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The electrifying announcement in 1897 that gold was to be found in wildly enriching quantities in the Klondike River region in remote Alaska was demonically well timed to attract an exodus of economically desperate Americans. Within weeks tens of thousands of them were embarking from western ports to throw themselves at some of the harshest terrain on the planet--in winter yet--woefully unprepared, with no experience at all in mining or mountaineering. It was a mass delusion that quickly proved deadly. Brian Castner tells the unvarnished yet always striking and often amazing truth of this greed fueled migration.