The first of a two-volume study of the heyday of gold, silver, and copper mining in the American West is unique in both scope and approach. Here is a saga of mines and money, of the richly profitable bonanzas and crushingly profitless borrascas of the West. Richard E. Lingenfelter describes how miners, managers, investors, and speculators produced enormous wealth--spurring the American economy, attracting myriads of Argonauts and settlers, and transforming...