Stagecoach: Wells Fargo and the American West - Hardcover
Recounts the rise of Wells Fargo & Co., an innovative company that provided basic services such as the exchange of gold dust for coin and reliable delivery of letters and goods.
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Review:
Today, most of us know the iconic red and yellow image of the Wells Fargo stagecoach only as the omnipresent logo of a huge national financial institution. Philip L. Fradkin's Stagecoach reminds us of the far more complex and colorful history of the 150-year-old enterprise it symbolizes, beginning with its heyday as an unpolished but honorable "express company" that dependably linked, by means of the stagecoach, an upstart West Coast and roughshod Rockies with everything else back East. Fradkin, author of eight books on the American West, ties the company's and region's fates together as mining, agriculture, and then more contemporary commercial interests (with help from the federal government) indelibly shaped them both. From the time of the dusty stage driver to the era of the wing-tipped banker, the book recounts it all but wisely focuses on the period from 1852 to 1918, a time when the firm "served as the principal communications conduit between East and West ... contributed to the Union victory in the Civil War ... and shipped fresh vegetables and fruits via fast refrigerated express." After reading it, you'll be hard-pressed to look at the enduring stagecoach imagery in quite the same way ever again. --Howard Rothman
About the Author:
Philip L. Fradkin is the author of eight critically acclaimed nonfiction books on the American West and Alaska. At the Los Angeles Times he shared a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Watts racial conflict, was a correspondent in Vietnam, and was the newspaper's first environmental writer. Fradkin was the assistant secretary of the California Resources Agency and western editor of Audubon magazine. He has taught writing courses at the University of California at Berkeley, where he is a consultant to the Bancroft Library, and a California history course at Stanford University. Fradkin's most recent book is Wildest Alaska: Journeys of Great Peril in Lituya Bay. He lives on the coast north of San Francisco.
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- PublisherThorndike Pr
- Publication date2002
- ISBN 10 0786242922
- ISBN 13 9780786242924
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages469
- Rating
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