GOLD FEVER!

What lure could cause thousands of people to quit their jobs, leave their families, sleep in tents, move to the wilderness, and eat wormy bread? This is a detailed, exciting account of how the discovery of gold in the streams of California in 1848 created an international frenzy to head to the American West. Schanzer (How We Crossed the West, 1997) uses direct quotes from journals, letters, and accounts written by the forty-niners themselves, giving her book an immediacy and drama others on the subject lack. She chronicles the influx of people lured by tales of wealth as they traveled across the US. The quotations create a colorful picture of the pan-handling life: what miners ate and wore, how they lived, played, struggled to survive, and how many of the people who truly profited from the gold rush were those who sold goods to the miners. Schanzer’s illustrations are dynamic, and as well-researched as the text. (map) (Nonfiction. 8-12)