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• THE VALLEYS LEGENDS & LEGACIES, VOL III

  $18.95 $11.37 0 review(s)

  
  

  Volume III: Stories include Firebaugh, Selma, Hanford, Fresno, Dunlap, Coalinga, Madera, Kingsburg, Fowler, Oakhurst, Mariposa

• 1939: The Making of Six Great Films from Hollywood’s Greatest Year

  $16.95 $10.17 0 review(s)

  
  

  To commemorate the 75th anniversary of this amazing year in Hollywood history, “1939: The Greatest Year in Motion Picture History” profiles of six of the greatest films of the year: “Gone with the Wind,” “Stagecoach,” “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” and “The Wizard of Oz.”
  
  Each of these films was based on a great story, and “1939” reveals in detail how those stories came into being, how long they waited to find fame in film, and how the movies inspired by them eventually made motion picture history. “1939” also describes the behind-the-scenes story of how the film was made: how the story was adapted to a film script; the writers, producers, directors, actors, and technicians who made the film; how the film was received by critics and the public; and the later careers of the people who made the film.
  
  “1939” plunges deep into the reality behind the Hollywood dream factory. Besides giving a full account of the artistic creation of each film, “1939” also describes the business deals that made each film possible and the Hays Office censorship that mandated careful handling of social and sexual themes — plus the colorful personalities in front and behind the camera and their sometimes disordered personal lives. Hollywood in the 1930s was crass, commercial, restrictive, and frequently dysfunctional — but it produced immensely enjoyable films that are still watched with pleasure today.
  
  The perfect combination of film history, artistic appreciation, historical insight, and gossip, “1939: The Greatest Year in Motion Picture History” is a book that no movie fan should miss.

• GOLD RUSH IN THE KLONDIKE: A Woman’s Journey in 1898–1899

  $22.95 $13.77 0 review(s)

  
  

  When Josephine Knowles left for the Klondike gold fields with her husband in 1898, she didn’t know she would be facing a constant battle with cold, disease, malnutrition and the ever-present possibility of death. Gold Rush in the Klondike is Knowles’s true story of her year in the Yukon territory, a revealing, never-before-published personal memoir of day-to-day life at the height of the Klondike Gold Rush. Written in a clear, forthright, nineteenth-century style, Gold Rush in the Klondike presents terrifying struggles against a hostile environment, picturesque descriptions of an untouched Arctic wilderness and Knowles’s keen observations of men and women on the frontier. A Victorian gentlewoman of refinement, Knowles found herself among swearing, whoring, sometimes violent miners, whom she won over with her grit and compassion. Deciding to never moralize or condemn, Knowles writes frankly of the intense hardships that drove miners into lives of drink and dissipation and the frontier women who were forced to make stark choices between prostitution and starvation. Knowles’s adventures include encounters with author Jack London (Knowles firmly disapproved of London’s cruel mistreatment of his sled dogs), nursing miners during a typhoid outbreak until she fell ill herself, witnessing savage fights among the miners, dangerous travel through the mountain passes and river rapids of the Yukon, and a daring surreptitious visit to a gambling saloon. Amid all hardships, Knowles formed warm relationships with the mining community, for, as she put it, “All the diseases and other troubles had knitted us into one large family.” Illustrated with period photographs, Gold Rush in the Klondike is an invaluable historical document of a lost time and place and an admirable portrait of one woman’s determination in the face of danger.

• GREETINGS FROM FRESNO: Vintage Postcards from California's Heartland

  $26.95 $16.17 0 review(s)

  
  

  More than 200 vintage color postcards bring to life Fresno County's storied past. These vibrant images date from as early as 1875, and are paired with brief passages that deftly position each card within its historical context. Famous long-vanished Fresno edifices are revived again, including the El Rancho motel, the Carnegie Library, and the Pine Lake Lodge. Beautiful, educational, and inspiring, this exceptional compilation is a treasure trove for the regional history buff.

• WHEN THE GREAT SPIRIT DIED- [LSI]: THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CALIFORNIA INDIANS

  $19.95 $11.97 0 review(s)

  
  

  "This man has scalped more Indians than any other person living on this coast, and has his trophies to prove the fact." This was the headline of an article in the San Francisco Examiner in early 1899. The reporter had obtained an interview with one Jackson Farley, a pioneer rancher who had settled in Mendocino County in 1857. Was this merely the idle boast of an old man seeking notoriety? Not at all. Farley pointed out dozens of Indian scalps decorating the walls of his cabin. Too, the reporter duly noted the fact that Farley recited his tales while sitting in his "Indian hide-bottomed chair." A member of one of Farley’s 1859 Indian hunting forays testified that: "On the first night we found and surrounded a rancheria in which we found two wounded Indians and one old squaw, all of which we killed; on our return home we found another rancheria which we approached within fifteen feet before the Indians observed us; then they broke for the brush, and we pursued them and killed thirteen bucks and two squaws."

• CALIFORNIA BADMEN: MEAN MEN WITH GUNS

  $15.95 $9.57 0 review(s)

  
  

  California Badmen is a exploration of little-known Western frontier gunfighters. Billy Mulligan, Sam Temple, Peter Olsen, Joe Dye, Bob McFarlane and those responsible for the Rancheria killings are brought back through the pages and taking their stand in Californian history. The riotous lives of these unique collection of mean men with guns spill over the California frontier and rival the likes of “Wild Bill” Hickok, Billy the Kid, and the Earp Family.