This past Fourth of July, as the Amazon deal was percolating behind closed doors, he held a party for employees, with water guns.

NEWYORKER: Happy Feet

Gold, though, is a vote against economic optimism, a hunker-down commodity that ideologically belongs beside guns, canned tuna and bottles of water in the basement.

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There were rocks everywhere, and scorpions and tarantulas and rattlesnakes, and vultures and no trees and not much water, and skinny dogs and donkeys, and ugly bad guys with guns and bullet vests who rode laughing into town to drink and shoot off their pistols and rifles, as if it were the Fourth of July, driving their horses all over town like dirt bikes on desert dunes.

NEWYORKER: Uncle Rock