<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: It's okay.........
Review: Bestselling historian Dee Brown (Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee) chronicles an easily misunderstood era with sympathetic essays on prominent Indian leaders, cowboys, miners, and settlers. The turbulent transistion from buffalo and red men to cattle and white men becames more understandable in 29 brief chapters focusing on the pivotal events, fascinating individuals, and social forces. Vivid profiles include Sitting Bull, Billy the Kid, Cochise, Crazy Horse, Wyatt Earp, Captian Jack, and Chief Joseph. "Let us be wise enough to learn true history so that we can recognize a myth when we see one," writes Brown.
Rating: 
Summary: Text Jumps Around But Still Good!
Review: Brown's American West book can be difficult to follow at times. But it was worth wading through to read the in-depth details of folks who lived back then. I believe this was such a fascinating era in our history that reading new details is worth the price of the book (which was very nominal). If you like the Old West, you will find more than enough to satisfy you.
Rating:
Summary: Text Jumps Around But Still Good!
Review: Brown's American West book can be difficult to follow at times. But it was worth wading through to read the in-depth details of folks who lived back then. I believe this was such a fascinating era in our history that reading new details is worth the price of the book (which was very nominal). If you like the Old West, you will find more than enough to satisfy you.
Rating: 
Summary: Whimsical!
Review: Dee Brown's The American West is the poor consolidation of three distinct books. The resulting consolidation reflects differing types of organization and style.
It is a series of disjointed, non sequential often unrelated vignettes that ramble across the Western American landscape. Focusing primarily on the West that occurred after the Civil War, it addresses a period of continual evolution, of transition between Native Peoples and their non native counterparts, between law and lawlessness and from one ecological state, wilderness, to farming, ranching and settlement.
But for all its lack of organization, continuity and sometimes poor writing quality, it is a book that manages to entertain and inform. Be prepared for some serious Native American bias. It appears the Mr. Brown feels the West should have never been developed to become the amazing part of America that it has become, but rather should have been left to Stone Age peoples in perpetuity.
It is a very quick read with lots of simple sentences and even simpler logic that in a very direct way can evoke a reasonable amount of sympathy for the author's agenda. This bias can and does effectively cloud what really happened.
Rating:
Summary: A good overview of Wild West history
Review: The audio set of Dee Brown's The American West brings to life the characters and personalities that made the wild west an exciting and at times dangerous place to live. Although the book is very good there is nothing like listening to Mitchell Ryan's rich voice as he almost waxes rhapsodically about the adventures of Wild Bill Hickok or Big Nose Kate or Billy the Kid.
Rating:
Summary: Good Overview
Review: This book is really a good of short articles and stories (I am assuming here) pulled from other publications. Because of this there is not a consistent theme that runs through the full book other then all the articles do have something to do with the American West - from ranch hands, cattle drivers and Indian's this book has it all. What I found with this lack of consistent theme is that many of the articles just wet you appetite for more information on the given subject. The book does provide a good overall view of the American west during the settlement days. The book is well written and is easy to get through. If you have just a general interested in the topic or want a refresher course this is probably the book for you. If you are looking for something more in depth you will probably come away disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Good Overview
Review: This book is really a good of short articles and stories (I am assuming here) pulled from other publications. Because of this there is not a consistent theme that runs through the full book other then all the articles do have something to do with the American West - from ranch hands, cattle drivers and Indian's this book has it all. What I found with this lack of consistent theme is that many of the articles just wet you appetite for more information on the given subject. The book does provide a good overall view of the American west during the settlement days. The book is well written and is easy to get through. If you have just a general interested in the topic or want a refresher course this is probably the book for you. If you are looking for something more in depth you will probably come away disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Amusing and Informative
Review: This collection of chapters on the American West is an entertaining and informative glimpse into the history of our nation's most misunderstood and glamorized region, but the book seems to try and do too much, and thus ultimately accomplishes little. Dee Brown writes about Indian wars, life in a great cattle drive, and then shifts to such topics as the reading habits and wardrobes of gents and housewives in the old west. There is a noticeable lack of continuity in many of the chapters, but overall almost all of them were enjoyable and educational on their own. There are also some very unique photographs, such as a shot of Big Foot frozen dead in the snow. Brown has done his research, and while not all of his topics will fascinate you, it is easy enough to skip through the chapters you care little about, and to savor the excellent discussions of Wounded Knee, Dodge City, Geronimo, etc.
Rating: 
Summary: Fight No More Forever
Review: With these words the Nez Perce Indians surrendered to the U.S. Army, having fled from Idaho across country, through Yellowstone and north to Montana, only to be cut off just miles from the Canadian border. This and other spectacular stories will quicken the pulse of any red-blooded history buff. We also visit cow ranchers down in Texas and learn the true, unvarnished story of Dodge City and other pestilences. The real thing.
<< 1 >>
|
