Like Boston Massacre, this assessment requires students to consider the relative strengths and weaknesses of a document as historical evidence. Students with a sophisticated understanding of how to source a document will be able to explain that the book is useful as evidence of what life was like in the Santa Clara Valley because the author had lived there for many years and had worked for a long time as a society reporter. They will also see that the author may have been embellishing the positive aspects of life in the Santa Clara Valley in order to encourage people to move there.
