontinental railway, urban renewal, urban sprawl, women in the workforce

With the Spanish out of the picture, Britain and the USA both became interested in Nicaragua and its strategically important passage from Lago de Nicaragua to the Caribbean. Both countries wanted to build an interoceanic canal through Central America, and Nicaragua looked the likeliest spot. In 1848 the British seized the Caribbean port of San Juan del Norte, at the mouth of the Río San Juan, and renamed it Greytown. Meanwhile, the California gold rush had added fire to the quest for an Atlantic–Pacific passage, and prospectors were transported to America’s west coast via the Río San Juan and a Pacific steamer service. The Late 19th Century In 1857 the Liberals, disgraced after inviting William Walker (see boxed text, right) into the country, lost power to the Conservatives and were unable to regain it for the next 36 years.

Birth of a Nation Panama’s future forever changed when world powers caught on that the isthmus was the narrowest point between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. In 1846 Colombia signed a treaty permitting the USA to construct a railway across the isthmus, though it also granted it free transit and the right to protect the railway with military force. At the height of the California gold rush in 1849, tens of thousands traveled from the east coast of the USA to the west coast via Panama in order to avoid hostile Native Americans living in the central states. Colombia and Panama grew wealthy from the railway, and the first talks of a canal across Central America began to surface.


pages: 612 words: 200,406

The Last Spike: The Great Railway, 1881-1885 by Pierre Berton

banking crisis, business climate, California gold rush, centre right, Columbine, company town, death from overwork, financial independence, God and Mammon, Khartoum Gordon, mass immigration, transcontinental railway, unbiased observer, young professional

Colonel F. A. Bee, who acted as Chinese consul in San Francisco, described them as benevolent associations, comparable to the Masons or Oddfellows; indeed, it was said that they had patterned themselves after similar western institutions when they were first formed in the early days of the California gold-rush. The companies handled the shipment of Chinese to North America as well as their contracts with their employers and their eventual return to China. Each Chinese paid a fee of 2½ per cent of his wages to the company, together with his passage money – about forty dollars. The company, in its turn, was pledged to look after each man’s welfare in North America, protecting him, for instance, if he got into legal difficulties.


pages: 654 words: 204,260

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

Albert Einstein, Albert Michelson, Alfred Russel Wallace, All science is either physics or stamp collecting, Apollo 11, Arthur Eddington, Barry Marshall: ulcers, Brownian motion, California gold rush, Cepheid variable, clean water, Copley Medal, cosmological constant, dark matter, Dava Sobel, David Attenborough, double helix, Drosophila, Eddington experiment, Edmond Halley, Ernest Rutherford, Fellow of the Royal Society, flying shuttle, Gregor Mendel, Harvard Computers: women astronomers, Helicobacter pylori, Higgs boson, Isaac Newton, it's over 9,000, James Watt: steam engine, John Harrison: Longitude, Kevin Kelly, Kuiper Belt, Large Hadron Collider, Louis Pasteur, luminiferous ether, Magellanic Cloud, Menlo Park, Murray Gell-Mann, out of africa, Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, supervolcano, Thomas Malthus, Wilhelm Olbers

If you needed to illustrate the idea of nineteenth-century America as a land of opportunity, you could hardly improve on the life of Albert Michelson. Born in 1852 on the German–Polish border to a family of poor Jewish merchants, he came to the United States with his family as an infant and grew up in a mining camp in California's gold rush country, where his father ran a dry goods business. Too poor to pay for college, he traveled to Washington, D.C., and took to loitering by the front door of the White House so that he could fall in beside President Ulysses S. Grant when the President emerged for his daily constitutional. (It was clearly a more innocent age.)


pages: 613 words: 200,826

Unreal Estate: Money, Ambition, and the Lust for Land in Los Angeles by Michael Gross

Albert Einstein, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, California gold rush, Carl Icahn, clean water, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate raider, cotton gin, Donald Trump, estate planning, family office, financial engineering, financial independence, Henry Singleton, Irwin Jacobs, Joan Didion, junk bonds, Maui Hawaii, McMansion, Michael Milken, mortgage debt, Norman Mailer, offshore financial centre, oil rush, passive investing, pension reform, Ponzi scheme, Right to Buy, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, tech billionaire, Teledyne, The Predators' Ball, transcontinental railway, yellow journalism

Rancho San Jose de Buenos Ayres, which would become Bel Air, Holmby Hills, and Westwood, was next door to Maria Rita; it was initially granted to a Mexican but was soon “conveyed” to two Los Angeles gringos. In 1848, after the Mexican-American War, America won control of Alta California and Maria Rita briefly fled her ranch in fear. While she was gone, all her papers were stolen, including her land grant. It would be years before she could again definitively prove the rancho was hers. The California gold rush began that year and was not only transforming life in San Francisco, but raising expectations to the south as well. Two years later, California gained statehood, and the Land Grant Act of 1851 required that all Spanish and Mexican land titles be officially confirmed. Many ranchos and their owners in the Hispanic gentry were driven into bankruptcy by the resulting legal bills and taxes, and gringos often took over their land.


pages: 716 words: 192,143

The Enlightened Capitalists by James O'Toole

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, benefit corporation, Bernie Madoff, Bletchley Park, book value, British Empire, business cycle, business logic, business process, California gold rush, carbon footprint, City Beautiful movement, collective bargaining, company town, compensation consultant, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, desegregation, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, end world poverty, equal pay for equal work, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, garden city movement, germ theory of disease, glass ceiling, God and Mammon, greed is good, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, income inequality, indoor plumbing, inventory management, invisible hand, James Hargreaves, job satisfaction, joint-stock company, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Lao Tzu, Larry Ellison, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, Lyft, Marc Benioff, means of production, Menlo Park, North Sea oil, passive investing, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, scientific management, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Socratic dialogue, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, stock buybacks, stocks for the long run, stocks for the long term, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, traveling salesman, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, Vanguard fund, white flight, women in the workforce, young professional

In December 2010, J&J’s directors were hit with a shareholder lawsuit citing a long list of “federal and state regulatory investigations, subpoenas and requests for documents, FDA warning letters, news articles, and the recall of products accounting for hundreds of millions of dollars of corporate losses.”55 The General would have been appalled. 8 Great Genes Levi Strauss (1829–1902) and His Heirs The making of the first pair of Levi Strauss jeans is the stuff of legend. As the story goes, during the great California gold rush Levi Strauss, a Jewish immigrant tailor, made a pair of pants for a ’49er out of fabric used to make tents, fastening parts of the sturdy material together with brass rivets. Like most legends, this one is more fiction than fact. What is true is that Levi Strauss was a Jewish immigrant from Bavaria who arrived in New York in 1847, accompanied by his brothers Louis and Jonas and sister Fanny, none of whom spoke English.


