The Explorer King Adventure, Science, and the Great Diamond Hoax Clarence King in the Old West

Robert Wilson paints a compelling portrait of Clarence King, scientist-explorer whose mountain-scaling, desert-crossing, river-fording, blizzard-surviving adventures helped create the West. Born in 1842, King became an icon of the new America: a man of action and intellect, science and literature, romanticism and charm. In a combination of adventure, history, and landscape writing, Wilson covers the West during an explosive time for science, politics, and business. And within this fascinating picture of the nineteenth century we meet a man who, for better or for worse, typified the soul of the era. Book jacket.

Robert Wilson is the editor of the Scholar and the author of Barnum: An American Life, among other works.