Arizona Books

This is a collection compiled by Frank Hamilton Cushing. Cushing (1857-1900) lived with the Zuñi and collected many stories that are part of their myths and way of thinking. "Zuñi Coyote Tales" is a selection from His larger collection "Zuñi Folk Tales".

Each tail pits the Coyote against a different critter or deity. As the story progresses we get a better understanding of Coyote and a lesson learned. Even thought this is a standalone book it is more dynamic if you know something of the Zuñi culture and history.

A reoccurring theme is that Coyote is very a very nosy trickster and it is best to keep your nose to your self.

A note for the squeamish, as with many folk tails some parts are painfully violent.

The author skillfully tells his story while carefully drawing the reader into his private life. The book is written with honesty and humor and without being overly emotional or dramatic. Although the author tells of his hardships and struggles,he does so in such a way that you see his life as colorful and rich rather than tragic. The story shows that love and nurturing can occur in non-conventional ways and from people you would not normally consider caretakers. This is a story of love and caring and the strength of the human spirit. I highly recommend this book.

J.R. Moehringer's "The Tender Bar" chronicles the infatuation a young boy develops for a neighborhood bar, the men that frequent it, and the education it provided. And in doing so, he elicits laughter, compassion, and admiration. To wit, a few underline-worthy excerpts: "The two critical tests of a man's mettle, Sheryl believed, were women and liquor. How you reacted to each, how you managed each, went a long way to determining your manliness quotient" (p.130). And J.R.'s reflection on confidence, "I wondered if self-confidence could be acquired, or if, like fathers and flawless skin, it was just something you were born with" (p.163). Or the distinction between a leer and a look: "Women don't like being leered at, but they love being looked at with delight" (p.258). And, lastly, J.R.'s realization that "the secret of being a good man...was [to] follow the example of one very good woman" (p.346). In short, this is J.R.'s story and it is, if nothing else, a memorable and impressionable one.

I loved this book! It is always entertaining, at times heartbreakingly poignant, and very difficult to put down.

This book beautifully marries form and content. The book is J.R. Moehringer's autobiographical memoir, spanning from his elementary school years into young adulthood. Much of the book revolves around the hours Moehringer spent in a neighborhood bar on Long Island, trading stories and having friendly but impassioned arguments with the other barroom regulars. As you read the book, you almost feel like you're in the bar listening to the conversation. Each chapter is really a barroom story in itself; you can almost hear Moehringer, lubricated by a few drinks, sharing yet another anecdote from his life history.

Some of the stories Moehringer recounts seem too good to be true. Perhaps, like any good barroom raconteur, Moehringer embellishes a little for dramatic or comic effect. At first I wondered if the stories really were factual. By the end, I decided that I enjoyed the book even more for not being sure.

I don't drink much, have rarely been in bars, and have spent little time on Long Island. Nonetheless, I had no trouble inhabiting Moehringer's world.

I highly recommend this excellent memoir!

I'm not much for memoirs, but I picked up The Tender Bar on the recommendation of the clerk at a local San Francisco bookstore, and I'm glad I did.

The Tender Bar, by J.R. Moehringer, chronicles the early life of, well... J.R. Moehringer, who grew up in Long Island, New York, alongside his mother, grandparents, several cousins, aunts and his Uncle Charlie, a bartender at the local pub, Publicans. His father, a popular radio disc jockey, was absent much of Moehringer's life, and his absence is the central storyline of The Tender Bar.

With no father figure in his life, Moehringer becomes attached to the bar, Publicans, as well as the many real-life characters that frequent the pub. Each chapter in the book is about one of those characters, and the memoir moves (though slow, at times) chronologically as Moehringer encounters and befriends more and more people.

Though Moehringer details the years he and his mother spend living in Arizona, as well as his collegiate career at Yale, most of the book takes place in and out of the Long Island bar. Due to the fact that most of the events occur in the bar, most of the chapters involve the characters drinking themselves silly, leading to amusing events and/or interesting conversations on work, life, women, the New York Mets and a host of other topics.

For the most part, it's an easy, fun, well-written read that will make you laugh throughout the book. There are some slow parts, and a lot of places in the book where the author is trying to be deep and serious, which can seem forced and unnecessary. But I liked The Tender Bar, and would recommend it as a good "vacation book," especially if you're on some tropical beach (as I was -- in Barbados -- while reading Moehringer's tale).

Journalist J.R. Moehringer has written a rollicking coming-of-age memoir set on Long Island and centering around a small town version of the TV bar Cheers. The story opens with the author at about age six being raised by his mother and grandmother at his grandparents' house, his golden-voiced and leaden-souled father having disappeared into thin air. Before long he finds that his best childhood friends and father figures are a bunch of bartenders and drunks at the most popular bar in town, Dickens. Once he reaches drinking age, it's hard for J.R. not to become an alcoholic. One of the bartenders is his uncle and the bar's policy is that relatives drink free (but must pay for any drinks they give to others).

Obviously, the young protagonist becomes a successful writer. How he reaches that stage provides two great stories--that of the struggling student and journalist, and that of the rollicking young alcoholic. That you are reading the book removes some of the suspense about the outcome, but Moehringer and a cast of Dickensian characters at both Dickens and his grandparents' house makes the journey very entertaining. If you like Frank McCourt's various memoirs, particularly Angela's Ashes, or if your childhood included alcoholic caretakers (parents or otherwise), you'll love "The Tender Bar".

Sure, this book may speak strongly for the respect and preservation of the desert southwest, and for that, it deserves proper credit.

But for me, it has had a much deeper impact. This is a lot more than just an argument that we should protect our wilderness, although it is easily that. Rather, I found it to be a profound guide on how to think and act in general, about pretty much everything, everywhere.

This is one of the greatest books of the American twentieth century, a true classic, and everyone pondering how to think about and evaluate everything these days could surely benefit by reading it carefully.

I purchased this book because David Quammen referenced it in one of his books, and I really enjoy Quammen's books. It is listed on various websites and in some magazines as a "Nature Classic".

I have visited and hiked the deserts and canyon in Utah and northern Arizona. That allowed me to feel a lot of what Abbey writes about. It is a special place. I wish I could go back and see Arches National Park when Abbey was there. (It was Arches National Monument at the time of his stay there.)

While there are some controversial things in this book, and while I don't agree with everything Abbey writes, I have to say that I really hated to come to the end of this book. Besides the stories about nature, Abbey also writes about some of the human activities in this area.

I think I understand why people call this a landmark book. The environmental movement was just starting in the sixties. (Does anyone else remember the green Ecology symbol?)

An early environmentalist even before the term came into use. Ranks up there with Sand County Almanac and Silent Spring. A must read for those who care about the environment. Abbey predicted some of the water problems that now face the southwest.

This is my favorite book. I consider Abbey to be a hippie environmentalist--a sort of modern day Thoreau. The book will suck you in and you'll be wishing you could run off to Moab and have a beer with Abbey.

In 1968 Edward Abbey wrote a memoir, Desert Solitaire, A Season In The Wilderness, that would instantly be hailed as a nature classic, as well as his bestselling work. While familiar with EA's name the only work of his I'd read up to this point was a woeful collection of the man's `poetry'. Believe me, when I say there's a definite reason for the quotes around the word poetry. Apparently the work is considered somewhat of a nature hymn, along the lines of Henry David Thoreau's Walden. This is a perfect example of poor criticism propagating myths down through the years. This is not to say that there is not some fine writing in DS, but neither its consistency nor tone are akin to Walden's....Although these events happened over 3 seasons, the book condenses them down into 1, for dramatic effect. It's a technique that can see such startling contradictions in the same book as this reluctant admission-

`As I type these words, several years after the little episode of the gray jeep and the thirsty engineers, all that was foretold has come to pass. Arches National Monument has been developed. The Master Plan has been fulfilled. Where once a few adventurous people came on weekends to camp for a night or two and enjoy a taste of the primitive and remote, you will now find serpentine streams of baroque automobiles pouring in and out, all through the spring and summer, in numbers that would have seemed fantastic when I worked there: from 3,000 to 30,000 to 300,000 per year, the `visitation,' as they call it, mounts ever upward....Down at the beginning of the new road, at park headquarters, is the new entrance station and visitor center, where admission fees are collected and where the rangers are going quietly nuts answering the same three basic questions five hundred times a day: (1) Where's the john? (2) How long's it take to see this place? (3) Where's the Coke machine?'

