Good solid reading, neither too heavy handed from the angle of scholarship and research, nor too glamorous in the picture of one of America's most colorful figures. A sure sale on the Coast, and an important library and college item everywhere. Careful, authentic, drawn from primary sources, weighing previous evidence in the balance, this should prove a definitive life of the man to whom the discovery of gold proved eventual ruin. He had early abandoned his family in Switzerland, had had a fabulous career in America, he made an empire out of a wilderness, he added new territory to the United States, and he died a broken man. Historical adventure.