The Old West...Partly Truth;Partly Fiction.
938268
The Old West is an amazing part of American History. Though it is not a precise time period;generally it is taken to be fron 1865 (end of the Civil War)to the turn of the Century. This in not precise,because much of what went on in the West happened before that,and many of those who took part in "The Old West",particularly in the 70's,and the 80's were in their 20's and 30's lived well into the first quarter of the 1900's.
 This collection of 4 DVD's of 8 hours and 40 minutes attempts to tell what happened,who were the famous participants,what the truth was and what and why there is so much fiction and legends about it all.
 The main narrator throughout is Kenny Rogers ,whose very appropriate voice and demeanor was an excellent choice to tell the story. He is assisted with a number of experts on the subject,curators of western historical museums and writers. There are numerous quotations through the stories giving first hand accounts of their experiences.
 The photography of the country is excellent,the soundtrack adds greatly to the stories,and there is a plethora of photographs from the whole period.
It is obvious that many different people were involved in the production;and there is some repetition as the DVD's are watched.
 No doubt the treatment of everything is very brief,but only so much can be squeezed into so little time;and even then the surface is barely scratched.
I think this collection would be greatly enjoyed by both long time fans of the movies and books of the Old West as well as someone who is just looking for an overview of this period.
2350774
Pat tells an interesting story of the old West, partly fact together with lots of fiction and peppered with details about how things were done back then.  Youll learn how the Germans built their houses, how the cowboys wrangled their steers, and how the soiled doves treated their customers together with a host of other factoids.  His cast of characters is extensive and will introduce you to just about every type of character that you would have encountered during those times.  It was a fun read and I recommend it to all who have an interest in the old West.
4691885
Great read while working in Utah. I read this with some reserve, as this was written while Mr Hickman was a guest of the federal authorities. It's not as damning as some might portray it, or as innocent as Mr Hickman would lead you to believe. I've been fortunate enough to visit many of the places that are mentioned in the book. Reading this allowed me to get a feel for how things were over 100 years ago. I'm not LDS, but I respect their beliefs. Could this all be true? Maybe, but more likely it's mostly true based on how he perceived the events.
Read this for a feel of the old west and a portrait of a man's life in those days. Take the rest with a grain of salt (Great Salt Lake & Utah Lake)
3635623
This is the second book I've read by Andy Adams after discovering him through excerpts in an anthology of western writing. He's tops in writing from authentic personal experience as a cattle driver in the 1880s, though even at his best he's no McMurtry or Louis L'amour when it comes to writing vivid narrative. You actually get some sense of what it was really like to be a cowboy, or in the case of this book, what it was like to build up a cattle empire in the 1800s. This book is more about the business side of being a cowman than it is about the experience of a cowboy, except for the early chapters when the protagonist hasn't really gotten into the business side. Those early chapters are actually the best in the book. As the book continues, he becomes a top-tier cattle trader and owner of 750,000 acres of Texas ranchland, more of a hands-on CEO than a cowboy. Andy Adams was not writing from his own first-hand personal experience as any kind of CEO, since he left Texas and the cattle business to go into gold mining and then took up living in Colorado Springs and became a writer. This may explain why this book doesn't have as much life to it as some of Adams' other books focusing on the humble cowboy. Also, it suffers too much from poor narrative pacing, meaning that it tells the account of each year's business in about the same amount of detail. Rarely is there a particularly entertaining episode which is expanded in greater detail. Rather, there is a preponderance of the following kind of account, for page after page, chapter after chapter (I selected this excerpt pretty much at random from the middle part of the book):

"George Edwards was accordingly sent for, and met us at Waco. He was furnished a letter of credit on our San Antonio bank, and authorized to buy and equip two complete outfits for the Uvalde beeves. Edwards was a good judge of horses, there was an abundance of saddle stock in the country, and he was instructed to buy not less than one hundred and twenty-five head for each remuda, to outfit his wagons with four-mule teams, and announce us as willing to engage fourteen men to the herd. Once these details were arranged for, Major Hunter and myself bought two good horses and struck west for Coryell County, where we had put up two herds the spring before. Our return met with a flood of offerings, prices of the previous year still prevailed, and we let contracts for sixty-five hundred three-year-old steers and an equal number of dry and barren cows. We paid seven dollars a head for the latter, and in order to avoid any dispute at the final tender it was stipulated that the offerings must be in good flesh, not under five nor over eight years old, full average in weight, and showing no evidence of pregnancy. Under local customs, 'a cow was a cow,' and we had to be specific."
4301676
The Hugh Glass story doesn't need much embellishment to catch your attention: Glass was a seasoned trapper who, in 1823, was attacked by a grizzly, horribly mauled and then left for dead by his treacherous companions who, to add insult to injury, stole his clothes and all his provisions, including his weapons. That should have been the end of the story, but Glass lived and battled open wounds and massive trauma, warring Native Americans out to lift his scalp and the unforgiving elements as he crawls -- and later runs -- hundreds of miles, stark naked, to the safety of a fort. It's a story of grit, survival and stubborn tenacity, the stuff of legends. In the hands of author Jon T. Coleman, it's transformed into a weird, manic, breathless -- and at times exasperating -- musing of what it means to be a westerner and a nuclear deconstruction of the west.

