West Books - Page 12

Major Problems in the History of the American West (Major Problems in American History)

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Good for student and lay reader 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Bought this book for a grad level class I am taking. Very easy to read. Preface in each chapter to historical documents and separate preface to modern writings. Gives a look at both sides of the story; not just the party line. Would recommend to both student and lay reader alike.

Editorial Review:

This unique collection of essays and documents brings to life the major topics in American western and frontier history from the sixteenth to the twentieth century.

Cowboy Culture: A Saga of Five Centuries

David Dary

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Thoroughly researched, vastly informative . . . 5 out of 5 stars.
13 of 13 people found this review helpful.

Currently there is no review here for this fine book, and it deserves one. For starters, the title for this well-researched history of 400 years of cattle raising in North America is not exactly right. It should be called "Cattle Culture," because cattle and not cowboys are at the center of the story the author tells. And his story traces their introduction to the New World by Columbus in 1494 through to the end of the open ranges in the American West in the late 1800s. Horses, also introduced by the Spanish, are no less a part of that story, along with the cattlemen who owned, bought, sold and sometimes stole cattle, and the horsemen (vaqueros, buckaroos, and cowboys) who worked the cattle.

Readers learn a great deal about cattle as a business, how the price of livestock fluctuated with demand and depended always on getting cattle to market, often many hundreds of difficult miles away. In some periods, the value of cattle was not in the beef on the hoof but in the hides and tallow. The California vaqueros, we learn, were not just herders but also expert slaughterers of cattle.

Not surprisingly, a great swath of Texas history is interwoven with the rising and falling fortunes of cattlemen, and the author puts together a detailed picture of the industry as it emerged there in the mid-19th century, foundered during the Civil War, and then flourished as the railheads worked west into Kansas. But the cattle drives from Texas to cow-towns like Abilene were only some of the many that the century witnessed, as herds were driven in various directions, sometimes by west-bound settlers on the Oregon Trail, or often to meet the sudden demand for beef wherever there were gold strikes. The author provides accounts of many of these, illustrated with maps.

There are many black and white period photographs in the book, which challenge the back-lot Hollywood imagery that readers are likely to have of the West. There are also informative illustrations, like that of the early western bridle called a jáquima by the Spanish-speaking vaqueros, later anglicized to "hackamore" by their American counterparts. The reader learns of many words flowing from Spanish into English, including "ranch," from the Spanish "rancho." The meanings of Spanish words like "hacienda" (a place where work is done) are also clarified. There are also illustrations of how to throw ropes in different ways to catch cattle and horses, how to dally a rope around a saddle horn, and the design of various kinds of barbed wire.

One chapter, "Bunkhouse Culture," is devoted to describing the fraternity of young men, mostly from the South, who came to be the Texas "cow-boys" that eventually emerged as the mythic figures on horseback that excited popular imagination. The author describes the unspoken "code" that bound them together and notes their quick passing from history as long-range drovers when barbed wire brought an end to the open range starting in the 1870s. About the same time, ranching as a corporate enterprise transformed the old conditions of loyalty between cowman and cowboy that characterized the earlier years. And so 400 years of history drew to a close.

At 300+ pages, plus another 50 of notes and an index, the book is not a quick page-turner. It reads instead like a very informative and often entertaining textbook on its subject, drawing heavily on contemporary accounts from diaries, journals, and newspapers. Doing so, it brings the past to life with people, personalities, and arresting incidents. I'm happy to recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the American West, the origins and development of the cattle industry, and the interplay between cattle, politics, economics, and social history.

Editorial Review:

A nationwide bestseller--with more than 65,000 copies in print since publication by Alfred A. Knopf in 1981, this fascinating chronicle of cowboy life and legend is now available in a trade paperback edition. It's the 500-year saga of the "real cowboy"--from fifteenth-century Mexico to the twentieth-century American West.

Glacier National Park, The First 100 Years

Carol W. Guthrie

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The story of Glacier National Park has been millions of years in the making.

Visit the land before it was a park, when the Blackfeet, Kootenai, Gros Ventre, Assiniboine, Pend d´Oreille, and Bitterroot Salish tribes called the Crown of the Continent home. Experience this place when the Blackfeet first acquired horses and guarded the passes and hunting grounds from rival tribes. See the land as the Kootenai did when they held their spiritual ceremonies at the foot of today's Lake McDonald.

