| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 36.1

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 36.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Nature of Gold: An Environmental History of the Klondike Gold Rush. By Kathryn Morse. Foreword by William Cronon. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003. xviii + 290 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95.)

This is a refreshing book on a topic that has attracted much interest over the past half dozen years. Morse dispenses with a good deal of the standard—often tired—approaches to gold rush history and begins at the beginning. Why did people value gold? And what is the nature of gold? That second question, with its multiple meanings, echoes throughout the book. Morse argues, for example, that the 1896 contest between McKinley and Bryan was in part a struggle over the nature of gold and that this debate sheds light on the nature of the Klondike gold rush.

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