The boom era began with the discovery of gold in California in 1848 and extended over fifty years to include the rushes in the Pikes Peak region in Colorado, the Black Hills of South Dakota, Alder Gulch in Montana, and the Yukon. Precious Dust humanizes the mad rush to these remote places.
"Marks is a gifted writer and an industrious researcher with an eye for telling detail. . . . The result is far and away our best social history of the gold rush experience as well as, in its very strangeness, an American portrait." —Washington Post
"In a remarkable way the story of the gold rush era adds up to a uniquely American experience. It is an incredible tale of peril, misfortune, luck, determination, back-breaking labor, personal bravery, high adventure, and the amassing of fortunes in ‘precious dust’ for a relative few."—New York Times Book Review
"Marks’s engrossing saga describes this grand late nineteenth-century treasure hunt as one of our history’s epic dramas, capturing the essence of America’s headlong rush toward a modern, industrial society."—San Francisco Chronicle
"Marks effectively blends diaries and letters into a masterful narrative. . . . [She] is to be credited for including the voices of women and people of color."—Library Journal
"An absorbing cultural, sociological, and historical chronicle of a pivotal epoch that both reaffirmed and redefined the American way of life."—Booklist