The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America by Margaret O'Mara

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, accounting loophole / creative accounting, affirmative action, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, AltaVista, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Web Services, An Inconvenient Truth, AOL-Time Warner, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, autonomous vehicles, back-to-the-land, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Bob Noyce, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, business climate, Byte Shop, California gold rush, Californian Ideology, carried interest, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, company town, Compatible Time-Sharing System, computer age, Computer Lib, continuous integration, cuban missile crisis, Danny Hillis, DARPA: Urban Challenge, deindustrialization, different worldview, digital divide, Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life?, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Dynabook, Edward Snowden, El Camino Real, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Fairchild Semiconductor, Frank Gehry, Future Shock, Gary Kildall, General Magic , George Gilder, gig economy, Googley, Hacker Ethic, Hacker News, high net worth, hockey-stick growth, Hush-A-Phone, immigration reform, income inequality, industrial research laboratory, informal economy, information retrieval, invention of movable type, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, It's morning again in America, Jeff Bezos, Joan Didion, job automation, job-hopping, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kitchen Debate, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, Laura Poitras, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, Mary Meeker, mass immigration, means of production, mega-rich, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, millennium bug, Mitch Kapor, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, mutually assured destruction, Neil Armstrong, new economy, Norbert Wiener, old-boy network, Palm Treo, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, Paul Terrell, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, pirate software, popular electronics, pre–internet, prudent man rule, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Robert Metcalfe, ROLM, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Snapchat, social graph, software is eating the world, Solyndra, speech recognition, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Strategic Defense Initiative, supercomputer in your pocket, Susan Wojcicki, tacit knowledge, tech billionaire, tech worker, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the market place, the new new thing, The Soul of a New Machine, There's no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home - Ken Olsen, Thomas L Friedman, Tim Cook: Apple, Timothy McVeigh, transcontinental railway, Twitter Arab Spring, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Unsafe at Any Speed, upwardly mobile, Vannevar Bush, War on Poverty, Wargames Reagan, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, work culture , Y Combinator, Y2K

New York and Philadelphia may have had the capital and the big electronics makers and some of the universities as well, but these places didn’t have the relentless focus on nurturing start-ups. Nowhere else but the Valley had the entrepreneurial and opportunistic Stanford, the thrusting bulldozers and hustling law firms, and the young money men opening up shop along Sand Hill Road. Nowhere else had the people. The California Gold Rush had been over for a century, but the Golden State remained a destination for the adventurous young from elsewhere, arriving with little to lose and an appetite for reinvention. Arrivals NEW YORK HARBOR, 1965 The bill we sign today is not a revolutionary bill,” President Lyndon B.


A Terrible Glory by James Donovan

California gold rush, Hernando de Soto, joint-stock company, Monroe Doctrine, transcontinental railway

“The Guns ‘Long Hair’ Left Behind: The Gatling Gun Detachment and the Little Big Horn.” Brand Book 33, no. 2 (Summer 1999). Ostler, Jeffrey. “They Regard Their Passing as Wakan.” Western Historical Quarterly 30, no. 4 (Winter 1999). Palais, Hyman. “Some Aspects of the Black Hills Gold Rush Compared with the California Gold Rush.” Pacific Historical Review 16, no. 1 (March 1946). Partoll, Albert J. “After the Custer Battle.” Frontier and Midland 19, no. 4 (1938–1939). Pearson, Jeffrey V. “Tragedy at Red Cloud Agency.” Montana 55, no. 2 (Summer 2005). Pennington, Robert. “An Analysis of the Political Structure of the Teton-Dakota Indian Tribe of North America.”


pages: 388 words: 211,314

Frommer's Washington State by Karl Samson

airport security, British Empire, California gold rush, centre right, company town, flying shuttle, Frank Gehry, glass ceiling, global village, Great Leap Forward, land bank, machine readable, place-making, sustainable-tourism, Tacoma Narrows Bridge, transcontinental railway, white picket fence

May through September, it’s open daily from 11am to 5pm; October through April, it’s open Friday through Tuesday from 11am to 5pm; admission is $5 for adults, $4 for seniors, and $3 for children. , an old oystering comToward the north end of the peninsula, Oysterville munity that is a National Historic District, is the quaintest village on the peninsula. Old homes with spacious lawns cling to the edge of the marsh, creating a timeless scene. Oysterville’s heyday came during the California gold rush, when the village shipped tons of oysters to San Francisco, where people paid as much as $50 a plate for fresh oysters. Today, Oysterville is a sleepy little community of restored homes. The town’s white clapboard church hosts occasional music performances. Oysterville Sea Farms (& 360/665-6585; www.willabay.com) has a seafood and cranberry-products shop on the waterfront at the north end of the village.


Colorado by Lonely Planet

big-box store, bike sharing, California gold rush, carbon footprint, Columbine, company town, East Village, fixed-gear, gentrification, haute couture, haute cuisine, Kickstarter, megaproject, off-the-grid, payday loans, restrictive zoning, Steve Wozniak, Timothy McVeigh, trade route, transcontinental railway, young professional

When he was 17 he and his mother escaped via the underground railroad. His mother, who had instilled within him the value of an education and taught him to read, died along the way, and he was recaptured and forced to work the Georgia gold fields. Eventually he escaped to Chicago, where he continued his education. He dreamt of the California gold rush but was waylaid in Nicaragua before finally pursuing his dreams in Breckenridge, right after the first Colorado gold strike. The man who made his living in Chicago as a barber eventually opened restaurants and hotels, funded gold explorations and sold equipment to miners in Denver and Breckenridge.


pages: 740 words: 227,963

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

anti-communist, Berlin Wall, California gold rush, card file, cotton gin, desegregation, Ford Model T, Gunnar Myrdal, index card, indoor plumbing, invisible hand, labor-force participation, Mason jar, mass immigration, medical residency, Rosa Parks, strikebreaker, trade route, traveling salesman, union organizing, W. E. B. Du Bois, white flight, Works Progress Administration

