High Stakes is a biography of Leigh S.J. Hunt (1855-1933), a visionary entrepreneur whose advice and whose business activities in the United States and in Asia influenced Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover. Hunt played a major role in the early growth of Seattle and Las Vegas, organized and developed the richest gold mine concession in late nineteenth-century Korea, and established the cotton industry in the Sudan. Throughout his life, he sought new frontiers and transformed them into productive units. He risked his and others’ money in pursuit of personal challenge and the expansion of his nation’s economy.