Abandoned Southern California

Abandoned Southern California
Author: Joanna Kalafatis
Publisher: America Through Time
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781634990684

"From prospectors' haunts in old ghost towns dating back to the Gold Rush, to the now-almost-deserted roadside towns of Route 66, the history of Southern California lives on through its abandoned towns and buildings. Through old settlements and institutions, now left to decay in the high desert or even in the middle of bustling, glamorous Los Angeles, readers can get a glimpse into the waves of migration that shaped the spirit of Southern California. The story of the state seems to repeat throughout different decades: California was perceived as the land of unlimited opportunities and renewed hope for incoming migrants, yet often led to a harsher and more challenging existence in real life. Nevertheless, the dreamers and fortune seekers who moved out West, whether for gold, land, spiritual reasons, health, or to escape the rapidly spiraling East Coast during the Great Depression, always persisted. As they moved from one location to the next to seek their fortune, their ambitions, failures, and lives became encased in the places they left behind. This book is the story of those people and places, and the enduring forces that created California as it is today."--Back cover.

Abandoned California

Abandoned California
Author: Andy Willinger
Publisher: America Through Time
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781634992374

In Southern California, settlers have long ventured into the Mojave Desert, seduced by its capacious horizons and fragile beauty, only to be abased by the intense heat, bone-dry terrain and maddening isolation. Industry, intent on extracting the land of its essence, set up operations, then walked away when there was nothing left worth taking. Civilization has always pushed into the frontier, and quite often the frontier pushes back. Areas like the forsaken homesteads of Wonder Valley and the abandoned mining operations of Joshua Tree seem simultaneously depleted yet majestically audacious in their quiet desolation, juxtaposed against the breathtaking landscapes of the desert. Abandoned California: The Mojave Desert is a collection of photographs and writings by Andy Willinger that capture the majesty of these forsaken buildings, vehicles and artifacts of the Mojave's once vibrant past. These sites have become meaningful, unintended statements - not only as vibrant, ephemeral artworks of minimal beauty, but as testament to the impact on nature by humanity. Undaunted, the Mojave Desert continues to brashly flaunt its skill in overcoming man's attempts to conquer it.

Abandoned California

Abandoned California
Author: Andy Willinger
Publisher: America Through Time
Total Pages: 96
Release: 2021-03-29
Genre:
ISBN: 9781634992992

In Southern California, settlers have long ventured into the Mojave Desert, seduced by its capacious horizons and fragile beauty, only to be abased by the intense heat, bone-dry terrain and maddening isolation. Industry, intent on extracting the land of its essence, set up operations, then walked away when there was nothing left worth taking. Civilization has always pushed into the frontier, and quite often the frontier pushes back. Areas like the forsaken homesteads of Wonder Valley and the abandoned mining operations of Joshua Tree seem simultaneously depleted yet majestically audacious in their quiet desolation, juxtaposed against the breathtaking landscapes of the desert. Abandoned California: The Mojave Desert is a collection of photographs and writings by Andy Willinger that capture the majesty of these forsaken buildings, vehicles and artifacts of the Mojave's once vibrant past. These sites have become meaningful, unintended statements - not only as vibrant, ephemeral artworks of minimal beauty, but as testament to the impact on nature by humanity. Undaunted, the Mojave Desert continues to brashly flaunt its skill in overcoming man's attempts to conquer it.

Abandoned Northern California

Abandoned Northern California
Author: Joanna Kalafatis
Publisher: America Through Time
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781634990912

"Driving through Northern California, you will find sprawling military bases, immense wineries, gold mining towns, and amusement parks all lying abandoned. The combination of different people and industries this part of the state has been home to over the years is intriguingly odd. The ruins that lie in the area today reflect the various ways people attempted to build their future in Northern California--not unlike the innovative ways people still try to build their future in the area today. Whether that involves a cool new start-up, a prominent place in the local, internationally respected wine industry, or seeking inspiration for an amazing new book, all kinds of diverse characters come here to dream and innovate. If there is one thing this cross-section of humanity who flocked to the state had in common, it is the will to forge ahead into the unknown. Inventors, military men, gold prospectors, entrepreneurs--they all, in their own ways, took their risks and chances in this newer part of the USA, to create a life, a business, a work of art or science that had never been done before. This is the legacy that has formed Northern California today."

Abandoned America

Abandoned America
Author: Matthew Christopher
Publisher: Jonglez Photo Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 9782361950941

Originally intended as an examination of the rise and fall of the state hospital system, Matthew Christopher's Abandoned America rapidly grew to encompass derelict factories and industrial sites, schools, churches, power plants, hospitals, prisons, military installations, hotels, resorts, homes, and more.