The Jim Crow regime persisted from the 1880s to the 1960s, some eighty years, the average life span of a fairly healthy man. It afflicted the lives of at least four generations and would not die without bloodshed, as the people who left the South foresaw. Over time, this mass relocation would come to dwarf the California Gold Rush of the 1850s with its one hundred thousand participants and the Dust Bowl migration of some three hundred thousand people from Oklahoma and Arkansas to California in the 1930s.9 But more remarkably, it was the first mass act of independence by a people who were in bondage in this country for far longer than they have been free.10 “The story of the Great Migration is among the most dramatic and compelling in all chapters of American history,” the Mississippi historian Neil McMillen wrote toward the end of the twentieth century.11 “So far reaching are its effects even now that we scarcely understand its meaning.”


pages: 809 words: 237,921

The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty by Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, AltaVista, Andrei Shleifer, bank run, Berlin Wall, British Empire, California gold rush, central bank independence, centre right, classic study, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, colonial rule, Computer Numeric Control, conceptual framework, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, Dava Sobel, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of the americas, double entry bookkeeping, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, equal pay for equal work, European colonialism, export processing zone, Ferguson, Missouri, financial deregulation, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, income inequality, income per capita, industrial robot, information asymmetry, interest rate swap, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, it's over 9,000, James Watt: steam engine, John Harrison: Longitude, joint-stock company, Kula ring, labor-force participation, land reform, Mahatma Gandhi, manufacturing employment, mass incarceration, Maui Hawaii, means of production, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Nelson Mandela, obamacare, openstreetmap, out of africa, PageRank, pattern recognition, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, Skype, spinning jenny, Steven Pinker, the market place, transcontinental railway, War on Poverty, WikiLeaks

The men had a “Dead List of seventy men” they intended to kill. We don’t have information about the homicide rate in Cheyenne in the 1890s, though data for the mining town of Benton, California, suggests that there it may have reached an incredible high of 24,000 per 100,000! More likely it was closer to 83 per 100,000, the rate during the California gold rush, or 100 per 100,000, the rate in Dodge City, Kansas, in the days of Wyatt Earp. This sounds as bad as Lagos when Soyinka was trying to make it there with his Glock pistol at the ready. But things turned out quite differently in Wyoming (actually, they turned out rather differently from what Kaplan expected in Lagos too, as we’ll explain in Chapter 14).


pages: 2,323 words: 550,739

1,000 Places to See in the United States and Canada Before You Die, Updated Ed. by Patricia Schultz

Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Boeing 747, Bretton Woods, Burning Man, California gold rush, car-free, Charles Lindbergh, Columbine, company town, Cornelius Vanderbilt, cotton gin, country house hotel, David Sedaris, Day of the Dead, Donald Trump, East Village, El Camino Real, estate planning, Ford Model T, Frank Gehry, gentrification, glass ceiling, Golden Gate Park, Guggenheim Bilbao, Haight Ashbury, haute cuisine, indoor plumbing, interchangeable parts, Mars Rover, Mason jar, Maui Hawaii, Mikhail Gorbachev, Murano, Venice glass, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, new economy, New Urbanism, Norman Mailer, out of africa, Pepto Bismol, place-making, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Saturday Night Live, scientific management, sexual politics, South of Market, San Francisco, Suez canal 1869, The Chicago School, three-masted sailing ship, transcontinental railway, traveling salesman, upwardly mobile, urban decay, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, wage slave, white picket fence, Works Progress Administration, Yogi Berra, éminence grise

ROCK HARBOR LODGE: Tel 906-337-4993 (May–Sept), 270-773-2191 (Oct–Apr); www.rockharborlodge.com. Cost: from $220 without meals (off-peak), from $245, includes meals (peak). When: late May–mid-Sept. BEST TIMES: late June–mid-Sept. America’s Forgotten Mineral Rush KEWEENAW COPPER MINING HERITAGE Keweenaw Peninsula, Michigan Most North Americans are familiar with the California Gold Rush of 1849. But history books largely overlook the copper rush that occurred at the same time, when vast deposits of copper—a mineral highly coveted in the 19th century—were discovered in the remote wilds of Michigan’s Keweenaw (KEY-win-aw) Peninsula. The Keweenaw National Historical Park, established in 1992, now tells the tale, encompassing heritage sites that range from an opulent opera house to a mine tour that carries you deep under the earth.

Raking off the back of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the 80-mile-long Keweenaw had always been an untamed place, a land of deep piney woods and rocky Lake Superior beaches. But that changed in 1840 when the copper rush began almost overnight, first with prospectors straggling through the wilderness, then with extensive mining enterprises. By the time the most accessible copper was played out, King Copper had generated $9.6 billion—10 times more than the California Gold Rush. The national park sites are scattered throughout the Keweenaw, with most of them concentrated in the cities of Houghton, Hancock, and Calumet. In Hancock, the mammoth shaft house of the Quincy Mine is a monument to one of the largest, most lucrative copper mines in the world, in operation until 1967.


pages: 900 words: 241,741

Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Peter Petre

Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, California gold rush, call centre, clean tech, clean water, Donald Trump, financial independence, Golden Gate Park, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, index card, Maui Hawaii, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, oil shale / tar sands, pension reform, risk tolerance, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, stem cell, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez crisis 1956, Y2K

Its full-time legislature passes so many new laws each year—more than a thousand—that legislators don’t have time to even read the bills before they vote on most of them. Voters get so frustrated that they pass major legislation by initiative, like Prop 98, to force Sacramento to focus on real problems like education funding. Absurd. Sacramento grew up as a boomtown: it was the main trading post in the great California Gold Rush of 1849. When Californians made it the state capital, they built a grandiose capitol building to rival the US Capitol in Washington, DC. But they didn’t get around to building a White House, so there’s no separate place where the governor can work. Instead, he and his staff share the capitol building with the legislature, and each governor makes his own living arrangements.


