Just out this week: Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant named Isaias Hellman created California by Bay Area journalist Frances Dinkelspiel.

Frances has shared an autographed copy of her book and we’ll be happy to send it to the lucky winner of our latest book giveaway here at CaliforniaAuthors.

But first a bit of the backstory: Frances is a former newspaper reporter who has spent the past EIGHT years researching a book about her great-great-grandfather. Isaias Hellman was a California builder and financier in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who played a pivotal role in creating one of the world’s most dynamic economies. Frances writes in the book’s introduction:

He was a major investor and promoter of at least eight industries that shaped California — banking, transportation, education, land development, water, electricity, oil, and wine. In a classic American rags-to-riches story, he came to Los Angeles from Germany in 1859 with nothing and went on to build up three of the West’s most important banks — the Farmers and Merchants Bank in Los Angeles, the Nevada Bank in San Francisco, and the Wells Fargo Bank. At the height of his power at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century he controlled more than $100 million in capital, equivalent to $38 billion in 2006 currency.

You can read a few early reviews of Towers of Gold here and here. Her upcoming events around California are here.

Be sure to visit Frances’ blog, Ghost Word, where she talks about her book and also keeps tabs on the Northern California publishing world.

If you’d like to enter this week’s Book Lotto, please use our contact form to send us your name and e-mail address. Put “TOWERS OF GOLD” in the subject line. We’ll select a winner at random on Friday, Nov. 21.