Backcountry Ghosts: California Homesteaders and the Making of a Dubious Dream

California is an infamously tough place to be poor: home to about half of the entire nation's homeless population, burdened by staggering home prices and unsustainable rental rates, California is a state in crisis. But it wasn't always that way, as prize-winning historian Josh Sides reveals in Backcountry Ghosts.

In 1862 President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, the most ambitious and sweeping social policy in the history of the United States. In the Golden State more than a hund...