The River Cottage Fish Book: The Definitive Guide to Sourcing and Cooking Sustainable Fish and Shellfish by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

air gap, California gold rush, clean water, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, haute cuisine, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Kickstarter, market bubble, means of production, sensible shoes

Like the cod—its only rival as a truly nation-shaping fish—the stocks of herring were once thought to be inexhaustible. In its heyday, the herring’s potential to deliver prosperity to the communities well placed to exploit it was limited only by the fishermen’s resourcefulness in removing it from the sea. In its way, the herring rush of the early nineteenth century was almost as sensational as the California gold rush. Remote Scottish settlements such as Wick and Peterhead became boomtowns on the back of herring fishing, and were said to harbor (as it were) some very wealthy individuals indeed. One of the most notorious episodes in Scottish history contributed to this success story. The Highland clearances of the eighteenth century were a consequence of the booming wool trade—a mini gold rush in itself.


pages: 941 words: 237,152

USA's Best Trips by Sara Benson

Albert Einstein, California gold rush, car-free, carbon footprint, cotton gin, Day of the Dead, desegregation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Donner party, East Village, Frank Gehry, gentrification, glass ceiling, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, haute couture, haute cuisine, if you build it, they will come, indoor plumbing, Kickstarter, lateral thinking, McMansion, mega-rich, New Urbanism, off-the-grid, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, side project, Silicon Valley, the High Line, transcontinental railway, trickle-down economics, urban renewal, urban sprawl, white flight, white picket fence, Works Progress Administration

On the site of the valley’s original tourist camp, Stovepipe Wells Village is a quieter, more down-to-earth place to rest your head, with renovated motel rooms. At its cowboy-style Toll Road Restaurant the flapjacks and biscuits-and-gravy breakfasts go like gangbusters. The next day, take up another strand of history in Death Valley: the story of the lost ’49ers. When the California gold rush began in 1849, a small group of pioneers took what they hoped would be a shortcut to the California goldfields, leaving behind the Old Spanish Trail. Exhausted, dangerously running out of food and water, and struggling with broken wagons and worn-out pack animals, the woeful group arrived near Furnace Creek on Christmas Eve.


Rough Guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area by Nick Edwards, Mark Ellwood

1960s counterculture, airport security, back-to-the-land, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Blue Bottle Coffee, British Empire, Burning Man, California gold rush, carbon footprint, City Beautiful movement, Day of the Dead, El Camino Real, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, gentrification, glass ceiling, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, haute cuisine, Joan Didion, Kickstarter, Loma Prieta earthquake, machine readable, Menlo Park, messenger bag, Nelson Mandela, period drama, pez dispenser, Port of Oakland, rent control, retail therapy, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley, South of Market, San Francisco, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, strikebreaker, transcontinental railway, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, urban decay, urban planning, urban renewal, white picket fence, Works Progress Administration, young professional

Contexts 389 Contexts History............................................................................................391 Books.............................................................................................406 San Francisco on film....................................................................412 390 History T hough its recorded history may not stretch back very far by European standards, in its 150-plus years of existence, San Francisco has more than made up for time. It first came to life during the California Gold Rush of 1849, the adventurous tone of which the city sustains to this day, both in its valuing of individual effort above corporate enterprise and in the often nonconformist policies that have given it perhaps the most progressive image of any US city. The following account is intended to give an overall view of the city’s development; for a rundown of the figures – both past and present – who have helped to shape the city, see the “San Francisco people” glossary on p.421.


pages: 898 words: 253,177

Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, California gold rush, clean water, Dr. Strangelove, Garrett Hardin, Golden Gate Park, hacker house, jitney, Joan Didion, Maui Hawaii, megaproject, oil shale / tar sands, old-boy network, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Silicon Valley, trade route, transcontinental railway, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, Works Progress Administration, yellow journalism

That project, the State Water Project, more than anything else, is the symbol of California’s immense wealth, determination, and grandiose vision—a demonstration that it can take its rightful place in the company of nations rather than mere states. It has also offered one of the country’s foremost examples of socialism for the rich. In the 1850s, when the California gold rush was at full flood, the Great Central Valley traversed by the miners on the way to the mother lode was an American Serengeti—a blond grassland in the summertime, a vast flourishing marsh during the winter and spring. The wildlife, even after a century and a half of Spanish settlement, was unbelievable: millions of wintering ducks, geese and cranes, at least a million antelope and tule elk, thousands of grizzly bears.


pages: 1,364 words: 272,257

Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag-Montefiore

anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, British Empire, California gold rush, Etonian, facts on the ground, haute couture, Khartoum Gordon, Mount Scopus, place-making, plutocrats, sexual politics, spice trade, Suez canal 1869, trade route, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, white flight, Yom Kippur War

He created a Jewish model farm near the city, studied the Torah, divorced his American wife and married a Jewess, all the while completing his book The Key of David. He was honoured by local Jews as 'the American Holy Stranger'. On his death he was buried in the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives. Jerusalem was now so overrun by apocalyptic Americans that the American Journal of Insanity compared its hysteria to the California Gold Rush. When Herman Melville visited, he was fascinated yet repulsed by the 'contagion' of American Christian millenarianism - 'this preposterous Jewmania', he called it, 'half-melancholy, half-farcical'. 'How am I to act when any crazy or distressed citizen of the US comes into the country?' the American consul in Beirut asked his secretary of state.


pages: 918 words: 257,605

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff

"World Economic Forum" Davos, algorithmic bias, Amazon Web Services, Andrew Keen, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Bartolomé de las Casas, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, blue-collar work, book scanning, Broken windows theory, California gold rush, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, classic study, cloud computing, collective bargaining, Computer Numeric Control, computer vision, connected car, context collapse, corporate governance, corporate personhood, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, digital capitalism, disinformation, dogs of the Dow, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Easter island, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, facts on the ground, fake news, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, future of work, game design, gamification, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Herman Kahn, hive mind, Ian Bogost, impulse control, income inequality, information security, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Jean Tirole, job automation, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, knowledge economy, Lewis Mumford, linked data, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, means of production, multi-sided market, Naomi Klein, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, Occupy movement, off grid, off-the-grid, PageRank, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pattern recognition, Paul Buchheit, performance metric, Philip Mirowski, precision agriculture, price mechanism, profit maximization, profit motive, public intellectual, recommendation engine, refrigerator car, RFID, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Robert Mercer, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, slashdot, smart cities, Snapchat, social contagion, social distancing, social graph, social web, software as a service, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, structural adjustment programs, surveillance capitalism, technological determinism, TED Talk, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, two-sided market, union organizing, vertical integration, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, winner-take-all economy, Wolfgang Streeck, work culture , Yochai Benkler, you are the product

While still at Google he told an interviewer, “More than 80% of people who own a mobile device claim that they play games on their device… games are often the number 1 or number 2 activity… so for Android as an operative system, but also for Google, we think it’s important for us to innovate and to be a leader in… the future of mobile gaming.”26 It is worth noting that Hanke chose to name his group after a nineteenth-century merchant sailing vessel undone by greed. The Niantic had been sold and repurposed for the more lucrative whaling trade when it set sail for San Francisco and the northern Pacific whaling grounds in 1849. The ship’s captain made an unplanned stop in Panama to board hundreds of pilgrims bound for the California Gold Rush, all of them eager to pay top dollar for cramped, smelly quarters on the whaler. The captain’s avarice proved fatal to the ship’s prospects when those passengers infected the ship’s crew with gold fever. The sailors abandoned captain and vessel upon docking in San Francisco, heading instead for gold country.


