
Product Details
- Publisher: McClelland & Stewart (2021-04-13)
- Language: English
- Paperback: 288 pages
- ISBN-13: 9780771018695
- Item Weight: 584.01 grams
- Dimensions: 9.52 x 6.4 x 1.04 cm
A gripping and wholly original account of the epic human tragedy that was the great Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-98. One hundred thousand men and women rushed heedlessly north to make their fortunes; very few did, but many thousands of them (and their pack animals) died in the attempt.
The electrifying announcement in 1897 that gold was to be found in wildly enriching quantities in the Klondike River region in remote Alaska was demonically well-timed to attract an exodus of economically desperate Americans. Within weeks, tens of thousands of them were embarking from western ports to throw themselves at some of the harshest terrain on the planet--in winter, yet--woefully unprepared, with no experience at all in mining or mountaineering. It was a mass delusion that quickly proved deadly. Brian Castner tells the unvarnished yet always striking and often amazing truth of this greed-fuelled migration.
About the Author
BRIAN CASTNER is the author of Disappointment River, All the Ways We Kill and Die, and the war memoir The Long Walk, which was adapted into an opera and named an Amazon Best Book for 2012. A former Explosive Ordnance Disposal officer and veteran of the Iraq War, his journalism and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Wired, Esquire, and on NPR. He is a two-time grantee of the Pulitzer Center, and is the co-editor of The Road Ahead: Stories from the Forever War.