Oscar Lewis (2) (1893–1992)
Auteur de Hawaii: Gem of the Pacific
Pour les autres auteurs qui s'appellent Oscar Lewis, voyez la page de désambigüisation.
A propos de l'auteur
Oscar Lewis, an American anthropologist, was renowned for his studies of poverty in Mexico and Puerto Rico and for his controversial concept of "the culture of poverty." After graduating from Columbia University, where he studied under Ruth Benedict, Franz Boas, and Margaret Mead, his first major afficher plus book, Life in a Mexican Village (1951), was a restudy of Robert Redfield's village of Tepoztlan, which reached a number of conclusions opposed to those reached by Redfield. Much of the controversy over the culture of poverty disappeared when Lewis labeled it a subculture; ironically, reactionaries have used the concept to blame the poor for their poverty, whereas Lewis believed the poor to be victims. Many of his books are based on tape recordings of family members, a technique in which Lewis was a pioneer. (Bowker Author Biography) afficher moins
Œuvres de Oscar Lewis
The Big Four: The Story of Huntington, Stanford, Hopkins, and Crocker, and of the Building of the Central Pacific (1938) 83 exemplaires
Silver Kings: The Lives and Times of Mackay, Fair, Flood, and O'Brien, Lords of the Nevada Comstock (1947) 32 exemplaires
Bay window Bohemia; an account of the brilliant artistic world of gaslit San Francisco (1956) 18 exemplaires
The First Seventy-Five (75) Years. The Story of the Book Club of California, 191 (1987) 15 exemplaires
Fabulous San Simeon;: A history of the Hearst Castle, a Calif. state monument located on the scenic coast of Calif.,… (1958) 10 exemplaires
A Widely Cast Net. Selections from the Work of a Veteran California Writer. Chosen with Comments by Their Author: Oscar… (1996) 7 exemplaires
San Francisco since 1872,: A pictorial history of seven decades, with photographs and poems from the collection of… 6 exemplaires
California in 1846, described in letters from Thomas O. Larkin, "The Farthest West," E. M. Kern, and "Justice." 6 exemplaires
The autobiography of the West; personal narratives of the discovery and settlement of the American West (1958) 6 exemplaires
This was San Francisco, being first-hand accounts of the evolution of one of America's favorite cities (1962) 5 exemplaires
A Family of Builders. the Story of the Haases and Thompsons. California Pioneers Since Gold Rush Days (1961) 4 exemplaires
The wonderful city of Carrie Van Wie. Paintings of San Francisco at the turn of the century with text by Oscar Lewis. (1963) 4 exemplaires
The uncertain journey 4 exemplaires
Effects of White Contact on Blackfoot Culture, the, With Special Reference to the Role of the Fur Trade (1942) 2 exemplaires
Mr. Bell takes a stand for progress 1 exemplaire
Hearn and His Biographies 1 exemplaire
Nature and Science on the Pacific Coast 1 exemplaire
Gold rush literature: A symposium 1 exemplaire
The life and times of the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise : being reminiscences of five distinguished Comstock… 1 exemplaire
Oeuvres associées
Ah-Wah-Ne Days: A Visit to the Yosemite Valley in 1872 By H.H. (1971) — Introduction — 4 exemplaires
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Nom canonique
- Lewis, Oscar
- Nom légal
- Lewis, Oscar
- Date de naissance
- 1893-05-05
- Date de décès
- 1992-07-11
- Sexe
- male
- Nationalité
- USA
- Lieu de naissance
- San Francisco, California, USA
- Lieu du décès
- San Francisco, California, USA
- Lieux de résidence
- San Francisco, California, USA
- Études
- University of California, Berkeley
- Professions
- historian
- Organisations
- Bohemian Club
The Westerners
Book Club of California
San Francisco Art Commission - Courte biographie
- Oscar Lewis, was one of the first historians to write seriously about the literary, cultural and social history of the American West
Membres
Critiques
Prix et récompenses
Vous aimerez peut-être aussi
Auteurs associés
Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 62
- Aussi par
- 10
- Membres
- 723
- Popularité
- #35,108
- Évaluation
- 3.9
- Critiques
- 5
- ISBN
- 79
- Langues
- 5
[https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/bookviewer?PID=nlm:nlmuid-101179231-bk#page/5/mode/1up].
I did find a Wm. W. West listed as a passenger on the "Mary Reed", a 103-ton schooner, which left out of Belfast, Maine, to San Francisco Bay via Cape Horn, on Nov. 27, 1849. The passage by ship took approximately 160 days or more, that's about 5-1/2 months. ("History of the City of Belfast in the State of Maine, Vol. I, p. 705-8). Recorded ship manifests become sketchy and even non-existent as more and more men shipped out and the novelty of it all wore off. This has been my only clue, but who knows for sure if this was my ancestor. There were so many William Wests living in the area during that time.
In reading up on the history of the routes and conditions of sea travel to California during the goldrush, I wanted to get a better understanding of what he may have gone through to get to California. Was he a part of the '49ers, or did he travel sometime in the following years after the first year rush? We may never know for sure.
People from all over the world came to California during the gold-rush, but this book focuses on the United States and its people and avenues of travel from 1849 to 1852. The gold-rush continued through 1855. The author gathered information from their diaries and journals, and early California newspapers and periodicals. It tells an interesting history of the exact day that sparked the rush, how the early Americans reacted, how they raised the substantial amount of money needed to get to California (individual donors or formed organizations), how they secured passage, and their travelling conditions. All very interesting! Not too stuffy or boring like most history books. You will at least want to follow along, using a map. One is provided at the back of the book, but hard to read.
