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Description edit
The secret double life of the man who mapped the American West, and the woman he loved Clarence King is a hero of nineteenth century western history; a brilliant scientist and witty conversationalist, best-selling author and architect of the great surveys that mapped the West after the... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Characters/People edit
- James Gardiner: Add a description of this character.
- Clarence King: a boy-genius geologist and first director of the US Geological Survey
- Henry Adams
- James Todd: a Pullman porter based in Brooklyn, NY
- Ada Todd
- Ada Copeland: a freed slave who went North to seek her fortune as a young woman
- John Hay: a close friend of King's who attended at Abraham Lincoln's deathbed
- Mrs. Howland
- Wetmore
- Wallace
- Grace
- Thelma
- Frank Emmons
- Marian
- Waring
- James Weldon Johnson
- Leroy
- Luciana
- Wilkins
- Townsley
- Whitney
- Lincoln
- Jim Gardiner
- Ada King
- Alexander Lancaster
- William Dean Howells
- Mildred
- John La Farge
- Sidney
- Annie Purnell
- Brown
- Humphreys
- Bronson
- Mitchell
- James Hague
- William Brewer
- Ruskin
- Lind
- Henry James
- Florence Howland: a very put-upon woman who was widowed twice by 40 and who struggled to raise her children in straitened financial circumstances
Quotes edit
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“Civilization so narrows the gamut! Respectability lets the human pendulum swing over such a pitiful little arc.”
Clarence King
- Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
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Psychologists say that to be a successful liar, one needs three attributes: the ability to plan ahead, a talent for managing one’s own emotions, and the capacity to read the needs of other people.
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In 1896 the Supreme Court of the United States upheld these laws in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, which affirmed that people with one “black” great-grandparent could, for all intents and purposes, be considered black themselves, no matter what they looked like. This peculiarly American idea came to be known as “hypodescent.” “One drop of black blood” trumped seven drops of “white.”
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“neurasthenia” to describe the effect of modern industrialized society upon the
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The term “slumming” entered the English language in the mid-1880s to describe the practice of visiting the crowded neighborhoods of the urban poor
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and brightest man of his generation.”2
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glimpsed something he sought in Ada Copeland and her African American world, and he acted to seize the promise of that rich emotional life.
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white residents foreign born.1
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“People are looked at in only two ways,” King wrote to Hay, “with the brain and with the heart. If you take the former method you initially classify and judge people by their differences with other people usually yourself. If you see them with the heart you have your conceptions on the similarities between them and some other people usually yourself.”
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often observed, “it was not the modern woman that interested him; it was the archaic female, with instincts and without intellect.”79
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When the activist Frederick Douglass wed his white secretary Helen Pitts in
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Setting & Locations edit
- New York City
- Georgia
- Manhattan
- California
- Brooklyn
- Newport
- Washington
- Flushing
- London
- West Point
- America
- United States Geological Survey
- San Francisco
- Florence
- Toronto
- Europe
- Arizona
- Sierra Nevada
- West Indies
- Brunswick
- Paris
- Mexico
- Baltimore
- North Prince Street
- Chicago
- Virginia City
- Florida
- Columbus
- Boston
- Cuba
- Arkansas
- Kalmia Avenue
- Canada
- Pacific
- Harris County
- China
- Caribbean
- Colorado
- Alabama
- New England
- Troup County
- Maryland
- New Haven
- Queens
- Spain
- Vinegar Hill: a foul-smelling corner of NYC where Ada and James Todd lived for a few years
- The Wild West: where you could still rub elbows with un-assimilated Indians and hunt buffalo
- the Brunswick: a New York City men's club where Clarence King lived, and periodically disappeared from
First Sentence edit
Edward V. Brown, the census taker, moved slowly down North Prince Street, knocking on each and every door in this Flushing neighborhood of Queens, New York.
Table of Contents edit
PROLOUGUE: AN INVENTED LIFE
PART ONE: CLARENCE KING AND ADA COPELAND
1. Becoming Clarence King
2. King Of The West
3. Becoming Ada Copeland
4. King Of The City
PART TWO: JAMES AND ADA TODD
5. New Beginnings
6. Family Lives
7. Breakdowns
8. Endings
PART THREE: ADA KING
9. On Her Own
10. The Trial
EPILOGUE
Secrets
Authors & Contributors edit
- Martha A. Sandweiss (Author)
First Edition edit
Original Language: English
Publisher: Add the publisher.
Country: Add the country of publication.
Publication Date: Add the publication date.
ISBN: Add the ISBN.
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Add the publisher.
Country: Add the country of publication.
Publication Date: Add the publication date.
ISBN: Add the ISBN.
Page Count: 384
Awards edit
- National Book Critics Circle Award (Finalist, 2009: Biography)
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
- Dewey: 305.896073
Subjects edit
Links to Supplemental Material edit
- National Public Radio: Interview on NPR with the author and an excerpt from the book.
More Books Like This edit
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