The second 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 the West and the nation.

This tale of great expectations follows the money from rich pockets of ore and the bulging pockets of investors and speculators through mills, smelters, and stock markets. Some of the greatest stockholder losses came from insider looting and market manipulation. Bonanzas & Borrascas ties together the fortunes of East and West by exploring the impact of eastern investors and speculators on western mines, as well as the generally unrecognized impact of the western mines on Wall Street and Washington, D.C. The cast of characters includes an array of financial, political, and cultural icons ranging from Hearst, Guggenheim, Baruch, and Hoover to Fremont, Edison, and Twain.