THE EXPLORER KING (SIGNED); Adventure, Science, and the Great Diamond Hoax--Clarence King in the Old West

New York: Scribner, 2006. First Edition. Cloth-backed Boards. Fine/Fine. (13) 302 (1) pp. SIGNED/INSCRIBED by author in ink on the title page: "Robert S. Wilson / For Matt, longtime friend, and biographer of my father. Bob / March 1, 2006". Illustrated, from period photographs and 2 maps. Illustrated unclipped dust jacket. Bibliography, Notes and Index. Cloth-backed boards. 6" xz 9 1/4". From the flap: "In this, one of the year's most compelling biographies, Robert Wilson paints a brilliant portrait of Clarence King--a scientist-explorer ;whose mountain-scaling, desert-crossing, river-fording, blizzard-surviving adventures helped create the new West of the nineteenth ceentury....The Yale-educated King went west in 1863 at age twenty-one as geologist-explorer. During the next decade he scaled the highest pjeaks of the Sierra Nevada, published a popular bo ok now considered a classic of advernture literatiure, initiated a ground-breaking land survyu of the American West, and ultimately uncovered one of the greatest frauds of the century--the Great Diamond Hoax, a discovery that made him an international celebrity at a time when they were few and far between." A Fine copy in a Fine unclipped dust jacket, now in a clear mylar protective sleeve. ALWAYS FREE SHIPPING of our books in boxes, via media mail, to any United States address.