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INTERESTING NOTES FROM THE BOOK
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THE DEPARTURE
A passage by sea to San Francisco Bay in 1849 would have cost from $250 to $400 (equivalent value today, in 2020, would be $8,343.00 to $13,349.00), and that was just the cost of the passenger ticket. It was recommended a capital of $750 ($25,029 today) as a minimum requirement for expenses during the 5-1/2 to 7-month journey, plus the cost of clothing and food for a year's stay that was erroneously recommended by local store keepers and other "mining experts" trying to make a buck. That was an awful lot of money back then. Stay-at-homes would front these adventurers for a share, which they believed to be a sure thing. Men from all over the country were leaving by the score, as if the U.S. were preparing for a war. Just about everything you could think of was in short supply. Shelves from all over the country were empty. Supplies, clothing and food were being swooped up by men leaving for the west. Many never even considered just how they were going to get all these supplies to a mining camp, and so many things they had wasted their money on, such as mini cannons for shooting Indians, strong-boxes for carrying home all their gold dust, extra warm clothing...were filling up the hills in San Francisco Bay, piled high, full of junk that was needlessly sold to them for the voyage over.
THE VOYAGE
The migration for California began in spring of 1849. The ‘49ers had one of two choices: 1) Pay the captain and sail the 15,000 miles in a ship, entering and rounding the Horn during the height of the Antarctic winter, or 2) Go by land, which was only a fifth the distance, but you had to provide your own supplies with wagon and oxen, traverse over some rough terrain and possibly encountering Indian attacks, still very much a real threat.
The first couple of weeks on sea was all about developing your sea legs and getting over seasickness. Men were vomiting everywhere, even below deck and no one concerned themselves much with cleaning up until it passed. Then they were able to enjoy themselves with games, writing in their journals, writing letters, pulling pranks, but most important...reading matter.
After a five or six week voyage, nearly all the ships on the round-the-Horn route stopped at either Rio de Janiero, Brazil, or the island of St. Catherine, for an average of about 10 days, to restock food and water and make repairs to the ship. At this point, all food and water were nearly exhausted. It was so hot, tar would be seeping through the boards on the ship, and everyone pretty much slept on deck out in the open because below deck was suffocating heat.
Upon leaving port and heading for the Cape around the tip of the continent, the weather drastically changed and became more treacherous. Violent sleeting storms while sailing around the tip were continuous. It instantly changed from summer to winter with temperatures dipping below freezing. Men huddled below deck, out of the sleeting rains, but still, all their clothing and bedding remained damp and wet throughout.
The option of the cut-across at Panama, which saved months of travel time, a rough and very expensive five day, 60 mile journey (before the railroad was constructed in 1855) became a viable option only a couple of months before the great gold-rush. The U.S. had just established mail ships with cabins, placing them on each side of the harbors at Panama so they could avoid the long and arduous route around the Horn. These ships were designated ships strictly to Panama, and gold-rushers could opt for those vessels, and many did. But, there were more people crossing than there were ships passing to pick up the men on the other side. So, thousands were left waiting for weeks and weeks until they ran out of money or died of disease, yellow fever, malaria, jaundice, cholera, or dysentery, that had cropped up due to the filthy conditions of living in tents spread out everywhere. The cross-over from Nicaragua to the west coast, saving about a thousand miles of travel, didn't begin until summer of 1851 when the New Yorker Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt's plans had already been in the making to monopolize this route to California by building a future canal.
Other ports the ships would pull into while in route to San Francisco were Vera Cruz, Chagres, and Talcahuano and Valparaiso in Chile, on the Pacific coast. They had made it through the most treacherous part of the journey, so here the men celebrated. Some ships would make it a point to stop at Juan Fernandez Island, popularly known as Robinson Crusoe's Island, in which he had lived 150 years earlier, in late 1600- early 1700, in recluse for 28 long years. Of course, the story was just a novel...you know, fictional...not real. It was actually based on a Scottish castaway who had survived on Mas a Terra in the Juan Fernandez Island, now a part of Chile, for four years. In 1849, there were only about a dozen people left living on the island where before it was a penal colony, holding a large number of prisoners and their guards. But here, they were able to replenish their water supply with the best fresh spring water around and scores of wild fruit, and chop enough wood to get them through the last leg of the journey...and spend a day hiking to see the cove now known as "Robinson Crusoe's cove". In 1966, the island was officially renamed Robinson Crusoe Island.
The sea trek northward on the west coast of South America to San Francisco turned out to be quite the ordeal, sometimes extremely slow as they constantly fought against a driving north wind and storms that pushed them back southwards again, sometimes putting them weeks behind their arrival time to San Francisco Bay. Upon arriving into the bay, the first sight they saw was basically a crowded ship cemetery on the banks bogged down in the mud where early in the rush all passengers, crew, and captain abandoned the ships and headed to the hills. Some diaries said some of the hulls had windows and doors built into them and were being used as stores filled with supplies for the miners.
STEAMSHIPS
Steamships were also used and built to accommodate more passengers. But, they were more susceptible to disease, such as yellow fever and, mainly, cholera, spreading among the passengers because of the close, cramped and filthy conditions, in steerage, and for the fact that they were crossing overland in either Panama or Nicaragua. By the time these steamers reached San Francisco, most steamers had many burials at sea, up to 20 or more deaths while in route, and I’m sure more upon arrival at port. By 1952, death ships were arriving from both Panama and Nicaragua, so the preferred and safest, but longest route, was still by way of the dangerous Horn.… (plus d'informations)