The Sugar King of California: The Life of Claus Spreckels
with author and historian Sandra Bonura

This event will be online via Zoom.

Join author and historian Sandra Bonura in conversation online on her new book, The Sugar King of California: The Life of Claus Spreckels.

The Sugar King of California is the astonishingly intimate story of one of the most controversial entrepreneurs of the 19th century - a rule-breaking visionary who through his sugar empire became one of the richest Americans in history alongside John D. Rockefeller, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates. Bonura tells the rags-to-riches story of Spreckels’s role in the developments of the sugarcane industry in the American West and across the Pacific, triumphing in a milieu rife with cronyism and corruption and ultimately transforming California’s industry & labor. But there’s always a cost for single-minded determination; the legendary family quarrels even included a murder charge. Spreckels’s biography is one of business triumph & tragedy, a portrait of a family torn apart by money, jealousy, and ego.

Praise for The Sugar King of California: "Bonura presents Claus Spreckels’s life full of work, rude business methods, luck, and eventually moderation—and combines this with a touching history of his private life.”—Uwe Spiekermann, former deputy director of the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC

Historian Dr. Sandra Bonura is a retired professor who is busy on her second career resurrecting the forgotten stories of overlooked historical figures. She is a frequent storyteller and lecturer on the importance of using a multitude of primary sources to gain perspective on historical events. Sandee is an award winning author of eight published works based on found archival treasures: The Sugar King of California: The Life of Claus Spreckels, Prairie to Prosperity: The Life of Henry G. Fenton, Empire Builder: John D. Spreckels and the Making of San Diego, Light in The Queen's Garden: Ida May Pope, Pioneer for Hawai'i's Daughters, Queen Lili'uokalani's Beloved Kawaiaha'o Seminary, Lydia K. Aholo—Her Story, Recovering the Lost Voice, and An American Girl in the Hawaiian Islands: Letters of Carrie Prudence Winter 1890-1893.