Presidents of War by Michael Beschloss

anti-communist, British Empire, California gold rush, Charles Lindbergh, continuation of politics by other means, cuban missile crisis, desegregation, Donald Trump, full employment, guns versus butter model, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, long peace, Monroe Doctrine, New Journalism, pneumatic tube, Ronald Reagan, traveling salesman, War on Poverty, Works Progress Administration

Crucible of Empire: The Spanish-American War & Its Aftermath. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1993. Bradlee, Benjamin C. Conversations with Kennedy. New York: W. W. Norton, 1975. Branch, Taylor. At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965–68. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006. Brands, H. W. The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream. New York: Doubleday, 2002. ———. The General vs. the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War. New York: Doubleday, 2016. ———. Lone Star Nation: How a Ragged Army of Volunteers Won the Battle for Texas Independence, and Changed America.


Coastal California by Lonely Planet

1960s counterculture, airport security, Albert Einstein, Asilomar, back-to-the-land, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Berlin Wall, bike sharing, Blue Bottle Coffee, buy and hold, California gold rush, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, company town, Day of the Dead, Donner party, East Village, El Camino Real, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, electricity market, Frank Gehry, gentrification, global village, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, haute cuisine, illegal immigration, Joan Didion, Khyber Pass, Kickstarter, Loma Prieta earthquake, low cost airline, machine readable, Mason jar, McMansion, military-industrial complex, Neil Armstrong, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, off-the-grid, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, South of Market, San Francisco, stealth mode startup, Steve Wozniak, trade route, transcontinental railway, Upton Sinclair, urban sprawl, white picket fence, women in the workforce, working poor, Works Progress Administration, young professional, Zipcar

Spain lost its hold on the territory to Mexico in 1821 and, following the Mexican–American War (1846–48), California came under US rule. The city was incorporated on April 4, 1850. A series of seminal events caused LA’s population to swell to two million by 1930: the collapse of the Northern California Gold Rush in the 1850s, the arrival of the railroad in the 1870s, the birth of the citrus industry in the late 1800s, the discovery of oil in 1892, the launch of San Pedro Harbor in 1907, the arrival of the motion picture industry in 1908 and the opening of the LA Aqueduct in 1913. Beginning in WWI, aviation and defense industries helped drive the city’s economy through the end of the Cold War.


Coastal California Travel Guide by Lonely Planet

1960s counterculture, Airbnb, airport security, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Apollo 11, Apple II, Asilomar, back-to-the-land, Bay Area Rapid Transit, bike sharing, Burning Man, buy and hold, California gold rush, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, company town, Day of the Dead, Donner party, East Village, El Camino Real, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, flex fuel, Frank Gehry, gentrification, glass ceiling, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, haute couture, haute cuisine, income inequality, intermodal, Joan Didion, Kickstarter, Loma Prieta earthquake, low cost airline, Lyft, machine readable, Mason jar, military-industrial complex, New Journalism, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, off-the-grid, Peoples Temple, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, South of Market, San Francisco, starchitect, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, trade route, transcontinental railway, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, urban sprawl, Wall-E, white picket fence, Whole Earth Catalog, women in the workforce, working poor, Works Progress Administration, young professional, Zipcar

Spanish soldiers often forced the Chumash to construct the missions and presidios (military forts) and provide farm labor; they also rounded up the tribespeople on the Channel Islands and forced them to leave. Back on the mainland, the indigenous population shrank dramatically, as many Chumash died of European diseases and ill treatment. Mexican ranchers arrived after their country won independence in 1821. Easterners began migrating en masse after California's gold rush kicked off in 1849. By the late 1890s, Santa Barbara was an established SoCal vacation spot for the wealthy. After a massive earthquake in 1925, laws were passed requiring much of the city to be rebuilt in a faux-but-attractive Spanish Colonial–style,with white-stucco buildings and red-tiled roofs.


pages: 864 words: 272,918

Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World by Malcolm Harris

2021 United States Capitol attack, Aaron Swartz, affirmative action, air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, back-to-the-land, bank run, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, Black Lives Matter, Bob Noyce, book scanning, British Empire, business climate, California gold rush, Cambridge Analytica, capital controls, Charles Lindbergh, classic study, cloud computing, collective bargaining, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, Colonization of Mars, commoditize, company town, computer age, conceptual framework, coronavirus, corporate personhood, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, deskilling, digital map, double helix, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erlich Bachman, estate planning, European colonialism, Fairchild Semiconductor, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, George Floyd, ghettoisation, global value chain, Golden Gate Park, Google bus, Google Glasses, greed is good, hiring and firing, housing crisis, hydraulic fracturing, if you build it, they will come, illegal immigration, immigration reform, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, Joan Didion, John Markoff, joint-stock company, Jony Ive, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, land reform, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, legacy carrier, life extension, longitudinal study, low-wage service sector, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Max Levchin, means of production, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, microdosing, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, Mont Pelerin Society, moral panic, mortgage tax deduction, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, mutually assured destruction, new economy, Oculus Rift, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, PageRank, PalmPilot, passive income, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, phenotype, pill mill, platform as a service, Ponzi scheme, popular electronics, power law, profit motive, race to the bottom, radical life extension, RAND corporation, Recombinant DNA, refrigerator car, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, rising living standards, risk tolerance, Robert Bork, Robert Mercer, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, semantic web, sexual politics, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, social web, SoftBank, software as a service, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanford prison experiment, stem cell, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, strikebreaker, Suez canal 1869, super pumped, TaskRabbit, tech worker, Teledyne, telemarketer, the long tail, the new new thing, thinkpad, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, too big to fail, Toyota Production System, Tragedy of the Commons, transcontinental railway, traumatic brain injury, Travis Kalanick, TSMC, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, urban decay, urban renewal, value engineering, Vannevar Bush, vertical integration, Vision Fund, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, Wargames Reagan, Washington Consensus, white picket fence, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, Y2K, Yogi Berra, éminence grise

