Screen LibraryThe Bonanza King : John Mackay and the battle over the Greatest Riches in the American West /
Traces the rags-to-riches frontier story of Irish immigrant John Mackay, describing how in mid-nineteenth-century Nevada he outmaneuvered the pernicious "Bank Ring" monopoly and thousands of rivals to take control of the history-making Comstock Lode.
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| Main Authors: | |
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| Published: |
Scribner,
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| Publisher Address: | New York, NY : |
| Publication Dates: | 2018. |
| Literature type: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Edition: | First Scribner hardcover edition. |
| Subjects: | |
| Summary: |
Traces the rags-to-riches frontier story of Irish immigrant John Mackay, describing how in mid-nineteenth-century Nevada he outmaneuvered the pernicious "Bank Ring" monopoly and thousands of rivals to take control of the history-making Comstock Lode. "The rags-to-riches frontier tale of an Irish immigrant who outwits, outworks, and outmaneuvers thousands of rivals to take control of Nevada's Comstock Lode, the rich body of gold and silver so immensely valuable--equivalent to more than $600 billion today"--That it changed the destiny of the United States. Born in 1831, John W. Mackay was a penniless Irish immigrant who came of age in New York City, sailed to California during the Gold Rush, and mined without much luck for eight years. When he heard of riches found on the other side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1859, Mackay abandoned |
| Item Description: | Includes index. |
| Carrier Form: | ix, 466 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 24 cm |
| Bibliography: |
"Virtually every sentence in The Bonanza King contains a fact, and the overwhelming majority of those facts come from some primary source. I kept careful track of all sources used while writing, and as the citations multiplied into the thousands, both my endnotes and bibliography bloated to an unmanageable size. Rather than trim them unmercifully and append them to the end of this book, I decided that the best course was to post them to my website, whole. The bibliography can be found at http: //gregcrouch.com/the-bonanza-king-bibliography. The endnotes are at http://gregcrouch.com/the-bonan Bibliography at author's website-http: //gregcrouch.com/the-bonanza-king-bibliography. |
| ISBN: |
9781501108198 1501108190 |
| Index Number: | HD9537 |
| CLC: |
F471.261-09 K837.125.38 |
| Call Number: | K837.125.38/M153C |
| Contents: | A Rough Irish Lad -- Gilded Dreams--and the Hard Fist of California Reality -- The Lure of the Washoe Diggings -- The Rush to Washoe--and an Indian War -- Surrounded by Riches--and Unable to Get Them Out -- Revving Up the Boom -- The First Boom, Frenzied and Exuberant -- A Tiny Sliver of a Mine -- The Rise of the Bank Ring -- The Irish Coup -- The Lode's Worst Day -- Jones's Sick Child -- The Consolidated Virginia Mine -- The Strike -- The Big Bonanza -- The Bonanza King -- The Cable War -- Twilight. |