When we talk about success, be it on Wall Street, or Silicon Valley, or even the boom in natural gas, we always talk about it as “the new gold rush."  In part because the Gold Rush represented the mobility, energy and adventure of Americans in pursuit of riches.

But those riches, that began in California in 1849, were anything but easy.  While many made fortunes, many of those fortunes came to those who took care of the hundreds of thousands who would come looking to change their lives.That’s the world that Edward Dolnick writes about in The Rush: America's Fevered Quest for Fortune, 1848-1853

My conversation with Edward Dolnick: