**SOLD
The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Selections from the Journals Arranged by Topic, edited by Gunther Barth (TPB, 1998, $2)
"Brevity is the characteristic of the present volume", states Barth in the preface, and he is right. The book is nicely done, and only 220 pages long.
The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West, by Patricia Limerick (TPB, 1987, $2.50)
Limerick sees the West as "grounded in primary economic reality- the hardheaded questions of profit, loss, competition, and consolidation", and not "as a series of quaint, violent, and romantic adventures- most with happy endings." She sees her work as bringing together separate new versions of the West's history.
Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s, by Donald Worster (TPB, 1979, $2)
This is quite a book. I am having a hard time putting it down. The horror of the dust storms, which caused people and animals to suffocate, trains to derail, and Washington D.C. to be coated in dust, were always expected to go away "next year". Instead they came back year after year. Finally even the self-reliant westerners were forced to beg for help. See if you agree with Worster's theory of Capitalism run amok causing both the depression and the dust bowls.
**SOLD**
Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, by Marc Reisner (TPB, 1993, $2)
"The story of the American West is the story of a relentless quest for a most precious resource: water. It is a tale of rivers diverted and dammed, of political corruption and intrigue, of billion-dollar battles over water rights, of ecologic and economic disaster... Reisner writes of the earliest settlers, lured by the promise of paradise, and of the ruthless tactics employed by Los Angeles politicians and businesses to ensure the city's growth." (Can anyone say "Chinatown"?)
Look for these books on the new non-fiction section.
P.S. My father loved the Louis L'Amour movie "Conagher", where in the 1880s the heroine ties poems to tumbleweed. Sorry Dad, but tumbleweed, or Russian thistle, wasn't introduced to the plains until 1906. Oh, well, it is still a good movie.