Witness the collision of cultures as Guthrie chronicles the arrival of the explorers, traders, and railroad barons—and the rush of settlers moving west.

In 1910 Glacier National Park was designated a national park, and it has undergone astonishing changes in the past 100 years. From the Great Northern Railway's Swiss-style chalets and lodges to the glorious Going-to-the-Sun Road, from the park's tragic first fatal grizzly attacks to its designation as an International Peace Park, Biosphere Reserve, and World Heritage Site, Glacier National Park has a story unlike any other.

· Official licensed product of the Glacier National Park Centennial
· Published in partnership with the Glacier Natural History Association
· Features more than 240 paintings and historical and contemporary photographs, as well as 6 colorful maps
· Covers the geologic and human history of the area, from American Indian tribes to early settlers, and details the first 100 years since Glacier was designated a national park
· Includes an extensive 4-page Time Trek of events from prehistory to the present

Please visit us at FarcountryPress.com for more information!

Mexifornia : A State of a Becoming

Victor Davis Hanson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 26 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

tired... 2 out of 5 stars.
4 of 24 people found this review helpful.

the first 50 pages were OK but downhill from there.
these are the tired rantings of a liberal who now realizes the failings of that mindset... but now it's too late. the author seems to think that picking grapes is some sort of noble undertaking and that manual labor is superior to his real job--- college professor.
now that the predictable chickens have come home to roost (mexican invasion, more welfare for illegal immigrants and overloaded hospitals full of thirld-worlders, he is SHOCKED!!SHOCKED!! that there is gambling going on at Ricks in Casablanca...
mediocre bathroom reading at best.

A personal and factual analysis 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Hanson's well-written book demonstrates that complex and controversial topics can be discussed with passion, compassion, and respect. He writes about how legal and illegal immigrants have changed and are changing California into Mexifornia, a blend of two nations and peoples. I ordered extra copies to circulate among friends.

Editorial Review:

This book is part history, part political analysis and part memoir. It is an intensely personal book about what has changed in California over the last quarter century.

Theatres in Los Angeles (Images of America: California)

Suzanne T Cooper, Amy R Hall, Ma

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Theatres in Los Angeles 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Although this is not the first book written on Los Angeles theatres(or for that matter, California), the book is well put together with many photographs not seen before. Definitely worth while for the theatre/architecture enthusiast.

A note to the author: page 13, top; the Tower Theatre opened in 1927, NOT 1972 as listed!

Don Bohatka
Midwest Director, Theatre Historical Society of America

Editorial Review:

Los Angeles and the movies grew up together, and a natural extension of the picture business was the premium presentation of the product—the biggest, best, and brightest theatres imaginable. The magnificent movie palaces along Broadway in downtown Los Angeles still represent the highest concentration of vintage theatres in the world. With Hollywood and the movies practically synonymous, the theatres in the studios’ neighborhood were state-of-the-art for showbiz, whether they were designed for film, vaudeville, or stage productions. From the elegant Orpheum and the exotic Grauman’s Chinese to the modest El Rey, this volume celebrates the architecture and social history of Los Angeles’s unique collection of historic theatres past and present. The common threads that connect them all, from the grandest movie palace to the smallest neighborhood theatre, are stories and the ghosts of audiences past waiting in the dark for the show to begin.

California Missions (Sunset Pictorial)

Sunset

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Excellent source for overview of each California Mission. 5 out of 5 stars.
57 of 58 people found this review helpful.

This book describes not only how and why the Missions were established, but also gives a history and brief description of each individual mission in the California system. There are some pictures which could help when making a model (the book "California Missions Projects & Layouts" by Libby Nelson is best for actual model-building). But this book certainly gives enough history to be an excellent resource when writing a report. It is also written so that a 4th-grader can read and understand. A must for any Mission student!

Boycott it. 1 out of 5 stars.
21 of 51 people found this review helpful.

Although it's nicely written and photographed, NO book reissued these days as a historical outline or overview has ANY business referring to Native Californians as "simple" or "childlike" or the colors of their artwork as "barbaric."