I grew up in Montana and learned the Hugh Glass story early on (middle school?), so when I saw this in a bookstore at the Anchorage airport, I expected a detailed analysis of the life and times of Hugh Glass, an exposition on the political climate at the time and theories about the friction of expansionism against Native American life. Be warned, this books is not history -- it's more like cultural archaeology with dynamite rather than rock hammers, and the author sets out to uncover some of the darkest chapters and most sordid undercurrents of the American west.

Coleman uses the story as nothing more than a jumping off point to examine the west and the roots of its unique culture. He is long on examining the evolution of the story from fact into near-myth, carefully analyzing the subsequent generations of retelling -- written, and later on the screen -- and peppering (spiking?) that with detours into speculative historical analysis.

It's more of a creative, academic exercise in making (forcing?) connections that exist nowhere except in the mind of the author. No one (Daniel Boone, for example), no institution, is safe as he races down unexpected tracks that tackle racism and slavery, capitalism, religion and personal transformation, culture -- then and now, education and literature and a thousand other topics.

The pace is frenetic, the writing sure, the cultural observations entertaining, but the whole thing rests on assumption after assumption that can't stand up to deeper historic scrutiny -- for example, the language used on runaway slave fliers is somehow connected to the transformative power of being stripped of cultural mores by depravation in the west which is somehow linked to eating too much buffalo meat which is somehow how linked to the conscious choice of a writer to tell the Glass story though the lens of psychoanalysis, etc. That doesn't mean it's not enjoyable, however --it's exhausting, frustrating and memorable.

It's hard to recommend the book, because reading it feels like being trapped in a conversation with someone who is on speed and possibly suffering from paranoid delusions -- but if the topic is interesting enough, those conversations can be rewarding. So if you think getting a three-hour diatribe from an interesting but probably unbalanced person might be worth your time just to look at a topic from a wildly unconventional perspective, give this book a try. Sometimes, I don't mind those conversations at all, as with this book.

The approach won't resonate with those who like their history fact-based, nor will it make any friends with the western exceptionalism crowd, but I enjoyed the read, even the places that got my hackles up a little.
1715518
In true style of William Johnstone, an interesting Western - though the story behind was ok, did not have the same spell bounding effect as other Johnstone Jensen westerns. Still, overall, a good 'read'
2700487
a very interesting spin of individual vs. society...a real cowboy who might have been OK a couple hundred years ago
3856815
...and thankfully most of us do recognise it's not "real", in as much as..well..it is a work of fiction.
That said, it's quite entertaining in parts. I'd probably recommend you pick this one up at the library, rather than buy it.  And..I hate to drum this message in a little more..but, "folks, it's not factual.  It's not real".
Enjoy!
234373
Stories, and a few poems, of life in the old west. The language is authentic to the times, and the situations cover Native Americans and settlers, cowboys and all the folks who settled and developed the southwest. They are told in the downhome, folksy style of a person recounting a story he has been told by another.
2264395
I love the old west history. With a gang of brothers robbing the gold, and then going to church to reform... Well it makes an interesting story. The best part though... You will just have to read the book :)
4007334
Interesting, good fun. Little too true, although an allegory.
922779
Through the ups and downs, the author takes all the legends and tries to put historical fact behind them, filling in with realistic fiction where needed. There aren't any tales of grand shining armor here, it's probably as close to the truth as you'll come in this life to knowing the story of England from a Christian perspective.
4724705
Written in the style of how the real west was most likely like at the time without the gloss of a standard Hollywood production.
4471609
Although not true, much of the story was interesting and one got the feeling of reality
3740603
At the risk of giving short shrift to the characters and events in TELEGRAPH DAYS, this book is

an entertaining fictional memoir told from the point of view of a woman named Nellie Courtright.

The novel opens with a 22-year-old Nellie suddenly becoming the head of a two-person household

(with her younger brother) in the middle of nowhere out west in the 1860s, and unfolds over the

next several decades as she meets, greets, defeats and sleeps with nearly every western legend

known to lore. Improbable? Maybe, but out of the question? Not really. For most of the novel,

McMurtry has placed her just a day away by horseback from Dodge City in its heyday, and it's not

far-fetched to think that these famous scouts and gunslingers pass through on their way there.

