West Books - Page 5

Man of the Family

Ralph Moody

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The Ralph Moody Collection 5 out of 5 stars.
15 of 15 people found this review helpful.

A reviewer asked for help regarding the names and volumes in this series. Here it is...

1. Little Britches
2. Man of the Family
3. The Home Ranch
4. Mary Emma & Company
5. The Fields of Home
6. Shaking the Nickel
7. The Dry Divide
8. Horse of a Different Color

Mr. Moody shares adventures of his life in this series. It's wonderful, but there is some foul language. Therefore, I would recommend reading the books aloud with older children (not for the preschool/early elementary crowd).

A family on its own 4 out of 5 stars.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful.

When Ralph Moody's father dies in the early spring of 1910, he's eleven years old, the senior boy in a family of five, and determined to support his mother and siblings. It's a rocky road, for his mother, even though she declares she'll "depend on" him as "her man," is equally determined that he must stay in school--which means he's restricted to nickel-an-hour boy-jobs for most of the year. And so, despite the title, this book is less about Ralph's helming the family than about the family's pulling together to support itself. They start a "cookery route," selling Mrs. Moody's New England food to neighbors; the children pick fruit, and Ralph rides in match races, breeds rabbits, and hires schoolmates with horses to keep the cattle from the incoming trail herds out of the residential lanes, as well as discovering that it's possible to supply the family's entire need for coal simply by picking up what has fallen off the tenders of passing trains. Like his father before him, he proves to be a shrewd trader and a clever inventor who comes up with a device on which to dry and repair the lace curtains from Denver's Brown Palace Hotel when his mother gets the idea of offering her services as a contract launderer. And he and his brothers and sisters get a surprise when, six months after their father's death, their mother has a sixth baby.

Besides Mary Emma Moody, who stands solidly in the midst of her young family and exemplifies the best type of "widder woman," the two most unforgettable characters in the book are Sheriff McGrath, a widower who tries awkwardly to court Ralph's mother, and Jerry McEnerney, the Irish section boss who, for all his early bluster, soon becomes the boy's friend and quietly arranges for him to obtain over 100 used railroad ties to haul away and sell. And though there are setbacks and mishaps, such as the vividly described spillage of an entire wagonload of cookery, the Moodys soldier on, until it begins to look as if they will be able to stay indefinitely in Ralph's beloved Colorado. But then Mary Emma incautiously shares a secret with a neighbor, and is subpoenaed to testify before the Grand Jury. Fearing that she will end by sending an innocent man to the gallows, she decides there is only one thing to do: take her children and secretly flee out of state to live with her brother in New England. And so one phase of Ralph's life ends and another begins, to be told in subsequent books. But the West will call him back, and he will never be fully free of its spell.

This is a funny, warmhearted, inspiring tale of a family determined to make its way without seeking charity, of its friends and neighbors, and of the beautiful land it loves. It would make a splendid family readaloud, or a good book to curl up with alone if you love stories of the West and of people who don't give up.

Editorial Review:

Fortified with Yankee ingenuity and western can-do energy, the Moody family, transplanted from New England, builds a new life on a Colorado ranch early in the 20th century. Father has died and Little Britches shoulders the responsibilities of a man at age eleven. Continues the true pioneering adventures as unforgettable as those in Little Britches. Illustrated.

Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park

Lee Whittlesey

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 46 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Morbidly Interesting, and a Personal Note 4 out of 5 stars.
7 of 8 people found this review helpful.

The last decade has seen a slew of books dealing with deaths in the national parks. The authors assure us that they publish these volumes to warn visitors of the dangers they face in the parks. The reality of course is that many in the literate public are fascinated by death, especially in unusual or exotic circumstances, and these books cater to that morbid demand. Nonetheless, they make for interesting reading and serve as a cautious reminder that visits to the wilderness, while safer than certain neighborhoods in major metropolitan areas, still contain very real hazards. This volume by Lee Whittlesey, was one of the first in this genre, and is still one of the best.

From grizzly attacks to death by poisonous gasses and murders, Whittlesey exhaustively covers all known deaths in Yellowstone from before the founding of the park to 1995 when the book was published. For me the descriptions of people falling into the hot springs were by far the most riveting, and the most grusome, portions of the book. Cooked alive, the victims of these accidents rarely died quickly, but often instead lingered on for many hours, a pretty horrific way to go. Whittlesey also catalogs the many mistakes victims and some lucky survivors made to help visitors to the park avoid similar fates.