As for 90% of these "simple" people with a rich cultural and spiritual life having been wiped out through warfare, culture shock, deicide, and disease, the authors weigh in on the pro-mission anti-mission argument by resorting to this supposedly measured justification:

"...the treatment of natives by the Spaniards, though open to criticism by modern standards of political morality, was certainly no worse than that practiced in other colonial empires of the time. Slavery was condoned by all the world empires until late in the 19th century...Basically, the conflict of Spaniard vs. Indian was that of two cultures widely separated in style but fated to collide, and the reduction of the weaker by the stronger was inevitable."

To argue that one form of subjugation is "no worse" than another, or that it was an inevitable result of the meeting of two cultures, is a cynical--no, a despicable hypothesis; and until this racist book is rewritten to eradicate these irresponsible "reasons" for ruthless colonialism, I urge the potential reader not to buy it. You can find nice photos and good commentary in plenty of other books. Let this one wither on the vine just as the missions did before their later restoration.

Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows

Will Bagley

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 38 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Taint for Hire, Anybody? 1 out of 5 stars.
6 of 14 people found this review helpful.

The book, _Blood of the Prophets_ was unfortunately written by a 'for hire' author with an a priori conclusion that, in Will Bagley's words, would "pin it on Brigham Young". When you pour your research into an anti-Mormon polemic, it tends to be wasted taint and that's what we've gotten here.

The Bagley Conspiracy 1 out of 5 stars.
6 of 12 people found this review helpful.

I was hopeful of getting a straight story of what happened at Mountain Meadows when I read this book. My ancestor is involved. Bagley warned that if the reader came to read about the "Saints" this and the "Saints" that, then the reader would be disappointed. I was excited about reading a balanced and unbiased story. I checked it out of the public library. I did not see the biased word "Saints" but I did read a very biased book.


I am not a big conspiracy person. However, Bagley's conspiracy goes like this:

1. The much beloved Parley P. Pratt is murdered.
2. Two Mormon men see the "Arkansas" party leave.
3. They notify the Utah Mormons that the wagon train is on the way.
4. The Mormons want to take revenge for Parley P. Pratt's murder
5. The apostle Charles C. Rich (my ancestor) kicks them out of Salt Lake. He sets in motion the conspiracy and tells them not to take the route that the Donner Party took but rather to go to Mountain Meadows.
6. There Brigham Young has devised a plan to murder all in the wagon train.
7. (By all accounts) About 50 Mormon men (remember no Indians) are led by Lee, a somewhat less of a leader. These 50 men (remember no Indians) keep tough wagon train men with guns pinned down for several days. (That would be tough. I've been there. There were more trees back then.)
8. No attempt is made to cover up the crime site. (The bodies were just left)
9. A very weak story is contrived to explain how everyone in the wagon train was murdered.
10. It doesn't take long for the real story to come out.
11. Still the crime site is not cleaned up. The US Army does that later.

I am not a conspiracy person. I feel Oswald acted alone when he killed Kennedy.
I do not think there was a conspiracy to kill everyone in the wagon train. It is silly, nonsensical, and intellectually offensive to say that Brigham Young ordered the massacre. Such people put themselves in the same class as the Kennedy conspiracy theorists.

What made Bagley write this?

1. I think he has issues with his Mormon past. He hints of it in his writing.
2. He "does not like Brigham Young". It is probably not a good idea to write a book if you feel that way. The best Hitler books are balanced. Bagley's book is not balanced. He all but admits it.

Conclusion: Bagley blew it. He wrote an implausible book based on an unlikely conspiracy. He started out with the goal of pinning it on Brigham Young. This reveals a bias..

The conspiracy that is the foundation of his book is not supported by other unbiased historians.
A recent book, The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Vincent Bugliosi, put to rest the Kennedy conspiracy. The upcoming book by Turley will hopefully put to rest the Bagley conspiracy.

