The Rush

“In The Rush, Nathaniel Philbrick takes the old maxim ‘follow the money’ to an engaging and revelatory extreme. Through an intricate skein of little-known stories, he shows how the discovery of gold in California drove tectonic shifts in the way Americans thought about wealth, and about each other—and in the process fueled the Civil War and today’s mad rush toward who knows what.”
—Erik Larson, author of The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

“Compulsively readable . . . The Rush complicates the familiar account of hopeful panners and canny outfitters, pairing the romance with the reality and drawing more characters into the story. Philbrick, a seasoned and popular chronicler of the American past, is equally concerned with those who got trampled by the rush as with those who rode it to astonishing heights of wealth and influence. . . . Philbrick brings the era’s gritty political dramas to life with compelling detail and an admirable faith in his readers’ willingness to follow the shifting factions and alliances. . . . Philbrick is a richly talented raconteur and a master of the cinematic vignette.”
—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)

“Like a concentrated beam of light refracted into a brilliant spectrum, Nathaniel Philbrick masterfully illuminates the forces great and small unleashed by the 1848 gold strike at Sutter’s Mill. This richly researched, vividly told narrative captures the rapacious, lawless quest for land and treasure that helped destabilized a fractured Union—and the astonishing human drama that came with it. Philbrick shows how the explosion of the frontier transformed the West, propelled a divided nation toward civil war, and opened a door through which an entire world rushed in. With an extraordinary cast—including a Chilean fortune seeker, an escaped slave, and a Southern sympathizer who rose to become a U.S. Senator from California—he gives voice to the people who were discarded, remade, and occasionally redeemed in one of the most consequential eras in American history.”
—Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and author of Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

“Sumptuous . . . Philbrick has written an engrossing account of tensions at the heart of our republic, a liberation from the dry rattle of textbooks as he limns the role oligarchy plays in our history.”
—The Boston Globe

“With polished prose and impeccable research, historian Philbrick unravels the Golden State’s ties to profit, enslavement and white supremacy. From John Sutter on to a ‘dress rehearsal’ for a Confederate victory and through to resource magnates like Leland Stanford, readers will understand that a conflict between North and South also included the West. They’ll also see that the greed unleashed during 19th century America resource-gathering isn’t gone.”
—The Los Angeles Times

“The Gold Rush is a fascinating saga, especially in the hands of so capable a chronicler as Nathaniel Philbrick.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Nathaniel Philbrick, our master storyteller, sees in the Gold Rush a Rosetta Stone for pre–Civil War America. It is a confounding and encouraging chronicle told from a myriad of perspectives, a bottom-up, epic tale of an inevitable rush toward profit and near-national suicide.”
—Ken Burns, filmmaker

“Nathaniel Philbrick has long been one of our most elegant narrative historians, and he’s back at it again, writing at the height of his powers. The Rush brings new energy and insight to a massively consequential event we only thought we knew. In a richly pleasing weave, he gives us the micro and macro, the intimate and sweeping, and makes us care about an engaging cast of characters who sought a new life in California’s riches. Along the way, Philbrick considers how the gold rush sped up everything it touched and led directly to the restless, frenetic, hyper-adrenalized culture of today’s America.”
—Hampton Sides, New York Times bestselling author of Blood and Thunder and The Wide Wide Sea

“With characteristic eloquence and insight, Nathaniel Philbrick has given us an illuminating and absorbing account of the California Gold Rush, bringing that tumultuous, thrilling, and complex moment to vivid life. Peopled with memorable figures and paced like a great novel, The Rush is a terrific work of history.”
—Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of And There Was Light

“With an eye for the perfect detail (sidewalks paved with beef jerky!) and a gift for the panoramic, Nathaniel Philbrick has pinned the Gold Rush, in all its wild color, to the page. Better yet, he follows it across time and across the country, to the slavery debate, the Civil War, and the transcontinental railroad. A sweeping, deeply satisfying narrative, pulsing with frontier energy.”
—Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams

“A rush of a narrative that will leave you giddy and full of wonder, turning pages with all the fever of a hopeful prospector. The true gold here is in the pathos beneath the glittering surface: the stories of real people; their brutal contests and conquests; and the breaching and the breaking of the natural terrain. A thrilling and valuable story of the making of America from the maestro of narrative nonfiction.”
—Ilyon Woo, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Master Slave Husband Wife

“The Rush is built on an enormous body of existing scholarship, and Philbrick synthesizes this research into a lively and accessible narrative. . . . Philbrick neatly evokes the politics, people and technologies that animated the period.”
—Smithsonian Magazine

“A gripping account of the California dreaming that propelled America forward, for better or worse.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[The Rush is] an exploration of the California Gold Rush, linking it with attempts to join the state to the Confederacy. . . . As ever, Philbrick untangles this complex story and makes of it an elegant narrative. . . . A lucid, lively melding of economic and political history that casts new light on the Golden State.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“A panoramic look at the California gold rush, California and the Civil War, and how their events shaped the modern world.”
—Booklist (starred review)