-& this contrapuntal admission that he basically understands why the previous lament was written:

`Standing there, gaping at this monstrous and inhuman spectacle of rock and cloud and sky and space, I feel a ridiculous greed and possessiveness come over me. I want to know it all, possess it all, embrace the entire scene intimately, deeply, totally, as a man desires a beautiful woman. An insane wish? Perhaps not--at least there's nothing else, no one human, to dispute possession with me.'


While the book is not going to make the reader drop the book & take a breath, like the best of Loren Eiseley, Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire is a book worth reading, not nearly so much because it is a paean to nature, although it occasionally is, but because it is an excellent portrayal of a man's state of being- a man who could be hypocritical, childish, write poorly, then surmount these flaws. If the same were true of most of EA's readers this last sentence would not be as cogent.

I admit it. I cannot put down a good book about stupid people making bad decisions in a spectacular, and spectacularly dangerous, place. There are a lot of short stories in here about how things went really, really bad for people who were unprepared, stupid, didn't know what they were getting into, or were just pure unlucky.

I saw the book in Flagstaff the day before I started a week long raft trip through the canyon. I decided it was probably a bad idea to read it then. Once I got back however, I did read it and couldn't put it down. It was all the more real for having just been there and having gone through some of the extremes of temperature, rapids, etc. that the unfortunates detailed in the book went through. I was proud of the outfitters staff who had us well prepared.

Anyway if you are entertained by people who took too little water into 125 degree temperatures, or who decided to run the rapids without life jackets, or who may or may not have been murdered by a fiancee, read this book. Obviously it's not for everyone. But I loved it.

You have many ways to die in Grand Canyon: fall, jump, get pushed, clown around, drown, starve, thirst, or be in an airliner collision over that vast chasm. Ghighlieri and Myers, a wilderness river guide and a Grand Canyon physician, methodically, graphically, painstakingly document the known deaths by name, date, events leading up to and subsequent rescue and/or recovery efforts. A fascinating read, should be required for anyone planning a visit to such a beautiful and potentially fatal attraction.

Although it sounds a bit morbid, this book is a very good read. There is a good mix of entertaining anecdotes and statistical analysis. The authors delve into the root causes and chains of events that have led to the hundreds of deaths in the canyon and really drive home the point that people make the same mistakes over and over and over again. If you are thinking about hiking, backpacking, or rafting in the canyon, I highly reccomend reading this book first - it will help you make the right decisions about your time in the canyon.

Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon
Excellent service, great book, well laid out and very informative

I was at the grand canyon when I bought this book-I didnt want to buy it,but a stranger had told me about it,and not wanting to tell a lie in case I ran into this person again (which I did)I picked it up and glanced at the first few chapters-within minutes I was hooked-it is an unbelievable read - to even think about what some of those victims must have gone thru was terrifying-yet it is one of those books that once you start to read it,you can't stop!It made me respect mother nature even more and appreciate the safety rules and regulations the forest service puts up,no matter how trivial it may seem to be.

I am convinced that Sandra Day O'Connor did not write this book herself as its observations are devoid of any depth and is written on a grade-school level. While the book offers a much appreciated glimpse into the Arizona of days gone by, it reads as a series of disconnected events without any personal reflection on the part of the author. I expected much more from a former Supreme Court justice.

I liked it.

Sandra Day O'Connor's family was a strong, practical and loving one that raised cattle across a huge expanse of the arid Southwest through virtually the entire 20th century. That family was an extended one--by choice and necessity--and included the cowboys who made the ranch work. Ultimately though, family dynamics, the government and technology overtook that way of life; the ranch that Justice O'Connor knew is no more. This book tells that story.

The writing is clear and descriptive, but almost too simple. Sentences are often choppy and the dialogue feels stilted--perfect grammar, no contractions, etc. I also found it awkward when the dialogue of all the characters was kept in the same paragraph. The book is credited to Sandra Day O'Connor and her brother Alan Day, but I had trouble with the voice. It is written in the third person, but it feels that it is primarily Justice O'Connor's voice. That feeling was occasionally rattled when an "Alan" story was told with details that she wouldn't have known. It is a frustrating arrangement. Too, the pacing and timing jump about a bit more than is necessary.

