BOOKS - "Tales of the Frontier" - From Lewis and Clark to the Last Roundup

MS - 3 on arrival

1963 - Everett Dick;  Selected and Retold by Everett Dick.

I was all set to be underwhelmed with son Ron (who has not read this) offered it to me when I stayed with them.

As with most times I challenge the "kid", was mostly wrong.  It was a good, long for the number of pages (382).   Dick doesn't try to re-do the stories; just make them flow a bit better so as not to bog down the reader in some of the colloquialisms that might slow context.  Many he shortens and they probably did need it.   That way he also gets more stories into fewer pages.

The tales gets told and on to the next.  But, he leaves all the grit and meaning, it seems.  He pulls no punches about the death, deprivation, emotion and all, but not in a gristly way.  Just probably very close to what he would have seen if he were actually there.  Politics, dirty tricks, feuds are all part of the real story.

About halfway through I started wondering about his sources ... and sure enough, there they were.  Not always page and paragraph, but all the texts and volumes from which he gleaned the names, places, dates and incidents.  Seemed like he did a very good job at it.

These are virtually obscure events, but they are as best I can tell "true".  Chronologically and catagory-wize they start at the beginning and basically end when the West of American that was to be "opened" and "settled" was.  It was a good read and so I decided you all might enjoy a copy.

Here they are.