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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | 978 BRO | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | 978 BRO | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
This is an account of America's most famous drama. By centring solely on three subjects - Native Americans, settlers and ranchers - the author recreates these groups' struggles for their place in this new landscape and illuminates the history of the old West. Beginning with the demise of the Native Americans of the Plains, Brown depicts the onrush of the burgeoning cattle trade and the wave of immigrants who ultimately settled the land.
Author Notes
Dee Brown wrote more than twenty-five books on American history and the West, including Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Drawing on his earlier books coauthored with Martin Schmitt (The Settlers West; Trail Driving Days), Brown focuses here on the inland American West during the last half of the 19th century as the railroads opened up the area to settlers, the Plains Indians made their final stand and cattle ranches spread from Texas to Montana. Brown examines the origins of the Western myth in literature, from the dime novels of Mayne Reid and Ned Buntline to Owen Wister's The Virginian, and traces the rise of rodeos and Wild West shows. Here is a galaxy of famous characters: Geronimo, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull; Wyatt Earp, Buffalo Bill, Charles Goodnight, Billy the Kid, Teddy Roosevelt, Generals Crook and Custer. The author takes us on cattle drives to Dodge City and other western towns, then completes this sprightly history with the arrival of law and order and the birth of populism. Informative and entertaining. Illustrations. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A pleasant but uninspired collection of vignettes about the history of the West that offers nothing new. Noted Western author Brown (When the Century Was Young, 1993, etc.) serves up a new volume detailing the life and history of the American frontier. The material is culled from the text of three previous picture books--Fighting Indians of the West, Trail Driving Days, and The Settlers' West--that he co-authored in the 1940s and 1950s with the late Martin Schmitt (editor of General George Crook: His Autobiography, 1946); this version also includes several photographs from the earlier volumes. Always sensitive to the long, losing struggle of the Indians, Brown movingly depicts Sioux chief Red Cloud's successful war to close the Bozeman Trail (including the so-called Fetterman Massacre) and Cheyenne chief Black Kettle's unsuccessful attempts to keep the peace, shattered by the Sand Creek and Washita massacres. But the white West is also covered, with glimpses of life on the great cattle drives and of the boomtowns at the end of the beef trails--towns like Abilene, Tex., and Wichita, Kans., which thrived as rail centers for the shipment of cattle. The mythmaking process that shaped the West of popular imagination is also dear to Brown's heart, and he brings into focus the impact of tall tales (Paul Bunyan, etc.), Wild West shows (Buffalo Bill, et al.), rodeos, Billy the Kid's inflated legend, and The Virginian, a novel by Harvard-educated Philadelphia lawyer Owen Wister that supplanted real-life cowboy Charlie Siringo's much more authentic A Texas Cow Boy in the public imagination. Brown writes in an engaging style, but our view of frontier history has changed a lot in 40 years. Rather than this recycled material, itself seduced by the myths it seeks to expose, better to read Brown's own Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
Library Journal Review
Historian and prolific author Brown presents a lively history of the settling of the West from the vantage point of the Native Americans who suffered in the wake. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
