Hellacious California!: Tales of Rascality, Revelry, Dissipation, and Depravity, and the Birth of the Golden State - Paperback
by Gary Noy (Author)
Hellacious California! tours the rambunctious and occasionally appalling amusements of the Golden State.
In 1855 an ex-miner lamented that nineteenth-century California "can and does furnish the best bad things," including "purer liquors . . . finer tobacco, truer guns and pistols, larger dirks and bowie knives, and prettier courtezans [sic]" than anywhere else in America. Lured by boons of gold and other exploitable resources, California's settler population mushroomed under Mexican and early American control, and this period of rapid transformation gave rise to a freewheeling culture best epitomized by its entertainments: gambling, gun duels, knife fights, gracious dining and gluttony, prostitution, fandangos, cigars, con artistry, and the demon drink. Historian Gary Noy unearths myriad primary sources, many of which have never before been published, to spin his true tall tales that are by turns humorous and horrifying. Whether detailing the exploits of an inebriated stallion, gambling parlors as a reinforcement and subversion of racial norms, armed skirmishes over eggs, or the ins and outs of the "Spirit Lover""scam, Noy expertly situates these stories in the context of a live-for-the-moment society characterized by audacity, bigotry, and risk. Published in collaboration with Sierra College Press.
A Sierra Nevada native and current resident, Gary Noy has taught history at Sierra College from 1987 until the present. He founded the Sierra College Center for Sierra Nevada Studies and served as its director until 2012. His previous titles include Sierra Stories: Tales of Dreamers, Schemers, Bigots, and Rogues (Heyday, 2014), which won the Gold Medal for Best Regional Nonfiction from the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, The Illuminated Landscape: A Sierra Nevada Anthology (Heyday, 2010), which he coedited, and Distant Horizon: Documents from the 19th Century American West (University of Nebraska Press, 1999). Visit his website at garynoy.com.
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