Between the frequently recounted events of the Gold Rush and the Great Depression stretches a period of California history that is equally crucial but less often acknowledged. In his fresh, synthetic consideration of these in-between years, George L. Henderson points specifically to the take-off of California's rural juggernaut between...

Aristotle, one of mankind’s greatest thinkers, rooted his basis of human understanding in the notion that universal phenomena can be explained through perception and rationalization. As such, Aristotle conjectured that a 10-pound object should fall through the air 10 times faster than a similar 1-pound object. This, and other intuitive...