Ambrose Bierce (1842–?1914) took part in the U.S. Civil War, dug for gold in the Black Hills of Dakota, worked for William Randolph Hearst on the San Francisco Examiner, and from time to time simply vanished. Finally, in 1913 he went south of the border into revolutionary Mexico and disappeared without trace. No one has ever learned what happened to him, but before he vanished he had left behind an enduring legacy: The Devil's Dictionary.