One thing that sets this book apart from others in this genre is that Whittlesey, in addition to experience as a park tour guide and ranger, is a lawyer. This background shows itself in various ways. The book includes, for example, extensive discussion of court cases that resulted from fatalities in Yellowstone and how they have influenced park management. It also shows in the author's broader philosophy about the deaths in the park. True accidents, he argues, are rare. For the most part, people who have died in the parks were, he argues, actually negligent when it came to their own safety and sometimes the safety of others. This attitude towards the victims shows itself throughout the book, and most of the time Whittlesey makes a pretty convincing case.

But not always. When discussing the 1986 death of William Tesinsky (by mauling from a grizzly bear) Whittlesey notes, "Bear 59 was a semi habituated bear, ... But she had never even approached a human aggressively." This is not entirely true. I should know, because I was chased by Bear 59 on June 20 of that very year while hiking (alone) between the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River and Yellowstone Lake. Indeed, it was my report to the Lake ranger station that led to the temporary closure of that trail, and the bear's eventual relocation by the Park Service. At that time, Bear 59 had two cubs and a large person walking nearby was, as the ranger explained to me, considered a threat. But 59 no longer had the cubs with her when she killed and partially ate the unfortunate Mr. Tesinsky. No doubt, as Whittlesey says, he was too close for 59's liking while trying to get the perfect photograph. But the retelling of this story, that follows the park's official report which I saw a few years later, is interesting in that it does not mention my earlier encounter with 59. Whittlesey the lawyer argues that, much as we don't want to admit it, negligence is more common than accident. He forgot to add that humans, including park rangers, might sometimes unintentionally omit certain bits of information that do not fit their preconceived notions.

(I asked a ranger about what had become of my incident report during a 1998 visit to the park. She said that it had not been included since the bear had not actually come into physical contact with me. I understand that answer, but it certainly does undermine the claim the bear had never before shown aggressive tendencies. In my case, I was unaware of her existence till I saw her charge out of the woods, two cubs at her heals, and easily 50 yards away.)

Editorial Review:

Intriguing stories of how people have died in Yellowstone warn about the many dangers that exist there and in wild areas in general.

Where I Was From

Joan Didion

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Why are you so mean, Joan? 3 out of 5 stars.
3 of 16 people found this review helpful.

So much of this book was just a cut and paste from her previous articles.

The Lakewood scandal was already covered by her in 1995's New Yorker Magazine.

She has page long quotes from her previous novels "Run River"...which were good; but "Where I Was From" was supposed to be all new material.

She skewers much of California life and society. Unfortunately the people she picks on are the least worthy. Little Leaguers, middle-class, fans of Thomas Kincade....

In a book about California, why didn't she go after the show biz industry, or Politicians......they are the one making the big bucks....not suburbia.

She is a good writer, and I'd read more of her....but not too soon. She comes off as angry, and she isn't someone you want to spend everyday with.

Hers is the kind of writing that is good for every now and then.

In all fairness, maybe with her latest "The Year Of Magical Thinking" .......she's not so angry.

But this one is very insulting, and feels very phoned-in what with all the pages and pages of endless quotes from other/old material.

Editorial Review:

In her moving and insightful new book, Joan Didion reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history and ours. A native Californian, Didion applies her scalpel-like intelligence to the state's ethic of ruthless self-sufficiency in order to examine that ethic's often tenuous relationship to reality.

Combining history and reportage, memoir and literary criticism, Where I Was From explores California's romances with land and water; its unacknowledged debts to railroads, aerospace, and big government; the disjunction between its code of individualism and its fetish for prisons. Whether she is writing about her pioneer ancestors or privileged sexual predators, robber barons or writers (not excluding herself), Didion is an unparalleled observer, and her book is at once intellectually provocative and deeply personal.

Dust Bowl

Donald Worster

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In the mid 1930s, North America's Great Plains faced one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in world history. Donald Worster's classic chronicle of the devastating years between 1929 and 1939 tells the story of the Dust Bowl in ecological as well as human terms. Now, twenty-five years after his book helped to define the new field of environmental history, Worster shares his more recent thoughts on the subject of the land and how humans interact with it. In a new afterword, he links the Dust Bowl to current political, economic and ecological issues--including the American livestock industry's exploitation of the Great Plains, and the on-going problem of desertification, which has now become a global phenomenon. He reflects on the state of the plains today and the threat of a new dustbowl. He outlines some solutions that have been proposed, such as "the Buffalo Commons," where deer, antelope, bison and elk would once more roam freely, and suggests that we may yet witness a Great Plains where native flora and fauna flourish while applied ecologists show farmers how to raise food on land modeled after the natural prairies that once existed.

