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Bezig met laden... The Bonanza King: John Mackay and the Battle over the Greatest Riches in the American West (2018)door Gregory Crouch
   Top Five Books of 2019 (116) Bezig met laden...
 Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek.  zmagic69 | Mar 31, 2023 |   > Before they walked the last few yards into the new camp, O'Brien asked Mackay if he had any money about his clothes. Mackay said that he didn't have a cent. Thinking they ought to walk into the new camp penniless, "like gentlemen," O'Brien fished his last fifty-cent piece from a pocket and heaved it down the hillside into the sagebrush > Comstockers had feet on the brain. They talked feet, worked feet, traded feet, jumped feet, ate and drank feet, bought and sold feet, consolidated feet, thought feet, slept feet, and dreamed feet. "Centipedes" and "millipedes" roamed the streets of Virginia City > the cable cars' roots reach back to the hoists that once served the Comstock mines. (  ) breic | Jan 2, 2021 |  ) Schmerguls | Oct 3, 2020 | Much of the narrative focuses on the history of the Comstock lode where Mackay prospered so at times the books gets somewhat bogged down in a history of this mining era. But in part this was necessary to get a grasp of what life was like in era, but also because Mackay himself was not a personality that could be expounded on to an extended degree. His accumulated wealth was in no way flaunted as it could have been because it was not in his character but yet I could not wonder how such a concentration of wealth in one individual contrasted with the dire poverty that so many lived in at the time. I lived in the region near the Comstock for about 15 years so was able to put of what I read hear into what I observed in the historic landscape and that made it even more meaningful to me. (  ) knightlight777 | Sep 3, 2018 | This is a history of the Comstock Lode, the largest mineral discovery in North American history, as told through the life of John Mackay, a New York City slum street urchin who went west with the 49's and rose to become one of the richest people in the world. After his death he faded into obscurity because, as Crouch says, he was uncontroversial and widely admired during his time, a sort of notability killer. Yet, an important figure of the 19th century not unlike Rockefeller. Either way if you read it to learn about Mackay, a rags to riches story, or mining the Comstock there is much to be gained. (  )1  Stbalbach | Jul 19, 2018 | geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Prijzen
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 his claim and walked a hundred miles to the Comstock Lode in what is present-day Nevada. Over the course of the next dozen years, Mackay worked his way up from nothing, thwarting the pernicious Bank Ring monopoly to seize control of the most concentrated cache of precious metals ever found on earth, the legendary Big Bonanza, a stupendously rich body of gold and silver ore discovered fifteen hundred feet beneath the streets of Virginia City, the ultimate Old West boomtown. But for the ore to be worth anything, it had to be found, claimed, and successfully extracted, each step requiring enormous risk and the creation of an entirely new industry. Now Gregory Crouch tells Mackay's amazing story--how he extracted the ore from deep underground drove stock market frenzies in San Francisco and launched his wife, whose beginnings were as humble as his own, ona meteoric social career among the finest European aristocrats. When Mackay died in 1902--with a personal fortune equivalent to $40 billion today--front-page obituaries in Europe and the United States hailed him as one of the most admired Americans of the age. Richly illustrated with period photographs and maps, The Bonanza King is a dazzling tour de force, a riveting history of Virginia City, the Comstock Lode, and America itself."--Jacket. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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 Google Books — Bezig met laden...GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)979.3History and Geography North America Great Basin and West Coast U.S. NevadaLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde: (4.36)
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Great detail, clear concise mining details, and a story that builds to an exciting climax.
A really great book. (