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• FRESNO'S ARCHITECTURAL PAST

  $26.95 $16.17 0 review(s)

  
  

  Fresno's Architectural Past is renowned local artist Pat Hunter's unique and stimulating homage to the landmark buildings of Fresno, California. Join her as she celebrates 22 of the city's grand old buildings with beautiful, evocative watercolor paintings.

• DEATH IN CALIFORNIA

  $15.95 $9.57 0 review(s)

  
  

  Subtitle: "The Bizarre, Freakish, and Just Curious Ways People Die in the Golden State." This book?s aim is to encompass shocking murders and accidents that at the time shook the very soul of Californians, but eventually and gratefully faded from memory. California has always been a destination for people with dreams of fame and fortune. Anything is possible in California, and when anything is possible, death always lurks nearby. ?Death in California? is a historic manuscript detailing the more arcane ways people have died in the Golden State. The thirty-one vignettes in ?Death in California? range from a description of being one of the fourteen different tourists to be swept to their deaths over Vernal Falls in Yosemite National Park, to singer Bob ?Bear? Hite of the blues/boogie band Canned Heat overdosing on heroin in a seedy Hollywood nightclub. The book?s diverse set of deaths include a tale of torture and murder by a chicken farmer in the desert in 1926, as well as the tragedy of a 10- ton jet airplane crashing into a Bay Area apartment kitchen in 1973. The litany of freakish and bizarre deaths in California also include hangings, gun accidents, crashes and suicide. Social status is no barrier: both the famous and obscure are profiled.

• Highway 99: The History of California's Main Street

  $22.95 $13.77 0 review(s)

  
  

  Stephen H. Provost Before it was a modern freeway, California’s State Highway 99 was “the main street of California,” a simple two-lane road that passed through the downtowns of every city between the Mexican border and the Oregon state line. “Highway 99: The History of California’s Main Street” turns back the clock to those days when a narrow ribbon of asphalt tied the state’s communities together, with classic roadside attractions and plenty of fun along the way. “Highway 99” documents the birth, growth, and transformation of the highway; the gas stations, motels, restaurants, and attractions that flourished and declined by the roadside; and the communities, personalities, and historical events that made their mark on the highway. From the migrations of the Dust Bowl to the birth of the Bakersfield Sound to the foundation of America’s fast-food culture, the history of California has happened around Highway 99, and “Highway 99: The History of California’s Main Street” brilliantly depicts that history.

• 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.

• CALIFORNIA DESPERADOS

  $15.95 $9.57 0 review(s)

  
  

  "I shot him in the left temple; the gun dropped from his hands; he quivered one instant, and Andy McGinnis climbed the Golden Stairs...." This was Chris Evans speaking. Evans, the killer, train robber and fugitive, was describing the famous shootout at Young's cabin when he and his partner John Sontag ambushed and killed two members of a posse that was pursuing them. In California Desperadoes, Evans and seven other early outlaws tell their own raw stories-tales of holdups, shootouts and desperate flights from the law. Witness the cruel confessions of the ruthless gang of California bandits who murdered a whole family-men, women, and children-in the opening days of the Gold Rush. Stand on the gallows with the notorious Jim Stuart as he is hanged by San Francisco vigilantes determined to retake their city from hordes of Australian convicts, robbers and killers. The ill-starred adventures of Tom Bell, Tiburcio Vasquez and Charles Dorsey will hold you spellbound as the outlaws themselves take you along the dangerous trails they rode. And stage robbers Jim Smith and Dick Fellows will shock you with their own tales of the harrowing and sometimes hilarious antics of the California highwaymen of another day. These are true stories told by true desperadoes and illustrated with many rare photographs. Here are first-person accounts you will not soon forget!

• STORIES OF SERVICE: Valley Veterans Remember World War II

  $24.95 $14.97 0 review(s)

  
  

  Stories of Service is a remarkable collection of stories by veterans and civilians of the San Joaquin Valley who lived and fought during World War II. Gathered primarily from author Janice Stevens? memoirs class for military veterans, these stirring recollections include riveting tales of combat, such as a sailor caught in the open on the docks when the first wave of Japanese warplanes bombed Pearl Harbor, to the harrowing dash across the sand during the Utah beach landings on D-Day. Other stories are poignant remembrances of pain and loss by those who remained on the home front, and depict the privation and sacrifice that characterized their lives. The authentic voices within speak with simple unvarnished honesty about fear, bravery, boredom, and love. Augmented by almost 100 period photos, their compelling stories represent a powerful and unfiltered look back into a time of terrible conflict, pain, courage, and patriotism.