Frontiers: A Short History of the American West (The Lamar Series in Western History)

Robert V. Hine, John Mack Faragher

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Published in 2000 to critical acclaim, The American West: A New Interpretive History quickly became the standard in college history courses. Now Robert V. Hine and John Mack Faragher offer a concise edition of their classic, freshly updated. Lauded for their lively and elegant writing, the authors provide a grand survey of the colorful history of the American West, from the first contacts between Native Americans and Europeans to the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Frontiers introduces the diverse peoples and cultures of the American West and explores how men and women of different ethnic groups were affected when they met, mingled, and often clashed. Hine and Faragher present the complexities of the American West—as frontier and region, real and imagined, old and new. Showcasing the distinctive voices and experiences of frontier characters, they explore topics ranging from early exploration to modern environmentalism, drawing expansively from a wide range of sources. With four galleries of fascinating illustrations drawn from Yale University's premier Collection of Western Americana, some published here for the first time, this book will be treasured by every reader with an interest in the unique saga of the American West.

Letters of a Woman Homesteader

Elinore Pruitt Stewart

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

I can't put it down! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Dear fellow Book-lovers:
I found this little gem at the local library today and I can't put it down. It is so good--easy to read (perfect for a busy Mom of 5 like me), inspiring, wholesome, funny, and informative. I am fascinated with this woman: her love for people, her giving heart, and her passion for fun and for life. I'm only on page 81 (out of 282) but I can already sit here and tell you to buy this book and enjoy it! I'm buying myself a copy and also one for my best friend. Christmas is coming!

Pioneer grit 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Genuine substance and sincerity describe Stewart's letters from the early twentieth century while homesteading in this remote corner of Wyoming. Whereas most women would not even consider putting down roots in such an isolated area, Mrs. Stewart was determined to make a life for herself in this territory. And she did just that. It took a special kind of person to live in this far-removed landscape.

Her writing, subject matter and approach to life were most admirable. Hard working and always enthusiastic for adventure, she writes of various encounters with surrounding neighbors and experiences into the countryside. If she had any dull moments on the ranch they must have been few and far between.

Very optimistic about life, Mrs. Stewart affirms, "...all my own efforts have always been just to make the best of everything and to take things as they come."
To further quote, "It has always been a theory of mine that when we become sorry for ourselves we make our misfortunes harder to bear, because we lose courage and can't think without bias."

A wonderful read furthering an appreciation for life in the homesteading era.

Editorial Review:

In a rich blend of memoir and meditation, Abbott focuses her graceful and witty attention on mothers and daughters of the South. Theirs is a world of red dirt and backbreaking chores and roof-raising revival meetings - a far cry from the magnolias and mint juleps of Gone with the Wind. "The South of the backwoods, hillbilly plain folk has at last found its true and inspired interpreter," says C. Vann Woodward.

Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party

George R. Stewart

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Timeless Story 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Written over 70 years ago, this account of the Donner Party is still captivating and contemporary. Stewart was a fastidious historiographer as well as a gifted storyteller. This fascinating drama unfolds crisply and frankly. Despite the gruesome details, or perhaps because of them, one becomes engrossed and enticed to keep turning the pages to learn what happened next.

The 1960 supplement was interesting but drier than the original 1936 text. The diary entries and letter from three of the survivors provide a unique view into the ordeal, and the reference summaries are useful aids for keeping the characters and itinerary straight.

Editorial Review:

The tragedy of the Donner party constitutes one of the most amazing stories of the American West. In 1846 eighty-seven people -- men, women, and children -- set out for California, persuaded to attempt a new overland route. After struggling across the desert, losing many oxen, and nearly dying of thirst, they reached the very summit of the Sierras, only to be trapped by blinding snow and bitter storms. Many perished; some survived by resorting to cannibalism; all were subjected to unbearable suffering. Incorporating the diaries of the survivors and other contemporary documents, George Stewart wrote the definitive history of that ill-fated band of pioneers; an astonishing account of what human beings may endure and achieve in the final press of circumstance.

John Colter: His Years in the Rockies

Burton Harris

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Absorbing... 5 out of 5 stars.
23 of 23 people found this review helpful.

