"Andrew Isenberg's superb new book analyzes the ecological domino effect set in motion by the California Gold Rush, which touched off the cycles of environmental degradation the scale of which we can only now fully appreciate. Filled with lessons and warnings, Mining California is a timely and important book." --Bill Deverell, Director, Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West   "As entertaining as it is insightful, Isenberg's book does justice to the dramatic ecological transformations California underwent in the half century after the Gold Rush.  This is environmental history at its best." --J.R. McNeill, author of Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the 20th-century World   "Andrew Isenberg shoves rustic myths aside to reveal a Gold Rush California that roared, buzzed, clanked, and trembled with machines, and bore the cost in polluted rivers, denuded mountain slopes, ruined ranches, and shattered Indian communities. Anyone wanting to understand the industrial, social, and ecological revolutions that constituted America's most famous economic boom must read this elegant and provocative book.

" --Louis Warren, University of California, Davis   Praise for The Destruction of the Bison: "Elegant . A detailed, convincing instance of how civilizations expand, it is profoundly instructive." -William H. McNeill, The New York Review of Books.