The Bonanza King: John Mackay And The Battle Over The Greatest Fortune In The American West

  • Author: Gregory Crouch
  • Narrator: John Keating
  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster
  • Duration: 23:23:56
preview

Synopsis

“A monumentally researched biography of one of the nineteenth century’s wealthiest self-made Americans…Well-written and worthwhile” (The Wall Street Journal) it’s 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.

Born in 1831, John W. Mackay was a penniless Irish immigrant who came of age in New York City, went 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 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 1,500 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 and used his vast mining fortune to crush the transatlantic telegraph monopoly of the notorious Jay Gould. “No one does a better job than Crouch when he explores the subject of mining, and no one does a better job than he when he describes the hardscrabble lives of miners” (San Francisco Chronicle). Featuring great period photographs and maps, The Bonanza King is a dazzling tour de force, a riveting history of Virginia City, Nevada, the Comstock Lode, and America itself.

Chapters

  • BonanzaKing 01 Title

    Duration: 18s
  • BonanzaKing 02 Prologue

    Duration: 08min
  • BonanzaKing 03 Ch1

    Duration: 52min
  • BonanzaKing 04 Ch2

    Duration: 01h22min
  • BonanzaKing 05 Ch3a

    Duration: 01h03min
  • BonanzaKing 06 Ch3b

    Duration: 47min
  • BonanzaKing 07 Ch4

    Duration: 01h14min
  • BonanzaKing 08 Ch5a

    Duration: 52min
  • BonanzaKing 09 Ch5b

    Duration: 28min
  • BonanzaKing 10 Ch6

    Duration: 52min
  • BonanzaKing 11 Ch7

    Duration: 01h16min
  • BonanzaKing 12 Ch8a

    Duration: 35min
  • BonanzaKing 13 Ch8b

    Duration: 56min
  • BonanzaKing 14 Ch09

    Duration: 01h18min
  • BonanzaKing 15 Ch10

    Duration: 01h19min
  • BonanzaKing 16 Ch11

    Duration: 01h11min
  • BonanzaKing 17 Ch12

    Duration: 38min
  • BonanzaKing 18 Ch13

    Duration: 01h04min
  • BonanzaKing 19 Ch14

    Duration: 58min
  • BonanzaKing 20 Ch15a

    Duration: 01h52s
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