Yellowstone...Colter's Hell...geysers...Indians.... I found this book a total pleasure to read. Couldn't put it down! Although it is true that Colter's life was somewhat obscure by a lack of more historical documentation, Harris does an exemplary piece of work with what there is to work with. Citing such references as William Clark, Thomas James, Brackenridge, Bradbury and others, Harris does make a justifiable attempt to back up his story. Required reading for those into this time period of the early American West when mountain men roamed the wide open spaces, high mountain valleys and peaks. It must have been a tough, but very rewarding way of life...if you survived the perils and hardships of that day.

Editorial Review:

John Colter was a crack hunter with the Lewis and Clark expedition before striking out on his own as a mountain man and fur trader. A solitary journey in the winter of 1807-8 took him into present-day Wyoming. To unbelieving trappers he later reported sights that inspired the name of Colter's Hell. It was a sulfurous place of hidden fires, smoking pits, and shooting water. And it was real. John Colter is known to history as probably the first white man to discover the region that now includes Yellowstone National Park. In a classic book, first published in 1952, Burton Harris weighs the facts and legends about a man who was dogged by misfortune and "robbed of the just rewards he had earned."

This Bison Book edition includes a 1977 addendum by the author and a new introduction by David Lavender, who considers Colter's remarkable winter journey in the light of current scholarship. 

The Oregon Trail

Francis Parkman, Elmer N. Feltskog

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

An Excellent Book - but misnamed 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This is an excellent book giving the reader a first person view of the Frontier in the 1840s. The details make the reader feel as if they were living the adventure themselves.

If you are looking for a book that tells of a journey on the Oregon Trail, this is NOT the book for you. A better for the book title might have been "A Summer On The Frontier: Life Among The Indians and Explorers." The author follows the Oregon Trail until he reaches Fort Laramie, and then spends the rest of his time among the indians who inhabited the plains and badlands at the time.

If you are looking for vivid picture of life among the indians, buffaloes, and explorers, this IS the book for you!

Editorial Review:

Francis Parkman was a 23-year-old scion of a prominent Boston family when he decided to write the history of the struggle of French and English for domination of the North American continent. In order to learn firsthand about the Indians of the Plains, he prepared himself with guides, supplies, and information, setting out from Westport, Missouri, in spring 1846 and returning that September. From that trip emerged one of the seminal books of American literature, The Oregon Trail.

The Great Taos Bank Robbery: And Other True Stories of the Southwest

Tony Hillerman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Unequalled in the Annals of True Crime 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful.

The Great Taos Bank Robbery would have occurred on November 11, 1957, except the bank was closed for Veterans Day. Thus it seems appropriate to write this review tonight in the hopes that it will post on November 12th, the actual date when the robbery did not occur. Tony Hillerman makes a convincing case for the bank robbery, noting the unique elements that one of the male malefactors was dressed as a woman, that the robbers waited in line with courtesy and patience, and that the getaway vehicle was borrowed from a local resident. Actual shots were fired at the minister, but this was after the robbers left the bank where the robbery did not occur. A three day manhunt ensued, during which time some of the residents bought the robbers groceries or otherwise fed them. Hillerman equates the Great Taos Bank Robbery of 1957 with the equally Great Taos Flood of 1935, noting that Taos does not have a river and receives very little rain. Hillerman's handling of this true crime narrative is masterly, but the reader is advised to proceed with caution as it is possible to hurt oneself laughing.

So begins an excellent little guidebook to the Four Corners region of America. Some of these little essays are somber "The Very Heart of Our Country" about the Navajos return to their homeland. Another one "We All Fall Down" is scary, detailing the propensity for the Black Death to stalk the region every few years.

Tony Hillerman died on Oct 26, 2008. This review is posted by a grateful fan. Because of his writings, I was inspired to make several visits to New Mexico and Arizona to see the landscapes he writes about. Thanks for the memories, Tony!

Editorial Review:

In this extraordinary collection, Tony Hillerman presents the Southwest as only he can, choosing remarkable true tales from his personal archives of local lore. As you read these stories, you will be amazed, astounded, and oftentimes confounded by the power of ingenuity, serendipity, and the strange, comical coincidence of life and how it proves, once again, that truth is ultimately stranger than fiction.

From the amusing title story of the holdup that didn't happen, to the riveting account of scientists tracking Black Death through the arroyos, to the ironic account of how a black cowboy's commonsense intelligence destroyed the dogma of the Smithsonian Institution, master storyteller Tony Hillerman reveals the present and timeless past of one of America's most beautifuland haunting regions.