Book excerpt: “Absolutely first-rate.”—The New Yorker This thrilling story is at once first-rate history and first-rate entertainment. Incredible events occurred in North America after a decrepit steamboat docked at Seattle in 1897 containing two tons of pure gold. So frenzied was the clash for gold and so scant was information about conditions in the Klondike that the rush for riches became a kind of fabulous madness. The entire tale—of which Pierre Berton’s account is the definitive telling—has an epic ring (legends were lived and fortunes were won) as much because of its splendid folly as because of its color and motion. “The definitive account of an affair as wildly improbable as any in North American history.”—Saturday Review “A lively saga of the great gold rush. It is the most complete and most authentic on the subject in English.”—The New York Times Book Review