Bibliography of California history

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This is a bibliography of California history. It contains English language (including translations) books and mainstream academic journal articles published after World War II.

Inclusion criteria

This list is not intended to be a comprehensive list of all works about California history. It is limited to works primarily or substantially about California history, published by state level or higher academic universities, mainstream national level publishers, or authored by recognized subject matter experts.^[a]

Works about Baja California before 1850 are included. Works regarding historical geography, and California's natural history are included, but works about municipal and local history are excluded. Notes are provided for annotations and citations for reviews in academic journals when helpful.

Citation style

This bibliography uses APA style citations. Entries do not use templates. References to reviews and notes for entries do use citation templates. Where books which are only partially related to California history are listed, the titles for chapters or sections should be indicated if possible, meaningful, and not excessive.

If a work has been translated into English, the translator should be included and a footnote with appropriate bibliographic information for the original language version should be included if possible.

When listing works with titles or names published with alternative English spellings, the form used in the latest published version should be used and the version and relevant bibliographic information noted if it previously was published or reviewed under a different title.

Kevin Starr, former professor of History and California State Librarian has written many highly regarded books^[1] on the history of California including the multi-volume Americans & the California Dream Series which contain a significant amount of history about Los Angeles and the surrounding area.

• California: A History. New York: Modern Library. (2007). Single Volume History of California.
• Coast of Dreams: California on the Edge, 1990–2003. New York: Knopf. (2004).

Americans & the California Dream Series by Kevin Starr, published by Oxford University Press

• Americans and the California Dream, 1850–1915. (1973)
• Inventing the Dream: California through the Progressive Era. (1985)
• Material Dreams: Southern California through the 1920s. (1990)
• Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California. (1996)
• The Dream Endures: California Enters the 1940s. (1997)
• Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, 1940–1950. (2003)
• Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950–1963. (2011)

Before Gold: California under Spain and Mexico series from University of Oklahoma Press.

• Beebe, R. M., & Senkewicz, R. M. (2020). Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary. University of Oklahoma Press.
• Beebe, R. M., & Senkewicz, R. M. (2023). Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo: Life in Spanish, Mexican, and American California. University of Oklahoma Press.
• Crosby, H. W. (2015). Californio Portraits: Baja California’s Vanishing Culture. University of Oklahoma Press.
• Hyslop, S. G. (2012). Contest for California: From Spanish Colonization to the American Conquest. University of Oklahoma Press.
• Perez, E. (2018). Colonial Intimacies: Interethnic Kinship, Sexuality, and Marriage in Southern California, 1769–1885 (Illustrated edition). University of Oklahoma Press.
• Phillips, G. H. (2010). Vineyards and Vaqueros: Indian Labor and the Economic Expansion of Southern California, 1771–1877 (Illustrated edition). University of Oklahoma Press.
• Vallejo, M. G. (2023). Recuerdos: Historical and Personal Remembrances Relating to Alta California, 1769–1849 (R. M. Beebe & R. M. Senkewicz, Trans.). University of Oklahoma Press.

• Faragher, J. M. (2022). California: An American History. Yale University Press.
• Starr, K. (2005). California: A History. The Modern Library.
• Verge, A. C., & Rolle, A. (2014). California: A History (8th edition). Wiley-Blackwell.

• Bauer, W. J. (2016). California through Native Eyes: Reclaiming History. University of Washington Press.

This section includes regional studies of what is now the southwestern United States that include substantial content about California.

• Gibson, C. (2019). El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America. Atlantic Monthly Press.
• Goodwin, R. (2019). América: The Epic Story of Spanish North America, 1493-1898 (Illustrated edition). Bloomsbury Publishing.
• Solnit, R. (2014). Savage Dreams: a Journey into the Hidden Wars of the American West University of California Press.

• John, R. S. (2011). Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border. Princeton University Press.
• Sanchez, G. J. (1995). Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (Illustrated edition). Oxford University Press.^[b]

This section covers works about the period from Spanish contact to 1821.

• Kessell, J. L. (2002). Spain in the Southwest: A Narrative History of Colonial New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California. University of Oklahoma Press.

This section covers works about the period from approximately 1821 to 1848.

• Walker, D. L. (1999). Bear Flag Rising: The Conquest of California, 1846. Forge Books.
• Merry, R. W. (2010). A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent. New York: Simon & Schuster

This section covers works about the period from approximately 1848–present.

