John Clinton Ryan is a man caught in the gunsight of history, traveling across Mexican Alta California in the mid-1800's. As the rumbling of war grows in cabinet rooms in Mexico City, Los Angeles,...

Statehood has come to California, a rich young land of golden opportunity. Speculators, fortune hunters, roughnecks, and con men have come from every corner of the earth to stake a claim. And...

Gold fever has swept across California's Barbary Coast, and fires of passion, lawlessness, and violence burn in its wake. Nothing is forbidden and everything is for sale. Lives are bartered for...

On the Atlantic, a young navy midshipman named Ned Beale wins friends in high places – including Commodore Robert F. Stockton and President James K. Polk – for his irrepressible, can-do attitude. In...