Still, I really enjoyed getting to know the characters, and felt real empathy for the family. I found the descriptions of ranch life interesting, colorful and informative, and now enjoy a much broader knowledge of cattle raising and horse riding than I did before. I also enjoyed the solid, honest and commonsensical feel of the family and the cowboys.

I guess the mark of a good book is that it leaves the reader wanting more. In this instance I wanted more details. I'm guessing that the editor wrestled with the authors to get the book arranged and the gaps filled in a manner that yielded a book that was coherent and comprehensive enough to pass muster. That the effort was successful, and left me wanting to know more, is a good thing.

I'm very glad I read it.

This is one of the best books I have read in a while. I thoroughly enjoyed Sandra Day O'Connor's vivid depiction of her youth living on a ranch in the southwest. Particularly impressive were the connections made between lessons learned on the ranch and her philosophy on life, which ultimately shaped her career. I couldn't put the book down. I have purchased several copies to give to friends and family who have connections to ranching and/or the southwestern U.S. I highly recommend this book, even to those who do not have connections to ranching. As the majority of the population moves further away from agrarian life, this book is a refreshing reminder of the importance of agriculture and those who labor to provide for our basic existence.

LAZY B by Sandra Day O'Connor gives the reader a picture through words and photographs of life on a ranch in the arid southwest. But it also presents the development of independence, the value of a job well done not for praise or monetary considerations but because you believe in yourself.
The way of life is fading into myth and legends, but an aspect of the value of children to the economic unit of the family needs to be examined and studied to give us greater insight into our educational processes. Productive work is the hallmark of a human being, it shines through the dust for this family and their employees.

A wonderful and genuine book that provides great imagery and a window into the real and raw Southwest. The book is less about Justice O'Connor and more about our magnificant Southwest. Environmental issues, farming, education, and family relationships are all discussed in an authentic and beautifully descriptive way. It's not a page turner but it's a lovely book if you want a picture about growing up in the Southwest when cowboys roamed and cattle were plentiful.

Wasted enough time reading this. So, this will short. Pretentious. Boring. Two things a good book isn't. Thank you.

I'm no critic. Just know what I like when I read it, and this is a lovely novel. What a cool movie it could be. (Sounding like a teenager is cool, too.) I hope Poirier publishes another novel soon.

I have been reading all the previous reviews of this book and I don't want to be redundant, so I will simply say that this is one of the most enjoyable, easy and fun to read books of its type. Its a real shame that it is not more well known as people are missing out on a good thing. If you havent already done so, read it now. You wont be disappointed!!

The novel started out strong. I immediatley became immersed in the life of Ellis, Wendy, Goat man and Barney. I wanted so much for Ellis just to keep his cool composure and not sell out to the stuffy persona that his prep school embodied. I did want him to become more responsible than his parents, but I feel like he never really got to have a child hood and then he started becoming a jerk and I was never really sure why. I thought that the novel ended abruptly and didn't give proper explanation of certain details. Like Why was Wendy so crazy? Why did Frank really leave? Did she always love him? Why did Ellis start acting like a spoiled brat? Was Goat man really doing anything with the goats?@! It might have been more of a coming of age novel for Wendy than it really was for Ellis

Goats is an off the wall coming of age story, that brings with it the emotion and depth of a classic novel. The writing style of Mark Jude Porrier entrances the reader and creates an excitment that makes this book impossible to put down. Some of the subject matter may be extreme, but it suits its purpose of being a down to earth coming of age story. The goats that are so vividly described are so personified you begin to associate with them as much as you do the main characters. This book is a great example of a lazy summer read, and will bring a smile and possibly a tear to anyone who reads it.

My granddaughter, who just had her 8th birthday, enjoyed the book I sent her very much. She began reading it just as soon as she got it as a present for her birthday.

This is one of the few Goosebumps books that we've seen a recording of the television show that was made...and I have to say, in this case, the television episode was actually better than the book version. This The Haunted Mask is the story of Carly Beth just fed up with being wimpy, wimpy, wimpy...tired of constantly being teased, pranked, and scared by her friends Carly Beth is determined to get the scariest Halloween mask ever and show her friends that she's not such a wimp after all. As with all things in the R.L Stine universe, Carly Beth's quest to teach her tormenters a lesson comes with a hefty price.