• Arax, M. (2019). The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California (Illustrated edition). Knopf.
• Beesley, D. (2004). Crow's Range: An Environmental History Of The Sierra Nevada University of Nevada Press
• Blunt, K. (2022). California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric--and What It Means for America’s Power Grid. Portfolio.
• Bordewich, F. M. (2013). America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union. Simon & Schuster.
• Brands, H. W. (2002). The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream. Doubleday.
• Farquhar, F. P. (1965) History of the Sierra Nevada University of California Press
• Higgins, Andrew Stone. Higher Education for All: Racial Inequality, Cold War Liberalism, and the California Master Plan. University of North Carolina Press, 2023.
• Holliday, J. S. (1981). The World Rushed In: The California Gold Rush Experience. Simon & Schuster.
• Holliday, J. S. (1999). Rush for Riches: Gold Fever and the Making of California. University of California Press.
• Holt, M. F. (1983). The Political Crisis of the 1850s. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
• Isenberg, A. C. (2017). The California Gold Rush: A Brief History with Documents. Bedford/St. Martin's.
• Johnson, S. L. (2000). Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush. W W Norton & Co Inc.
• Jones, K. (2017). South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s (Illustrated edition). Duke University Press.
• Larkin, T. O., & Hawgood, J. (1970). First and Last Consul: Thomas O. Larkin and the Americanization of California (Second Edition). Pacific Book Publighing.
• Libecap, G., (2007). Owens Valley Revisited: A Reassessment of the West's First Great Water Transfer Stanford Economics and Finance.
• Lindsay, B. C. (2012). Murder State: California’s Native American Genocide, 1846-1873. University of Nebraska Press.
• Madley, B. (2016). An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 (Illustrated edition). Yale University Press.
• North, D. M. T. (2018). California at War: The State and the People during World War I (Illustrated edition). University Press of Kansas.
• Pfaelzer, J. (2023). California, a Slave State. Yale University Press.
• Rawls, J. J.; Orsi, R. J. eds. (1999) A Golden State: mining and economic development in Gold Rush California University of California Press.
• Runte, A. (1990) Yosemite: The Embattled Wilderness University of Nebraska Press.
• Richards, L. L. (2007). The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War . Knopf.
• Ruiz, V. L. (1987). Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930-1950. University of New Mexico Press.
• Scarry, R. J. (2001). Millard Fillmore. McFarland & Company.

Academic journal articles

• Biber, Eric (2004). "The Price of Admission: Causes, Effects, and Patterns of Conditions Imposed on States Entering the Union". The American Journal of Legal History. 46 (2): 119–208.
• Burns, J. F. (2003). "Taming the Elephant: An Introduction to California's Statehood and Constitutional Era". California History. 81 (3/4): 1–26. doi:10.2307/25161698 JSTOR 25161698
• Paddison, Joshua (2003). "Capturing California". California History. 81 (3/4): 126–136. doi:10.2307/25161702 JSTOR 25161702.
• Winter, M. C. (2008). "Culture-Tectonics: California Statehood and John Rollin Ridge's "Joaquín Murieta"". Western American Literature. 43 (3): 258–276. doi:10.1353/wal.2008.0004, JSTOR 43025141.
• Woolsey, Ronald C. (1983). "A Southern Dilemma: Slavery Expansion and the California Statehood Issue in 1850—A Reconsideration". Southern California Quarterly. 65 (2): 123–144. doi:10.2307/41171032, JSTOR 41171032.

• Arax, M., & Wartzman, R. (2003). The King of California: J.G. Boswell and the Making of A Secret American Empire. PublicAffairs.
• Hackel, S. W. (2013). Junipero Serra: California’s Founding Father. Hill and Wang.
• Pawel, M. (2018). The Browns of California: The Family Dynasty that Transformed a State and Shaped a Nation (Illustrated edition). Bloomsbury Publishing.
• Standiford, L. (2015). Water to the Angels: William Mulholland, His Monumental Aqueduct, and the Rise of Los Angeles (Illustrated edition). Ecco.

• Weber, Francis J. (1968). "A Bibliography of California Bibliographies". Southern California Quarterly. 50(1): 5–32.

• Browning, P. (1991) Place Names of the Sierra Nevada: From Abbot to Zumwalt, Wilderness Press
• Gudde, E. G. (1998). California Place Names: The Origin and Etymology of Current Geographical Names Fourth edition. (W. Bright, Ed.). University of California Press.
• Hayes, D., & Labonté, C. (2007). Historical Atlas of California: With Original Maps. University of California Press.

• California History (1922–present). Published by the California Historical Society and the University of California Press. ISSN 2327-1485, Print ISSN 0162-2897.^[c][2][3]
• Pacific Historical Review (1932–present). Published by the University of California Press. Online ISSN 1533-8584, Print ISSN 0030-8684.^[4][5]
• Western Historical Quarterly (1970–present). Published by the Western History Association and Oxford University Press. Print ISSN 0043-3810, Online ISSN 1939-8603.^[6][7]

This section contains a limited list of primary sources related to California history.

• Brewer, W. H., & Chittenden, R. H. (2011). Up And Down California In 1860-1864: The Journal Of William H. Brewer (F. P. Farquhar, Ed.). Literary Licensing.
• LeConte, J. (1960) A Journal of Ramblings Through the High Sierra of California by the University Excursion Party Sierra Club.
• Murrell, G. M. (2023). “There Is More in Luck than Work”: The Letters of a Young Kentuckian in the California Gold Rush (1849-1854). Ed. Juliette Bourdin. Les Perséides.
• Reed, A. (1994) Old Mammoth: A First Hand Account Live Oak Press
• Roper, S. (1994) Camp 4: Recollections of a Yosemite Rockclimber Mountaineers Books
• Siepel, K. H. (2015). Conquistador Voices: The Spanish Conquest of the Americas as Recounted Largely by the Participants. Spruce Tree Press.
• Siepel, K. H. (2015). Conquistador Voices: The Spanish Conquest of the Americas as Recounted Largely by the Participants. Spruce Tree Press.

• "An Act for the Admission of the State of California into the Union" (PDF). The Library of Congress. The Government of the United States. 9 September 1850. Retrieved 12 May 2023.

• Bibliography of Los Angeles
• Bibliography of Hollywood
• Bibliography of San Francisco

• History of California
• Territorial evolution of California
• California State Library
• California Historical Society
• List of bibliographies on American history
• Bibliography of South Carolina history

• Bibliography of the History of California and the Pacific West, 1510-1906, published 1914, available at California State University, Monterey.
• California, a select bibliography, available at California State University.
• Bibliography of California, available at University of California, Los Angeles.