Author: Wilson, Robert
Publisher: Scribner
Year: 2006
ISBN: 0743260252
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: As New
Jacket Condition: As New
Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall
Description: New book, 302 pages. This book paints a brilliant portrait of Clarence King - a scientist explorer whose mountain-scaling, desert-crossing, river-fording, blizzard-surviving adventures helped create the new West of the nineteenth century. The Yale educated King went west in 1863 at age twenty-one as a geologist-explorer. During the next decade he scaled the highest peaks of the Sierra Nevada, published a popular book now considered a classic of adventure literature, initiated a ground breaking land survey of the American West, and ultimately uncovered one of the greatest frauds of the century - the Great Diamond Hoax, a discovery that made him an international celebrity at a time when they were few and far between.