On the night of Halloween, she just can't bring herself to put on the not-so-scary costume her mother's made for her, instead she runs out to a shop and finds "the perfect mask" in the back room of the store, unfortunately the owner is hesitant to part with it...ultimately she gets the mask and embarks on what she thinks will be the best get even Halloween scare ever...until she realizes that the mask much more than an ugly face to care her friends with and that she may become trapped inside as it begins to change her personality as well. Will Carly Beth get the mask off? You'll have to read to find out!

Not as enjoyable as I'd have liked...The Haunted Mask isn't a "bad" book, for me it boils down to feeling no connection to any of the characters...we don't get to know Carly Beth before we see her pranked, teased and scared constantly and the picture the reader gets is that if these are her friends, she sure doesn't need any enemies...they're downright mean, the goal seems to be to embarrass her more than anything else. I think young readers would enjoy The Haunted Mask, as a whole it is one of the scarier premises of the series but for me personally, this was a flop. I didn't think the interaction between the friends was indicative of "friend" behavior, it felt mean spirited perhaps if the build up to Halloween had been longer and we'd gotten to know the four friends just a bit more, this would have been a better read. Overall, I felt a bit let down, I rate this at three stars because the idea behind it is good, but the execution and character development was really lacking.

Sixth grader Steve Boswell has a problem, a very serious problem. He has been sentenced to coach a 1st grade soccer team as punishment for a prank gone wrong. As if losing every afternoon after school was not enough the team of 6 year olds seem determined to destroy him with their antics. Steve has decided to extract revenge by scaring them with a Halloween prank. His plans call for a particularly frightening costume, like the one a classmate scared him with the previous year. When he asked about the mask, however, his classmate was very reluctant to tell where she had gotten the mask. After Steve did manage to get the information she pleaded with him not to get a mask. Before Halloween was over Steve wished he had listened to her.

This is part of the popular GOOSEBUMPS series targeted to 9 to 12 year olds (Reading level 4th grade). As with the rest of the series this one is rather scary and very gross, totally appealing to it's pre-teen audience. Also attractive to this group is the organization of the story into short cliff-hanger chapters urging the reader to continue. The book itself is quite short, only 124 pages - most adults would be able to finish it in less than an hour - making it likely to hold the interest of even a reluctant reader until the end.

This book in not nearly as good as the first Haunted Mask by the same author. It never tied up the ending of the first book by explaining what happened to Karlie's brother. The rest of the story was too predicteble.

I JUST LOVED THE BOOK. IT ALMOST SUCKED ME INSIDE IT.

I delved into this book expecting the typical mob story: lots of violence, vendettas and brotherhood. That isn't what it is. Its certainly more of a character study, focusing on Billy and the boss, Dutch Schultz. I was disappointed at first, but next thing I knew I was done with the book and I think I enjoyed it. If it had been longer I think I wouldv'e lost interest though. Good length.

I had read "The March" and "Ragtime," so I figured "Billy Bathgate" would be excellent, and it was. On the surface, it's a simple story of the last few months of gangster Dutch Schultz's life. But Doctorow tells the story through the eyes of Billy Bathgate, a teenager who gets in with Schultz's gang as a go-fer. Doctorow's writing is, as always, superb, and more than just a recitation of facts, going deeply into the gangsters' world and their behaviors, and how they operated within society.

I'm still not sure if Billy Bathgate was based on a real person or if he is entirely fictional, but telling the story through his experiences as a lesser member of the gang allowed an inside look at Schultz without disturbing the facts.

A very readable and fascinating look into the New York crime scene of the 1930's.

We've all read scores of stories in which a young, spunky kid makes his way up the criminal ladder with his wit and little tricks...but this is by Doctorow, so it's done better than most. The book contains some of the standard themes inherent in the drama -- the thugs, the incredibly sexy woman that no one can resist, betrayal, and death. However, it often defies expectations and leads the reader to really share with Billy's emotions. All the scenes, whether they be about torture, sex, familial love, or childish musings, connect to universal emotions.

