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America's Fevered Quest for Fortune, 1848-1853
In the spring of 1848, rumors began to spread that gold had been discovered in a remote spot in the Sacramento Valley. A year later, newspaper headlines declared "Gold Fever!" as hundreds of thousands of men and women borrowed money, quit their jobs, and allowed themselves - for the first time ever - to imagine a future of ease and splendor.
In The Rush, Edward Dolnick brilliantly recounts their treacherous westward journeys by wagon and on foot, and takes us to the frenzied gold fields and the rowdy cities that sprang from nothing to jam-packed chaos. With an enthralling cast of characters and scenes of unimaginable wealth and desperate ruin, The Rush is a fascinating-and rollicking-account of the greatest treasure hunt the world has ever seen.
"Dolnick's compulsively readable story is one that's rarely been told better." - Publishers Weekly
This information about The Rush was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo credit: Jerry Bauer
Edward Dolnick is author of Down the Great Unknown, Madness on the Couch, The Rescue Artist, The Forger's Spell, The Clockwork Universe and his latest work America's Fevered Quest for Fortune, 1848-1853. A former chief science writer at the Boston Globe, he has written for the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times Magazine, and many other publications. He has two grown sons and lives with his wife near Washington, D.C.
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