Indian labor was vital to the early economic development of the Los Angeles region. This first volume in the new series Before Gold: California under Spain and Mexico explores for the first time Native contributions to early Southern California. Opening with a survey of the economic dimension of traditional southern California Indian cultures, Phillips then examines the origins and collapse of the missions, the emergence and expansion of the pueblo of Los Angeles, and the creation and decline of the ranchos. He closely considers the Indians' incorporation into these foreign-imposed institutions and the resulting impact on the region's economy and society. While concentrating on the Tongvas (Gabrielinos), Phillips also considers Indians who entered the region from the south.Based on exhaustive research, Phillips's account focuses on California Indians more as workers than as victims. He describes the work they performed and how their relations evolved with the missionaries, settlers, and rancheros who employed them. Phillips emphasizes the importance of Indian labor in shaping the economic history of what is now Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside counties. Featuring more than two-dozen illustrations and maps, Vineyards and Vaqueros demonstrates that no history of the region is complete without a consideration of the Indian contribution.

Long recognized as a pioneering work in the ethnohistory of California, " Chiefs and Challengers, " when it first appeared, overturned the stereotype of Indian victimhood and revealed a complex political landscape in which Native peoples interacted with one another as much as they did with non-Indians intruding into their territories. Although historian George Harwood Phillips did not shy away from chronicling the mistreatment of Indians, he moved beyond that approach to examine Indian-white interactions from both Indian and white perspectives. This new edition describes the indigenous cultures of southern California and offers a detailed history of the repercussions of Euro-American colonization.
Because there was no geographical frontier in California separating Indians and whites, the interaction varied significantly from region to region in California. In the south, conflict reached a climax in 1851 when Antonio Garra led a pan-Indian revolt that sent shock waves throughout California, forcing the Americans to take counteractions that affected themselves as much as the Indians.
In this second edition of "Chiefs and Challengers, " Phillips brings the story into the twentieth century by drawing upon recent historical and anthropological scholarship and upon seldom-used documentary evidence. After 1865, Indians faced new problems, including settler encroachment and the imposition of the reservation system. That some Indians succeeded in holding onto their ancestral lands, Phillips shows, is evidence of their strategic efforts to survive. His narrative includes numerous eloquent testimonies from Indians, among them a student at a government-run school who wrote to the U.S. president: "The white people call San Jacinto rancho their land and I don't want them to do it. We think it is ours, for God gave it to us first."

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When his friend George Gershwin persuaded Vladimir Dukelsky to change his name to Vernon Duke, what the music world already knew became apparent to the public at large - the man had two musical personas - one as a composer, the other as a tunesmith. One wrote highbrow music, the other lowbrow. Yet the two sides complemented each other. Neither could function without the other. Born and classically trained in imperial Russia, Vladimir Dukelsky (1903-1969) fled the Bolshevik Revolution with his family, discovered American popular music in cosmopolitan Constantinople, and pursued his budding interest to New York before his passion for classical music drew him to Paris, where the impresario Serge Diaghilev hired him to compose a ballet for the Ballets Russes. Taking a Chance on Love immerses us in Duke's dizzying globe-hopping and genre-swapping, as financial concerns and musical passions drive him from composing symphonies to writing songs, from brilliant successes to Broadway flops, and from performing with classical performers to writing books and articles. Throughout, as he crisscrosses the landscape of American music, collaborating with lyricists such as Howard Dietz, Ira Gershwin, and Sammy Cohn, the incomparable Vernon Duke emerges clearly from these pages: sometimes charming, sometimes infuriating, always entertaining. Although Vernon Duke has entered the canon of American standards with such songs as ""Taking a Chance on Love,"" ""I Can't Get Started,"" and ""April in Paris,"" little is known about the composer with two personas. Taking a Chance on Love brings the intriguing double life of Dukelsky/Duke back into the spotlight, restoring a chapter to the history of the Great American Songbook and to the story of twentieth-century music.