The Rivals : William Gwin, David Broderick and the Birth of California Book

Arthur Quinn, whose epic of colonial America, A New World, has established him as a master of historical narrative, turns here to one of the great dramas of nineteenth-century America: the fatal rivalry of California senators William Gwin and David Broderick. 1849: Gold rush-era California was a circus of dreamers, desperadoes, and a few canny men who came to this wide-open territory to grasp political power. Two such men were Gwin, an aristocratic Southerner with a tarnished past, and Broderick, a veteran of the bare-knuckle politics of the New York slums. Both had their eyes on the same prize: a seat in the U.S. Senate with the anticipated admission of California to the Union. Each man attained his goal, but neither was satisfied. For a decade, Broderick and Gwin struggled for control of California's Democratic party. Polar opposites in both background and temperament, they became not just political opponents, but personal enemies as well. The bitterness of their feud was compounded by the increasing ferocity of the national debate over slavery, on which Broderick and Gwin took opposite sides. It ended in a duel that destroyed them both: Broderick was killed, and Gwin disgraced. Around the tragic drama of these two antagonists, Arthur Quinn has given us a sweeping portrayal of a state in the making and a nation in danger of tearing apart. The Rivals is a stunning tour de force of historical writing by the author whom Czeslaw Milosz has called "the Ecclesiastes of the West Coast."