DIAMOND FEVER!

There are diamonds in those hills—or are there?

In November 1870, Kentucky cousins Philip Arnold and John Slack strode into a San Francisco gold and silver mine investor’s office with a bag full of diamonds in the rough. They claimed they’d found a diamond mine, the first one ever located in the American West, though they were evasive, saying only that it was somewhere in “Indian territory.” By the time they agreed to reveal its exact location in 1872, they’d attracted the attention of a congressman, two pirates who stole gold for the Confederate cause during the Civil War, and engineer Henry Janin, a thoroughly reputable mine inspector. Though Janin’s initial assessment of the diamond field concluded it was genuine, it was, in fact, a meticulously planned fraud. In the second half of the book, Sheinkin rolls the tape back, walking readers through the Great Diamond Hoax and its aftermath point by point, like a magician revealing how a trick is done. Chad’s short, interspersed black-and-white comics dramatize high-stakes moments. The book encourages readers to think critically about scams and why people fall for them. The main events are put into the context of the late Reconstruction era and the early Gilded Aged, exploring the impact of the white historical figures and events such as the Indian Appropriations Act of 1871. This analysis is seamlessly folded into a rollicking—and well-researched—adventure story.

A sparkling accomplishment.