The only problem I had with this book was the ending. I was thoroughly enjoying it and unable to focus on my work until I finished but towards the very end it just got...unimpressive. While everything did wrap up well, it seemed more like an easy or expected conclusion than one that was original and fitting to the characters themselves. But overall, it's a great read.

EL Doctrow's talent with language is a step or two or three or four beyond that of the average scrivener. And even of the somewhat above average scrivener. Most of us aspire to prose as good as his without ever quite achieving it. But sometimes in this book he is a bit undisciplined in the application of his talent, and gets himself in trouble as a result. It's evident right from the first chapter, when passages like this:

"He had to have planned it because when we drove onto the dock the boat was there and the engine was running and you could see the water churning up phosphorescence in the river, which was the only light there was because there was no moon, nor no electric light either in the shack where the dockmaster should have been sitting, nor on the boat itself, and certainly not from the car, yet everyone knew where everything was...."

...and this:

"But anyway I wasn't thinking of any of this at the time, it was just something I had in me I could use if I had to, not even an idea but an instinct waiting in my brain in case I ever needed it, or else why would I have leapt lightly over the rail..."

...establish his protagonist Billy Bathgate as a capable, savvy, and colloquially eloquent street urchin. Then, a few pages later, we get this:

"I think now that the key to grace or elegance in any body, male or female, is the length of the neck, that when the neck is long several conclusions follow, such as a proper proportion of weight to height, a natural pride of posture, a gift for eye contact, a certain nimbleness of the spine and length of stride, all in all a kind of physical gladness in movement leading to athletic competence or a love for dancing. Whereas the short neck predicts a host of metaphysical afflictions, any one of which brings about the ineptitude for life that creates art, invention, great fortunes, and the murderous rages of the disordered spirit."

Those of you familiar with Mark Twain's hilarious evisceration of James Fenimore Cooper's literary offenses in "The Deerslayer" will recognize the problem. For those who aren't, think specifically of Twain's Rule #7:

"They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven- dollar Friendship's Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it. But this rule is flung down and danced upon in the 'Deerslayer' tale."

Doctrow violates this rule too. Not as egregiously as Cooper, and not within one paragraph, and from the bottom up rather than the top down, but he still violates it. I'd have given Billy Bathgate a four or even five star rating if he'd been more consistent in his management of character voice.

Billy Bathgate sucks you into a world of a down and out street wise kid who is seduced by a low level seedy mobster into being his protoge. The writting is crisp and the story sharp. Very entertaining and probably Doctorows best work.

This is the No. 1 classic of all Louis Lamor's novels. It is both true to our western heritage and descriptive of man's inner goodness. I find it rewarding to repeatedly read it, and also to view the movie again and again.

I ordered this book so long ago I can not remember the date. Is it lost on the internet or is it in the mail?

I've always liked Westerns better in the movies than in fiction. What makes for good mythic archetypes on the silver screen often makes for something less than that on the printed page. Still, Louis L'Amour's Hondo worked for me. It's a tale of the tall silent loner, hard on the outside and a sensitive soul deep within, the kind of archetype first given us by James Fenimore Cooper's Hawkeye character in Last of the Mohicans. Since then writers of Westerns have reworked the character again and again. And L'Amour does it, as well, with Hondo Lane. He creates a supremely likeable loner who is equally at home with the Apache Indians as with the white settlers, and who is suddenly thrust into a situation in which he must worry about a lone settler woman and her six year old son living in Indian country as the Apaches rise up in rebellion at the broken treaty foisted on them by the white man. Vittoro, the old and implacable Apache chief, takes a shine to the woman's son when he shows unexpected pluck and extends his protection over the boy and his mother. But another Apache, Silva, balks at this, even as Hondo is heading to the homestead to rescue the mom and her son, the woman's ne'er-do-well husband hot on his heels, intent on murder and mayhem. Hondo must fight his way back to the woman and boy, despite the harsh enmity of the Apaches, and balance the demands of his army employers with the needs of the little family he has decided to adopt. It's a good, fast moving story though it hasn't much depth to it. Nor are the characters, who are mostly well drawn, very deeply portrayed. In the end its the drive of the narrative and the rich evocation of the Arizona desert that carry this one. L'Amour worked the Western myth as well in print as many contemporary filmmakers sometimes managed to do in celluloid. -- SWM

In thirty five years, L'Amour wrote over one hundred books. Every one is still in print. Quite an accomplishment. I've read dozens of his books and Hondo is unquestionably my favorite.

