Nathaniel Philbrick

This moment started the gold rush that would bring thousands to the territory known as California.

In The Rush, California Gold, the Civil War, and the Making of the Modern World, the latest book by prolific historian Nathaniel Philbrick, Marshall's discovery is a decisive historical moment sending a fledgling nation hurtling toward a reckoning not only with slavery, but with its geographical immensity.

The Smithsonian holds a nugget thought to be the first discovered by Marshall.

There's a picture of it here.

I know you've read it as well.

Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea.

is the story, is the true story and the true account of all of that versus Moby Dick being a novel based on a true story, based on a true event.

So could I have survived that? I'm not a big boater.

There's a little tiny book.

It's called Why Read Moby Dick by Nathaniel Philbrick.

Oh, Nathaniel Philbrick.

Yes.

What did he write?

This moment started the gold rush that would bring thousands to the territory known as California.

In The Rush: California Gold, the Civil War, and the Making of the Modern World, the latest book by prolific historian Nath- Nathaniel Philbrick, Marshall's discovery is a decisive historical moment sending a fledging nation hurtling toward a reckoning not only with slavery, but with its geographic immensity.

The Rush is built on the enormous body of existing scholarship, and Philbrick synthesizes this research into a lively and accessible narrative.

California was a highly disputed land when Marshall made his fateful find, poised to tip the balance between the Union's 15 enslaving and 15 free states.

This feels like it's an important scene.

Um, and, And I actually think – I don't know if either of you – I know we mentioned, Rob, or at least I know you mentioned Nathaniel Philbrick's book about Moby Dick and about how it's – on about how Moby Dick is about slavery, et cetera.

And my edition actually has a foreword by Philbrick.

I don't know if either of yours do as well.

Somewhat in the manner of our own ongoing series on Moby Dick and the history of the sea, in each episode of Passages, Sir Pell invites another writer to speak with her about a different book by Toni Morrison.

Our series on Moby Dick will resume later this fall when Nathaniel Philbrick... joins me for a conversation about Chapter 14, Nantucket.

I'm Donovan Hone for Lapham's Quarterly.

This episode of The World in Time was produced with help from Peter Ogereau.

This moment started the gold rush that would bring thousands to the territory known as California.

In- The Rush: California Gold, the Civil War, and the Making of the Modern World, the latest book by prolific historian Nath- Nathaniel Philbrick.

Marshall's discovery is a decisive historical moment sending a fledging nation hurtling toward a reckoning not only with slavery, but with its geographic immensity.

The Rush is built on the enormous body of existing scholarship, and Philbrick synthesizes this research into a lively and accessible narrative.

[laughs]

This is called The Rush: California Gold, the Civil War, and the Making of the Modern World by Nathaniel Philbrick.

Uh, the reason I brought up boats is 'cause I think if you know Nathaniel Philbrick, you might know him best as the author of In the Heart of the Sea.

This was, uh, a book that told the true story of the Essex, which was a real-life whale ship, uh, that had an unfortunate run-in with a whale.

And that true-life story [laughs] and that true-life story ended up inspiring Moby Dick, which is supposedly one of the great works of American fiction.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so this book, The Rush, is about the California Gold Rush, but it's also about the early days of California, the, the attempts to sort of move it towards the Confederacy perhaps, as it was, uh, in the final stages of becoming a state, and how the Gold Rush and westward expansion is sort of related to all the terrible things that happened later during the Civil War.

Nathaniel Philbrick, if you've read In the Heart of the Sea, you know as the best narrative nonfiction historical writers can do, just puts you in a place with incredible detail.