Gold Diggers: Striking It Rich in the Klondike Author: Charlotte Gray | Language: English | ISBN:
B0042X9WLY | Format: PDF
Gold Diggers: Striking It Rich in the Klondike Description
Between 1896 and 1899, thousands of people lured by gold braved a grueling journey into the remote wilderness of North America. Within two years, Dawson City, in the Canadian Yukon, grew from a mining camp of four hundred to a raucous town of over thirty thousand people. The stampede to the Klondike was the last great gold rush in history.
Scurvy, dysentery, frostbite, and starvation stalked all who dared to be in Dawson. And yet the possibilities attracted people from all walks of lifenot only prospectors but also newspapermen, bankers, prostitutes, priests, and lawmen. Gold Diggers follows six stampedersBill Haskell, a farm boy who hungered for striking gold; Father Judge, a Jesuit priest who aimed to save souls and lives; Belinda Mulrooney, a twenty-four-year-old who became the richest businesswoman in town; Flora Shaw, a journalist who transformed the town’s governance; Sam Steele, the officer who finally established order in the lawless town; and most famously Jack London, who left without gold, but with the stories that would make him a legend.
Drawing on letters, memoirs, newspaper articles, and stories, Charlotte Gray delivers an enthralling tale of the gold madness that swept through a continent and changed a landscape and its people forever.
- File Size: 3823 KB
- Print Length: 434 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1582436118
- Publisher: Counterpoint (September 10, 2010)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B0042X9WLY
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #71,732 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #2
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > History > Americas > Canada > Post-Confederation - #2
in Books > History > Americas > Canada > 19th Century - #3
in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Regional Canada
- #2
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > History > Americas > Canada > Post-Confederation - #2
in Books > History > Americas > Canada > 19th Century - #3
in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Regional Canada
This book is such a great chronicle of the various Klondike gold rushes that it definitely stands together with some of the great books that have been written about the Klondike/Yukon experience. The information abut Jack London and his role in making the myths of the Yukon is just indispensable. If you think you know something about Jack London and how he did in the Klondike, I think you will be surprised by what Ms Gray digs up about London and his time in the Klondike.
The other characters, and their adventures, fairly jump off the page, with their bravado and spirit as real as a chilly Klondike breeze. The idea of a place so free and wild captures the imagination, and Ms. Gray manages to paint these word pictures with a freshness and vividness that you can really feel. The feeling of adventure and "gold fever" leaps from Ms Gray's pages. It is truly a funny and fun read, which is difficult to accomplish in what is essentially a history book.
So read this one if you want to know why people went there and what they found. I guarantee you will go away with an admiration and respect for these brave souls that you will remember long after you have finished this incredible book!!!
By S. R. Tabz
Gold Diggers is really three books in one: a short primer on the Klondike, a book about business and the economy, and a story about how far some are willing to go in pursuit of their dreams.
As a primer on the Klondike, it offers a fascinating account of the last great gold rush in world history. Gray writes in a descriptive and evocative style, with a focus on a diverse set of characters and their intriguing personal journeys to the North.
The story is also a kind of microcosm of the business world -- showing how economies quickly grow, flourish, and suddenly collapse, all as a consequence of the ebb and flow of information. It's also a story about how cunning entrepreneurs build businesses that become monopolies, which eventually fold or get bought out by larger entities, in the perennial flow of big capital and the more complicated politics of empire.
But more than anything, the book testifies to the strength of the human spirit in the face of overwhelming odds. We see this in the formidable journey that prospectors endured from the Alaskan coast, through the Yukon interior, to Dawson city -- a journey over treacherous mountain passes, violent river rapids, and countless miles of trail in the freezing cold. We also see it in the conditions suffered during winter on the creeks, where temperatures would dip as low as sixty or seventy below zero, food was scarce, and daylight hours few.
Often character here is destiny, with cunning or determination making all the difference in how things turn out. But just as often, it isn't. So, while many become rich or famous at the end of it, many more come away empty-handed or broken-hearted, or die somewhere along the way, frozen and alone in the wilderness.
Gold Diggers is a moving and illuminating story, both historically unique and universal. It holds many riches in store, just waiting to be discovered.
By Robert Francis
Gold Diggers: Striking It Rich in the Klondike Preview
Link
Please Wait...