Reccomend to Me a Good Book About the "Wild West."

Cafe Society
1

My husband and I were watching a Western last night, when the historian in me felt compelled to mention that the West really wasn’t as “wild” as all of the movies seem to portay it.

My husband and I started discussing the mythology which was built by Hollywood, and mentioned he’d like a good book on the the real Wild West. With Christmas coming, I now turn to my fellow Doper bibliophiles for suggestions.

I’m looking for something serious, not one of those “What Your Teacher Didn’t Tell You” books. I’d like something well-researched and accurate, without an obvious revisionist slant.

Any thoughts?

2

“Dakota Cowboy” by Ike Blasingame.

3

Maybe not as far west (or as late in the 19th century) as you mean, but depicting the “West” of its time: “Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prarie” by John Faragher is a well researched biography of early 19th century pioneers in central Illinois. (This guy searched through legal records, interviewed relatives - the whole bit.) Fascinating book; it debunks many common misconceptions about pioneer life. It was used as a textbook for a 300 level course I had a few years back.

4

“The Log of A Cowboy”, by Andy Adams. A true account of one of the last cattle drives.

5

Cowboy Culture by western historian David Drury is a classic.

There is a big illustrated book that accompanied a tv documentary series called, of all things, The Wild West that is also quite good.

I’m curious, though. What did you mean by “without an obvious revisionist slant”?

6

I’ve enjoyed books by Vardis Fisher. He wrote Mountain Man (on which the movie “Jeremiah Johnson” was based), The Mothers which is about the Donner Pass Party) and others. He writes more about the mountain side of old west.

7

Roughing It by Mark Twain, wherein he describes his misadventures in the 1860’s West.

There is quite a good deal of information in this book. I regret this very much, but really it could not be helped.

8

Tie My Bones to Her Back by E. F. Jones is a very unromantic look at buffalo hunters. A little rough in spots (violent), but a good read.

The Homesman by Glendon Swarthout is an anti-Little House on the Prairie book. A homesman was the man in charge of escorting prairie wives and mothers back to relatives in the east after they’d been driven insane by the hardships of frontier life.

Ron Hansen wrote two good books about outlaws – one about the Daltons (Desperadoes) and another about Jesse James.

Susan Dodd wrote Mamaw, about Jesse James’ mom.

Larry McMurtry’s Anything for Billy put a psycho slant on those legends.

I’ve read a lot of books you could call “westerns”, but I’m sure most of them are romanticized.

Someone recently recommended The Shootist, also by Glendon Swarthout, but I haven’t gotten to it yet. Apparently it’s better than the movie. (Imagine that.)

9

If you grew up in Montana, you basically had to read A.B. Guthrie, Jr. His “Big Sky” series is six books, but the best are the first two, The Big Sky and The Way West; he won the Pulitzer Prize for the latter in 1950. The books are stand-alone, though they feature some of the same characters, so you could just get The Way West if you wanted.

For more of a sampling of western literature I would recommend The Best of the West: An Anthology of Classic Writing from the American West, edited by Tony Hillerman. It’s fun, but kind of hit or miss (as many anthologies are).

For the Native American perspective, I would recommend Fools Crow, by James Welch, which tells the story of life among the Blackfeet in the mid-nineteenth century. It’s a great book, but does not end happily.

And, of course, though it’s not really “wild west” western, Undaunted Courage by Stephen E. Ambrose is awesome. (It’s about the Lewis & Clark expedition.)

Except for [Undaunted Courage, these are all fiction. I don’t know of a good all-encompassing nonfiction history book to recommend. “The West” from, say, 1750 to 1900 is a lot of territory to cover – literally. I think any book that tried to cover the whole thing would suffer from the defects of all “overview” history books: not enough detail; too little about too much. Do you want to know about the land rush, or the gold rush? Life for the Anglo “pioneers” or for the Indians, or the Chinese? Life in the saloons of San Francisco or in the soddies of the Dakotas? The Molly Maquires in the Idaho mines, or the vigilantes in Virginia City? Do you want to know about the “soiled doves” of Butte, plying the world’s oldest profession, or about the Buffalo Soldiers, black civil war veterans who helped explore the west?