The Firecracker Boys: H-bombs, Inupiat Eskimos, and the Roots of the Environmental Movement

Dan O'Neill

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Total reviews: 225 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Sounder is no beauty. But as a coon dog, this loyal mongrel with his cavernous bark is unmatched. When the African American sharecropper who has raised Sounder from a pup is hauled off to jail for stealing a hog, his family must suffer their humiliation and crushing loss with no recourse. To make matters worse, in the fracas, Sounder is shot and disappears. The eventual return of a tattered and emaciated Sounder doesn't change the fact that the sharecropper's oldest son is forced to take on man's work to help support the family. His transition to adulthood is paved by the rocks and taunts hurled at him by convicts and guards as he searches for his father. But along this rough road he ultimately finds salvation as well.

William H. Armstrong's Newbery Award-winning novel quickly became a classic as a moving portrayal of resilience and hope in the face of profound human tragedy. Decades later, the bittersweet story still rings true, as strong-spirited individuals continue to battle the evil of prejudice. (Ages 9 to 12) --Emilie Coulter

Historic Photos of San Francisco (Historic Photos.)

Rebecca Schall

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A photographic memoir of a resilient city 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

With two parents that were professors on the topic, I grew up in a household where history was always at the top of the agenda. To complement that, I have always been a fan of photography, doing my own share of it when I get the opportunity. So the book "Historic Photos of San Francisco" came like a perfect blend for me, even more so because San Francisco is one of my favorite cities in the world.

As the title implies, the book offers a photographic history of the city, going from 1860, through the turn of the century (including the earthquake of 1906 and the post-earthquake period), all the way through to the 1960s and the "Summer of Love". The photos not only capture key moments and memories in the city's life: they also help the reader understand the resilient nature of San Fran.

"Historic Photos of San Francisco" makes for more than just a nice coffee table book: it's an invaluable testimonial and historic reference for the generations to come.

Editorial Review:

Before the discovery of silver and gold, San Francisco was a frontier missionary town. From these modest beginnings, the city overcame great adversity to become one of the world s most significant metropolitan centers. Throughout its history San Francisco has been an entrepreneurial center. Beginning with new transportation technologies of railroads and shipping, to services such as banking and insurance, the entrepreneurial community has a long history of overcoming challenges to reach prosperity.
This volume, Historic Photos of San Francisco, captures the evolution of this great city in still photography from various collections of the San Francisco Public Library. The book follows life, government, education, and events spanning two centuries of San Francisco's history. It captures unique and rare scenes through the original lens of hundreds of historic photographs. These images portray the events and people that have played a part in the building of a unique and prosperous city.

Tough Trip Through Paradise, 1878-1879

Andrew Garcia, Bennett H. Stein

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Tough Trip Through Paradise 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I purchased this book for my husband. He enjoyed it and passed it on to other readers.

awesome 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I read this book many years ago and then lost my copy of it, so I ordered another one on Amazon. This is the most moving book I have ever read. If you're into non-fiction westerns, this is the book for you. I found the first half a tad slow but the second half was fantastic. To this day, when I think about it, it almost brings tears to my eyes. The story was written from the memoirs of Andrew Garcia, a scout for Custer and tells of his adventures traveling through the west with his native american wives. I loaned this book to a friend and he shares my enthusiasm for it.

One of the 10 best "documentaries" I have ever read! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I had read this book some 40 years ago and thought it was great! Recently I purchased it on Amazon and read it again; even better the second time around. Provides fascinating insight to a time of historical importance to the American West.

A different kind of humor 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Like so many commentators here, I read this book a long time ago, then loaned my copy to someone and never got it back. I have Google searched many times trying to find a copy so I could read it again.

The thing that struck me most in this re-reading is the great pervading sense of humor that runs through the book despite the difficult and often dangerous life as a white man living among Indians in Montana in the late eighteen hundreds. When this book arrived, I was reading 'Broadway Nights'; a humorous book about a gay pianist (not pronounced pee-anist). Both books made me laugh out loud despite being at polar extremes as far as life style is concerned.

There are unforgettable moments in this book; the fat squaw and the drunk warrior; the bear in the tent. Some made me laugh hysterically, and a few made me shiver with awe and horror.

Sadly, this printing does not include the photos printed in the original book. They brought everything into sharp, and, at times painful, clarity. Poignant reminders of the past and beautiful Indian girls, now long gone. Just read it.