Enforced Marginality

Enforced Marginality
Author: Bluma Goldstein
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2007-08-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0520933419

This illuminating study explores a central but neglected aspect of modern Jewish history: the problem of abandoned Jewish wives, or agunes ("chained wives")—women who under Jewish law could not obtain a divorce—and of the men who deserted them. Looking at seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Germany and then late nineteenth-century eastern Europe and twentieth-century United States, Enforced Marginality explores representations of abandoned wives while tracing the demographic movements of Jews in the West. Bluma Goldstein analyzes a range of texts (in Old Yiddish, German, Yiddish, and English) at the intersection of disciplines (history, literature, sociology, and gender studies) to describe the dynamics of power between men and women within traditional communities and to elucidate the full spectrum of experiences abandoned women faced.

California

California
Author: Edan Lepucki
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2014-07-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0316250821

The world Cal and Frida have always known is gone, and they've left the crumbling city of Los Angeles far behind them. They now live in a shack in the wilderness, working side-by-side to make their days tolerable in the face of hardship and isolation. Mourning a past they can't reclaim, they seek solace in each other. But the tentative existence they've built for themselves is thrown into doubt when Frida finds out she's pregnant. Terrified of the unknown and unsure of their ability to raise a child alone, Cal and Frida set out for the nearest settlement, a guarded and paranoid community with dark secrets. These people can offer them security, but Cal and Frida soon realize this community poses dangers of its own. In this unfamiliar world, where everything and everyone can be perceived as a threat, the couple must quickly decide whom to trust. A gripping and provocative debut novel by a stunning new talent, California imagines a frighteningly realistic near future, in which clashes between mankind's dark nature and deep-seated resilience force us to question how far we will go to protect the ones we love. "In her arresting debut novel, Edan Lepucki conjures a lush, intricate, deeply disturbing vision of the future, then masterfully exploits its dramatic possibilities."-Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit from the Goon Squad

Empty Mansions

Empty Mansions
Author: Bill Dedman
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 498
Release: 2013-09-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0345534522

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Janet Maslin, The New York Times • St. Louis Post-Dispatch When Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly sixty years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the nineteenth century with a twenty-first-century battle over a $300 million inheritance. At its heart is a reclusive heiress named Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, at the time of her death at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen in decades. Though she owned palatial homes in California, New York, and Connecticut, why had she lived for twenty years in a simple hospital room, despite being in excellent health? Why were her valuables being sold off? Was she in control of her fortune, or controlled by those managing her money? Dedman has collaborated with Huguette Clark’s cousin, Paul Clark Newell, Jr., one of the few relatives to have frequent conversations with her. Dedman and Newell tell a fairy tale in reverse: the bright, talented daughter, born into a family of extreme wealth and privilege, who secrets herself away from the outside world. Huguette was the daughter of self-made copper industrialist W. A. Clark, nearly as rich as Rockefeller in his day, a controversial senator, railroad builder, and founder of Las Vegas. She grew up in the largest house in New York City, a remarkable dwelling with 121 rooms for a family of four. She owned paintings by Degas and Renoir, a world-renowned Stradivarius violin, a vast collection of antique dolls. But wanting more than treasures, she devoted her wealth to buying gifts for friends and strangers alike, to quietly pursuing her own work as an artist, and to guarding the privacy she valued above all else. The Clark family story spans nearly all of American history in three generations, from a log cabin in Pennsylvania to mining camps in the Montana gold rush, from backdoor politics in Washington to a distress call from an elegant Fifth Avenue apartment. The same Huguette who was touched by the terror attacks of 9/11 held a ticket nine decades earlier for a first-class stateroom on the second voyage of the Titanic. Empty Mansions reveals a complex portrait of the mysterious Huguette and her intimate circle. We meet her extravagant father, her publicity-shy mother, her star-crossed sister, her French boyfriend, her nurse who received more than $30 million in gifts, and the relatives fighting to inherit Huguette’s copper fortune. Richly illustrated with more than seventy photographs, Empty Mansions is an enthralling story of an eccentric of the highest order, a last jewel of the Gilded Age who lived life on her own terms. Praise for Empty Mansions “An amazing story of profligate wealth . . . an outsized tale of rags-to-riches prosperity.”—The New York Times “An evocative and rollicking read, part social history, part hothouse mystery, part grand guignol.”—The Daily Beast “Fascinating . . . [a] haunting true-life tale.”—People “One of those incredible stories that you didn’t even know existed. It filled a void.”—Jon Stewart, The Daily Show “Thrilling . . . deliciously scandalous.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Crossing California

Crossing California
Author: Adam Langer
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 516
Release: 2005-05-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1440628297

Crossing California is a cinematic and unforgettable look at the end of an era, the turning point when the idealism of the sixties gave way to the pragmatism of the eighties. California Avenue, in Chicago’s West Rogers Park neighborhood, separates the upper-middle-class Jewish families on the west from the mostly middle-class Jewish households east of the divide. This funny and heartbreaking novel, which spans the Iran hostage crisis through the inauguration of Ronald Reagan as president, tells the story of three families and their teenage children living on either side of California. It follows their loves, heartaches, friendships, and losses during a memorable and defining moment of American history.