[Review of] Douglas Monroy. Thrown Among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California

As one drives through the state of California, the legacy of Indian, Spanish, and Mexican cultures is obvious everywhere. In school, children learn how this land fell into the hands of the Spanish Crown with its mission system starting to bring Christianity to the Indians, how California became Mexican via the independence movement, and finally in the nineteenth century, how the United States came to control California. Yet little is known or understood about what the transfer of power meant or how it occurred