Louis Lamoure is often described as a good storyteller, but a mediocre writer. Hondo, his first novel, proves that Lamoure could write when he paid attention to his craft. When you start late and publish over one hundred books, it's difficult to maintain the quality required to get a first novel published.

Unusual for a Western, Hondo is a love story, reminiscent of the The Virginian (Enriched Classics (Pocket)). Published in 1953, the story also provides a balanced view of the Apaches.

Lamoure loved of the West and it comes through to the reader in his stories.
The Shut Mouth Society
The Shopkeeper

A classic western complete with horses, guns, Indians, and of course a hero.

This non-fiction book is about the expedition of John Wesley Powell and their pioneering and death-defying exploration of the Grand Canyon in 1869. Powell, a college professor who had lost an arm at Shiloh, was well-prepared to map the canyons of the Colorado and do a scientific andgeological survey. Unfortunately, he was no leader, and the expedition suffered terribly for it. He rounded up a crew of mountain men and ne'er-do-wells, as well as a few neurotic former Civil War veterans and set off in rowboats that couldn't have been more ill-suited to running the violent rapids of the Colorado. Powell and his men saw amazing sites, but they almost perished multiple times. Finally there was a mutiny in which several men ended up leaving the party and trying to hike out of the canyon(they were never seen again); the others ran the rapids and somehow lived to tell the tale.

While I liked learning more about Powell's expedition, Dolnick has little sense of pacing, and uses annoying modern metaphors every time he gets the chance. The result is a plodding read on what should have been a can't-miss story. Down the Great Unknown has its merits, but the definitive book on Powell and the Grand Canyon has yet to be written.

Reviewer: Liz Clare, co-author of the historical novel "To the Ends of the Earth: The Last Journey of Lewis & Clark"

I've "rafted" the upper Colorado.

Of course that was in a motorized raft, led by experienced pilots, with a map and they did all the cooking and if something really bad happened the ranger service could chopper in and get me (Hey, I *did* hike out from Phantom Ranch)

I can't conceive of doing it in an ungainly rowboat, without a steering oar, having little provisions, without a map or even knowledge of the river (what happens if you hit a 100 ft fall and nowhere to portage?), and where a broken ankle would have meant an almost certain death -- and with one arm.

Truthfully, its amazing this exposition survived.

Dolnick weaves in Powell's embellished account with the other expedition journals to craft a balanced account of the expedition, along with correlating the trip with known features of the canyon. Dolnick describes the tensions within the team -- categorizes their moves, good and bad and tracks their trailblazing passage.

Excellent read.

I enjoyed this book very much. So much that I have loaned it to family and friends to enjoy.

This is a pretty decent book for the newcomer who has never read anything about Powell. I found it less entertaining than my fellow reviewers though, as it follows the tedium of the daily journals a little too closely. I also found the narrative to be interspersed with too many digressions. These range from opinions of the Green/Colorado river by modern rafting experts to accounts of other early rafting expeditions, and a lengthy 2-chapter segment on the American Civil war and Battle of Shiloh. This latter exercise contributes nothing to the book, by the way! The reader is also left in the dark about the Native American peoples, Mormon settlers, and miners who inhabited this area at the same point in time ... Really, it is as if the expedition were done in a vacuum. Even worse was the lack of information on 9 of the 10 men who took part in the expedition. While there is more than enough about John Wesley Powell, readers get only sketchy details about the lives of the other 9 men. Even the simplest details like where these men were born is left out, nor are we given much about the kinds of lives they lived (careers, families, etc.) prior to the expedition (and precious little afterwards as well). Although 6 of these 9 men were, like Powell, fellow Union veterans of the Civil War, but we get nothing about their wartime experiences! We also have no clue what motivated them to join this expedition. This oversight would not doubt have suited the egotistical Powell, but is a serious oversight for a modern historian.

This book was informative but not a real "page turner". The author went off on tangents often that took away from the story at hand. It was not a bad book, but it was not full of the adventure that you would have expected the trip to have been.