Another good chunk of the book has Nellie working for Buffalo Bill Cody, whose associates were a

veritable Who's Who of western legend.

I join many others in not taking this book too seriously. It's not LONESOME HEN. It's just a fun and

fast read, at times laugh-out-loud funny. Nellie knows that she is pretty, bright, and -- as all the

men tell her -- well "organized." The comic tone is in how hapless it all is, and the book is fleshed

out by a 20-something woman with a libido, a taste for all kinds of adventure, a genteel side, and

the frustrating circumstances of faraway suitors with not much in between but endless prairie and

mean, smelly men.

Nellie is vexed by the ways of men, but she identifies readily with women like the neglected Lulu

Cody and a reluctant prostitute who eventually marries Nellie's brother. I like to see accomplished

writers go out on a limb after 38 books like McMurtry does here.

My one complaint: the final 20 pages or so, with Nellie in California as the movie industry starts to

crank it up, seem rushed and almost irrelevant. Maybe it's because she's aged quite a bit by this

time and, you know, who knows where the time goes? But I won't shoot the author over it.

And while he's been criticized at times for the way the book is constructed, with very short

chapters that practically short-circuit the development of character and plot, I also feel that in the

end it's McMurtry tossing out a fresh device that parallels Nellie's flittering petulance. He's too

good for this device to be carelessly concocted or accidental or evidence of his tiredness; it's

almost like he's saying, "It's a woman's prerogative."
2973249
Where can you find a good feminist Western now-a-days?  Or any feminist Western for that matter? You know where the main character is a woman, a sheriff even, as familiar with guns as any man.  Where there is a town with a female-supporting Mayor and a sprinkling of sympathizers ready to come to the aid of innocent victims of violence and sheer meanness?

Well look no further than "Sweet Betsy" a tale of the West in 1880.  Elegantly written and filled with interesting facts about life in the Old West, Michael Zomber's work will intrigue and satisfy readers from many areas of interest.  It is the story of Sheriff Betsy Johnson who winds up in Early, New Mexico fleeing disguised as a man to escape a probable indictment for murder occasioned by her helping her father defend a Freedman from the KKK.  She settles in the new town with her seven year old daughter and soon enough reveals her true sex and begins a love affair with Mayor Tunsell a Shakespeare quoting man dominated by a desire to see justice done for everyone in the community.

Making friends with numerous people including Indians and Mexicans, she gets appointed to the job of sheriff and manages to keep the peace without excessive gun-play or violence.  Life is returning to normal after the traumatic death of her father, a hero of Gettysburg and admirer of Lincoln.  But. as fate would have it, this idyl cannot continue.

Things get started when the lady saloon owner, Francine, has her abusive, near-do-well husband, Hal, appear seeking half of her saloon which the law declared rightfully his.  The author weaves closely drawn secondary characters throughout the narrative and paints a sympathetic picture of the life of woman in the nineteenth century.  It is also a powerful call to remove the vestiges of bias and racism from our nation.  But this is not a harangue or polemic but a realistic story filled with real people.
1918856
OLD TIME WESTERN WISDOM

If you love what you do, it shows. Erwin Thompson clearly loves to tell a good story while he doles out some old time western wisdom.

Descriptions that can place you in a blinding snowstorm or seated next to a roaring fire seem to be a specialty. Characters that create sympathy, loathing, or curiosity also people his stories.  Mix in some old time elements likes sleighs, hair ribbons, and penny candy and we've dropped back in time with the blink of an eye.

In CATTLE COUNTRY, we have the classic struggles found in a small  county when someone gets a bit too greedy for his own britches. A bit of gun play, a new stranger willing to stand up for what's right, and some interesting and unexpected romantic pairings could make this tale set many years ago just as likely current news, minus the horse and buggy.

BACK TRAIL takes us down the road a piece with a whole new generation getting into the ranching business. Some of the nastier elements are still hanging around and it takes a gunfighter who's looking to hang up his guns to even things up. Pride was a big part of developing the West and the new guy in town would rather not step on anyone's. Quick thinking with his head and a borrowed gun get this tale rolling and keep you turning the pages as fast as a Grapevine Twist at the Saturday night dance.

Thompson's crafty plot twists and interesting chapter names, " An Unexpected Kiss ( And a Change of Tenants in the Root Cellar)" will make you smile while his tales of the old West will make you feel like puttin' on your boots and kickin' up some dust!