I do know that now, but it’s an important bubble for the twentieth century, and a thorough accounting of the town’s role explains a lot about California, the United States, and the capitalist world, where it has found itself elevated to the status of promised land. That story fills the following pages. Section I 1850–1900 Diagram of Palo Alto “kindergarten track,” in Charles Marvin, Training the Trotting Horse (1890) Chapter 1.1 To Whom Time Is Money The Uneventful Conquest of Alta California—Gold Rush—West Coast Genocide—The New Almaden Mine—Immigrant Agriculture—Bank of America To speak of the Ohlone is to speak of the broken link between the Bay Area’s indigenous people and the Bay Area itself. Disease—rather than extermination campaigns, death by labor, or environmental destruction—killed half of the approximately 300,000 Alta California Indians during the Spanish and Mexican periods, beginning in 1769 and 1821 respectively.


Northern California Travel Guide by Lonely Planet

Airbnb, Apple II, Asilomar, back-to-the-land, Bay Area Rapid Transit, big-box store, bike sharing, Burning Man, buy and hold, California gold rush, California high-speed rail, call centre, car-free, carbon credits, carbon footprint, clean water, company town, dark matter, Day of the Dead, Donald Trump, Donner party, East Village, El Camino Real, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Frank Gehry, friendly fire, gentrification, gigafactory, glass ceiling, Golden Gate Park, Google bus, Haight Ashbury, haute couture, haute cuisine, high-speed rail, housing crisis, Joan Didion, Kickstarter, Loma Prieta earthquake, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, Mason jar, McMansion, means of production, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, off-the-grid, Peoples Temple, Port of Oakland, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, South of Market, San Francisco, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, the built environment, trade route, transcontinental railway, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, urban sprawl, white picket fence, Whole Earth Catalog, women in the workforce, working poor, Works Progress Administration, young professional

Established as a mining and railroad town during the gold rush, it has the oldest courthouse in continuous use (since 1854) west of the Mississippi, loads of Old West pioneer character and a couple of good museums dedicated to the area's history. Rock hounds should drive to the Mariposa County Fairgrounds, 2 miles south of town on Hwy 49, to see the 13lb ‘Fricot Nugget’ – the largest crystallized gold specimen from the California gold-rush era – and other gems and machinery at the California State Mining & Mineral Museum ( GOOGLE MAP ; %209-742-7625; www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=588; 5005 Fairgrounds Rd; adult/under 13yr $4/free; h10am-5pm Thu-Sun May-Sep, to 4pm Oct-Apr). An exhibit on glow-in-the-dark minerals is also very cool. 4Sleeping & Eating River Rock InnMOTEL$$ ( GOOGLE MAP ; %209-966-5793; 4993 7th St; r $135-179; aW#) Updated kitchenette rooms are done up in artsy earth tones at this inn that claims to be the oldest motel in town.


USA Travel Guide by Lonely, Planet

1960s counterculture, active transport: walking or cycling, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Asilomar, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, big-box store, bike sharing, Biosphere 2, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Burning Man, California gold rush, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, congestion pricing, Cornelius Vanderbilt, cotton gin, cuban missile crisis, Day of the Dead, desegregation, Donald Trump, Donner party, Dr. Strangelove, East Village, edge city, El Camino Real, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, Ford Model T, Frank Gehry, gentleman farmer, gentrification, glass ceiling, global village, Golden Gate Park, Guggenheim Bilbao, Haight Ashbury, haute couture, haute cuisine, Hernando de Soto, Howard Zinn, illegal immigration, immigration reform, information trail, interchangeable parts, intermodal, jitney, Ken Thompson, Kickstarter, license plate recognition, machine readable, Mars Rover, Mason jar, mass immigration, Maui Hawaii, McMansion, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, Neil Armstrong, new economy, New Urbanism, obamacare, off grid, off-the-grid, Quicken Loans, Ralph Nader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, retail therapy, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, South of Market, San Francisco, starchitect, stealth mode startup, stem cell, supervolcano, the built environment, The Chicago School, the High Line, the payments system, three-martini lunch, trade route, transcontinental railway, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, urban decay, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, Virgin Galactic, walkable city, white flight, working poor, Works Progress Administration, young professional, Zipcar

History The hunter-gatherer existence of the Gabrieleño and Chumash peoples ended with the arrival of Spanish missionaries and pioneers in the late 18th century. Spain’s first civilian settlement here (1781), El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles, remained an isolated farming outpost for decades. LA was incorporated as a California city in 1850, and by 1830 its population had swollen thanks to the collapse of the Northern California gold rush, the arrival of the transcontinental railroad, the citrus industry, the discovery of oil, the launch of the port of LA, the birth of the movie industry and the opening of the California Aqueduct. The city’s population has boomed from some 1.5 million in 1950 to almost four million today. LA’s growth has caused problems, including suburban sprawl and air pollution – though thanks to aggressive enforcement, smog levels have fallen annually since records have been kept.

The Visitor Services Center ( 510-642-5215; http://visitors.berkeley.edu; 101 Sproul Hall; tours 10am Mon-Sat, 1pm Sun) has info and leads free campus tours (reservations required). Cal’s landmark is the 1914 Sather Tower (also called the Campanile), with elevator rides ($2) to the top. The Bancroft Library displays the small gold nugget that started the California gold rush in 1848. Leading to the campus’s south gate, Tele-graph Avenue is as youthful and gritty as San Francisco’s Haight St, packed with cafes, cheap eats, record stores and bookstores. UC Berkeley Art Museum MUSEUM ( 510-642-0808; www.bampfa.berkeley.edu; 2626 Bancroft Way; adult/child $10/7; 11am-5pm Wed-Sun) A campus highlight with 11 galleries showcasing a wide range of works, from ancient Chinese to cutting-edge contempor-ary.