For the real “flavor” of history, I think fiction is your best bet, surprisingly. But I will also confess that I don’t consider books about Missouri, Kansas, or Illinois to be books about the west, wild or otherwise. :slight_smile:

10

Why not?

I’ll grant you Illinois, Illinois is a stretch.

But I’d include Iowa and Minnesota, the Dakotas for sure, as well as Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska.

Not sure about my criteria (I’m no historian), but when traveling around the midwest, there are constant reminders (and historical markers) about events that qualify these states as stereotypically western. Gunfights, bank robberies, Indian wars, struggling and dying settlers, ghost towns, Pony Express routes, cattle drives, Lewis and Clark trail, etc. etc.

Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas might have gotten more movie/fiction attention, but there was plenty of stuff happening in the midwest.

11

**

That’s actually what I’m looking for.

I already have a book about western prostitution.

I guess what I’m looking for is a book more about the daily life of those Anglo pioneers living in the West-- a book which seperates the myth from the reality. I know that it’s a very broad subject, but there must be something which would fit the bill.

12

Anglo Pioneers? Er…who would they be? Sorry to intrude here but “Anglo” is a nonsensical term. Would the Spanish missionaries be considered Anglo? By the time the Spanish arrived in California there were less then 10,000 people living in the entire state. I’d call them pioneers without the need for any pre-fix.

13

OH! Anglo Pioneers! Try O.E. Rolvag’s “Giants in the Earth” A great story about the first Norwegian settlers in what became South Dakota. Really a great book, wonderful description of the first farms, blizzards and a very sad ending.

What could be more Anglo than Norwegian pioneers?

14

I was only using that term because that’s what Jodi used, Mr. Snarky Pants, and I’m pretty sure she was using it in the broad sense of “folks of European (as opposed to Native American) descent who immigrated West.”

(I do have a book on the African-American experience in post-Civil War migration, but it’s not terribly detailed about what life was like during this time in the West.)

I guess I’m looking for something which would talk about how the sterotypes differ from the reality-- that wagon trains were not really under constant attack from hostile Natives, and there wasn’t a gunfight in the street every day at noon.

15

LISSA, we understood each other. :wink:

16

I also highly recommend ROUGHING IT; I’m sure it’s full of tall tales but I would hesitate to call it entirely a work of fiction. Twain’s brother was a governor; Twain was out there; the criminals and lawmen he mentions were real. It’s delightful and full of the little details that make a place come alive. The story of the flour auction alone is worth the book.

Oh yeah, for a view of early California, TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST by Richard Henry Dana is about a Harvard-educated boy who travels around the Horn and has a great deal to say about the Indians and Mexicans he saw before the Gold Rush, from 1934-36. It’s often quite unflattering to them but it’s ultimately humane and completely fascinating. But I don’t know if Alta California is the Wild West and it was way too early for cowboys.
I read some of it sitting on a bench next to Harvard Yard, looking at the house he was born in. Both books are on Project Gutenberg, but are best read in pieces; there’s a lot to absorb.

17

Three great novels are:

Little Big Man (1964) and its sequel The Return of Little Big Man (1999) are both outstanding. Even if you’ve seen the movie, read the book as it’s quite different and much more in depth.

Deadwood by Pete Dexter (author of Paris Trout ) is a tale of the last days of Hickock which features other old west characters (Calamity Jane being the most pathetic). It’s out of print but soon to be a miniseries.

Dee Brown wrote several really good popular histories of the West including

The Gentle Tamers about the women of the west (from whores to outlaws to settlers)

American West a general overview/survey of the inland west.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee , his bestselling and most important book, though this one is about the settling of the west from the Indian perspective.

18

I just read (well, a couple of days ago) a review of a book that doesn’t exactly fit your bill, but might be interesting:

Triggernometry: A Gallery of Gunfighters by Eugene Cunningham. (the link is to the review I read)

Julie