John Sutter (1803-1880) was a Swiss expatriate whose attempt at creating a personal empire in the Sacramento Valley was ineluctably altered when gold was discovered on his settlement. In his biography of this ambitious, hapless dreamer, Hurtado (modern American history, U. of Oklahoma) delineates the ambiguities of Sutter's life in the context of the ambiguities of the American conquest of the West. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)