pages: 1,335 words: 336,772

The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chernow

Alan Greenspan, always be closing, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Bolshevik threat, book value, Boycotts of Israel, Bretton Woods, British Empire, buy and hold, California gold rush, capital controls, Carl Icahn, Charles Lindbergh, collective bargaining, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate raider, death from overwork, Dutch auction, Etonian, financial deregulation, financial engineering, fixed income, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, index arbitrage, interest rate swap, junk bonds, low interest rates, margin call, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, money market fund, Monroe Doctrine, North Sea oil, oil shale / tar sands, old-boy network, paper trading, plutocrats, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, short selling, stock buybacks, strikebreaker, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, the market place, the payments system, too big to fail, transcontinental railway, undersea cable, Yom Kippur War, young professional

Webster would not appear very well if it should get out,” Joshua Bates, the senior Baring partner, warned Thomas Ward, American bagman for the operation.12 Bates, a sober, diligent Bostonian, cringed at what they were doing: “I have a sort of instinctive horror of doing one thing to effect another, or using any sort of subterfuge or reserve,” he confessed to Ward.13 Whatever their scruples, the conspiracy thrived: pro-resumption Whigs were elected in both Maryland and Pennsylvania, and London bankers again received payments from both states.14 Peabody, never one to forget an injury, excluded the most persistent debtors, Florida and Mississippi, from his later philanthropies. Even altruism had its limits. When the depreciated state bonds Peabody had bought up in the early 1840s paid interest again, he reaped a fortune. Then, as revolution swept across the Continent in 1848, American securities seemed a safe haven in comparison with Europe. And as the California gold rush and Mexican War wiped away the last vestiges of depression by the late 1840s, Peabody took new pride in his native roots. Now he fancied himself the ambassador of American culture in London and dispensed barrels full of American apples, Boston crackers, and hominy grits. On July 4, 1851, he hosted the first of his Independence Day dinners, featuring the elderly duke of Wellington as guest of honor.


pages: 1,157 words: 379,558

Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris by Richard Kluger

air freight, Albert Einstein, book value, California gold rush, cognitive dissonance, confounding variable, corporate raider, desegregation, disinformation, double entry bookkeeping, family office, feminist movement, full employment, ghettoisation, independent contractor, Indoor air pollution, junk bonds, medical malpractice, Mikhail Gorbachev, plutocrats, power law, publication bias, Ralph Nader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, stock buybacks, The Chicago School, the scientific method, Torches of Freedom, trade route, transaction costs, traveling salesman, union organizing, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban renewal, vertical integration, War on Poverty

The Hills put the company’s best blender of plug to work in their Brooklyn factory on a formula that had even more Burley in it than Camel, while George scoured the long list of trademarks that the old trust had accumulated over the years for a striking name. He found it in a long-abandoned pipe tobacco brand once made in Richmond and registered in 1871 when memories of the California Gold Rush were still fresh—Lucky Strike. The old package had had a nice, unfussy look to it: a deep hunter green background and a bright red central disk bearing the brand name. George had an artist clean up the lettering so that the name appeared all in bold, black capital letters without serifs and the disk was set off with a double band, gold on the inside and black on the outer edge.


pages: 675 words: 344,555

Frommer's Hawaii 2009 by Jeanette Foster

airport security, California gold rush, Charles Lindbergh, Easter island, glass ceiling, gravity well, haute couture, haute cuisine, indoor plumbing, machine readable, Maui Hawaii, off-the-grid, place-making, polynesian navigation, retail therapy, South China Sea, sustainable-tourism, urban renewal, urban sprawl, white picket fence, Yogi Berra

Mon–Fri 8am–5pm; Sat 8am–4pm; Sun 8am–2pm. Self-guided tour free. Morning Espresso Tour Mon–Fri 10am; $20 adults, $10 kids 5–10. Mule Drawn Wagon Tour Mon–Fri 8am and 1pm, Sat–Sun 8am; $35 adults, $10 kids 5–10. Afternoon Hiking Adventures daily 3–5:30pm; free. Molokai Museum and Cultural Center En route to the California Gold Rush in 1849, Rudolph W. Meyer (a German professor) came to Molokai, married the high chieftess Kalama, and began to operate a small sugar plantation near his home. Now on the National Register of Historic Places, this restored 1878 sugar mill, with its century-old steam engine, mule-driven cane crusher, copper clarifiers, and redwood evaporating pan (all in working order), is the last of its kind in Hawaii.


pages: 1,230 words: 357,848

Andrew Carnegie by David Nasaw

banking crisis, book value, British Empire, Burning Man, business climate, business cycle, business logic, California gold rush, clean water, collective bargaining, company town, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, crony capitalism, David Brooks, death from overwork, delayed gratification, financial independence, flying shuttle, full employment, housing crisis, indoor plumbing, invention of the steam engine, it's over 9,000, James Watt: steam engine, Khartoum Gordon, land reform, land tenure, Louis Pasteur, Monroe Doctrine, price stability, railway mania, Republic of Letters, strikebreaker, Thomas Malthus, transcontinental railway, traveling salesman, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, vertical integration, work culture , Works Progress Administration

Already by the 1860s, half the iron rolled in the country was being bought by the railroads; by 1880, three quarters of the nation’s steel would be used to manufacture rails. Iron-and steelmaking establishments that had remained far less advanced than those in Europe through the 1860s took off in the post–Civil War period. Eight hundred and fifty thousand tons of iron and steel were rolled in 1870; 3.3 million in 1880; 10.6 million in 1900.28 Unlike the California gold rush of the early 1850s or the Pennsylvania oil boom a half decade later, the railroad mania reached across the nation, touching small and large businesses, brokers, bankers, bond traders, real estate operatives, builders, landowners, manufacturers, merchants, politicians, and financiers in every region, every state and territory.


Parks Directory of the United States by Darren L. Smith, Kay Gill

1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy, Asilomar, British Empire, California gold rush, clean water, company town, Cornelius Vanderbilt, cotton gin, cuban missile crisis, desegregation, Donner party, El Camino Real, global village, Golden Gate Park, Hernando de Soto, indoor plumbing, mass immigration, Maui Hawaii, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, oil shale / tar sands, Oklahoma City bombing, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, Southern State Parkway, Torches of Freedom, trade route, transcontinental railway, Works Progress Administration

It will tell the story of how Hawaiiians flourished as a civilization, Captain Cook’s historic landing, the rise of Kamehameha I, and subsequent changes leading to Hawaii’s unique blend of cultures. American history, and today remnants of the trail are reminders of the sacrifices, struggles, and triumphs of early American travelers and settlers. Trail includes portions that were pioneered and developed before the 1849 California Gold Rush. An estimated 320 historic sites along the entire trail include forts, trading posts, natural landmarks, river crossing sites, campsites, trail junctions, and gravesites. ★1055★ CONTINENTAL DIVIDE NATIONAL SCENIC TRAIL Continental Divide Trail Alliance PO Box 628 Pine, CO 80470 303-838-3760 - Phone 303-838-3960 - Fax Web: www.cdtrail.org 5.

