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TITLE: The Explorer King: Adventure, Science and the Great Diamond Hoax--Clarence King in the Old West
SPEAKER: Robert Wilson
EVENT DATE: 02/08/2006
RUNNING TIME: 56 minutes
DESCRIPTION:
Robert Wilson discussed his new biography, "The Explorer King: Adventure, Science, and the Great Diamond Hoax--Clarence King in the Old West," in a program sponsored by the Center for the Book. "The Explorer King" (Scribner, 2006) examines the life of Yale-educated Clarence King, who helped create the new American West of the 19th century. King went west in 1863 at age 21 as a geologist-explorer. During the next decade, he scaled the highest peaks of the Sierra Nevada; published a popular book, "Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada," now considered a classic of adventure literature; and initiated a major land survey of the American West. In 1872 King uncovered one of the greatest financial frauds of the century, The Great Diamond Hoax, in which claims of a diamond field in Wyoming turned out to be bogus.
Speaker Biography: Robert Wilson, who has been an award-winning editor at Preservation Magazine and Civilization: The Magazine of the Library of Congress, now edits The American Scholar.
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