Facilities: Historic buildings, museum, exhibits, restrooms, picnic areas, hiking trails, nature trails (uu). Activities: Interpretive programs, living history demonstrations, guided tours, fishing, hiking, gold panning. Special Features: Park encompasses most of the historic town of Coloma, where James Marshall’s discovery of gold in 1848 was the start of the famous California Gold Rush. Historic buildings on exhibit include a full-sized replica of Sutter’s sawmill. ★1652★ MENDOCINO HEADLANDS STATE PARK c/o Mendocino District Office PO Box 440 Mendocino, CA 95460 Web: www.parks.ca.gov/default.asp?page_id=442 Phone: 707-937-5804 338 CALIFORNIA Size: 7,709 acres. Location: Just off Highway 1, surrounding the town of Mendocino.


pages: 1,351 words: 385,579

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker

1960s counterculture, affirmative action, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Albert Einstein, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, Bonfire of the Vanities, book value, bread and circuses, British Empire, Broken windows theory, business cycle, California gold rush, Cass Sunstein, citation needed, classic study, clean water, cognitive dissonance, colonial rule, Columbine, computer age, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, confounding variable, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, crack epidemic, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Brooks, delayed gratification, demographic transition, desegregation, Doomsday Clock, Douglas Hofstadter, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, experimental subject, facts on the ground, failed state, first-past-the-post, Flynn Effect, food miles, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, fudge factor, full employment, Garrett Hardin, George Santayana, ghettoisation, Gini coefficient, global village, Golden arches theory, Great Leap Forward, Henri Poincaré, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, high-speed rail, Hobbesian trap, humanitarian revolution, impulse control, income inequality, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the printing press, Isaac Newton, lake wobegon effect, libertarian paternalism, long peace, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Marshall McLuhan, mass incarceration, McMansion, means of production, mental accounting, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, mirror neurons, moral panic, mutually assured destruction, Nelson Mandela, nuclear taboo, Oklahoma City bombing, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Singer: altruism, power law, QWERTY keyboard, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, random walk, Republic of Letters, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Saturday Night Live, security theater, Skinner box, Skype, Slavoj Žižek, South China Sea, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanford prison experiment, statistical model, stem cell, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, sunk-cost fallacy, technological determinism, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, the long tail, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, Timothy McVeigh, Tragedy of the Commons, transatlantic slave trade, trolley problem, Turing machine, twin studies, ultimatum game, uranium enrichment, Vilfredo Pareto, Walter Mischel, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

A cowboy from a rival company thought he said “dirty neck,” and when the gunsmoke cleared, one man was dead and three wounded.99 It wasn’t just cowboy country that developed in Hobbesian anarchy; so did parts of the West settled by miners, railroad workers, loggers, and itinerant laborers. Here is an assertion of property rights found attached to a post during the California Gold Rush of 1849: All and everybody, this is my claim, fifty feet on the gulch, cordin to Clear Creek District Law, backed up by shotgun amendments.... Any person found trespassing on this claim will be persecuted to the full extent of the law. This is no monkey tale butt I will assert my rites at the pint of the sicks shirter if leagally necessary so taik head and good warning.100 Courtwright cites an average annual homicide rate at the time of 83 per 100,000 and points to “an abundance of other evidence that Gold Rush California was a brutal and unforgiving place.


Frommer's California 2009 by Matthew Poole, Harry Basch, Mark Hiss, Erika Lenkert

airport security, Asilomar, Bay Area Rapid Transit, California gold rush, call centre, car-free, Charles Lindbergh, clean water, Columbine, Donald Trump, Donner party, East Village, El Camino Real, European colonialism, Frank Gehry, gentleman farmer, gentrification, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, high-speed rail, housing crisis, indoor plumbing, Joan Didion, machine readable, Mason jar, mass immigration, Maui Hawaii, post-work, retail therapy, rolling blackouts, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Skype, South of Market, San Francisco, sustainable-tourism, transcontinental railway, urban sprawl, white picket fence, Works Progress Administration, Y Combinator

Outdoor enthusiasts have literally dozens of sporting books to choose fr om, but most comprehensive is F oghorn P ress’s ex cellent outdoor series— California C amping, C alifornia F ishing, C alifornia G olf, C alifornia Beaches, and California Hiking—available at every major bookstor e in the state. Another recommended choice is Frommer’s G reat Outdoor Guide to Northern California (Wiley Publishing, Inc.). RECOMMENDED MOVIES The beauty and metaphor that is California (Gold Rush, Land of Opportunity, Go C A L I F O R N I A I N P O P U L A R C U LT U R E : B O O K S , F I L M , T V & M U S I C Special-Interest Reads West Young M an, S ilver Scr een—the list 29 goes on) has inspir ed far too many mo viemakers to list in any compr ehensive way, but I’ve compiled a shor t list of the California-based gems that hav e inspired generations of movie fans.


pages: 1,909 words: 531,728

The Rough Guide to South America on a Budget (Travel Guide eBook) by Rough Guides

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Atahualpa, banking crisis, California gold rush, call centre, car-free, centre right, colonial rule, Colonization of Mars, company town, Day of the Dead, discovery of the americas, Easter island, Francisco Pizarro, garden city movement, gentrification, haute cuisine, illegal immigration, it's over 9,000, Kickstarter, mass immigration, Nelson Mandela, off grid, openstreetmap, place-making, restrictive zoning, side project, Skype, sustainable-tourism, the long tail, trade route, urban sprawl, walkable city

Valparaíso Few travellers fail to be inspired by the ramshackle beauty of VALPARAÍSO, with its mishmash patchwork of brightly coloured houses is built across a series of hills; steep stairways and the city’s famous ascensores (elevators) link the hills to the port area. Still a major port today, the city came into its own during the California Gold Rush, and in the mid-nineteenth century was the main hub for ships crossing between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Valparaíso’s narrow labyrinth of atmospheric alleyways offers glimpses of the city’s decline from the grandeur of its former glories, and its more recent (partial) transformation into a bohemian, arty hub.