Nevada Books

I had a hard time putting this book down, although I seldom read non-fiction. The case studies were very interesting, and I felt the book gave a good feel for life in the desert.

This book is a relatively short (~80 pages) paperback book on the history of the Virginia and Truckee Railway. It is also the story of the rebirth of the railroad from an abandoned line with only a name to a fully operating tourist line in Nevada.

The book is well written and split into two parts. The beginning is a fairly short summary of the original railroad; where it went, how it started, and how it died. The second part chronicles the work of one individual as he worked to rebuild a ghost railroad into a going tourist operation.

The book is filled with photos from the original line and the now tourist short line. It's a nice, quick read and is designed as a book to be sold to tourists who take the train. While not a detailed study or history of the line, it is a good book for some quick history.

Join Pony Express rider Johnny Free and his pony JennySoo as they deliver the mail. This picture book tells the story of a nights ride where Johnny and JennySoo meet up with seven Paiute warriors. Read this book to find out how they escape them.

The oil paintings in the book were really pretty. I like the story. It kept the readers attention and kept you wondering what was going to happen nest.

We recommend this book to for adult and children to share together to learn more about the Pony Express. It's a great history lesson. The story it's self is fiction but on the last page the author gives us some background on the real Pony Express.

Michael Allen is a folklorist and a rodeo fan. He's a Westerner, born and raised in Ellensburg in central Washington. When this book was published, he was on the faculty of the University of Washington -- probably still is. I say all this because his book is first of all an academic discussion of his subject. It's based on extensive reading and field research, and the analysis tackles a broad range of topics that comprise the discourse among a couple generations of folklorists who've focused on the culture of western Americana. In other words, while Allen clearly enjoys his subject, he's making arguments directed at fellow professionals who represent different points of view. Because of this, there's a steady flow of documentation, with plenty of footnotes. For the casual reader, all this may get a little heavy-going at times.

Allen covers many facets of his subject -- starting with the history of rodeo and looking at the rodeo cowboy as portrayed in movies and TV, folklore, literature, art, and country music. He also has a chapter on what he calls "rainbow rodeo riders" -- that is, minorities, such as Native Americans, African-Americans, women, gays and lesbians. There's also a glossary of rodeo cowboy lingo and a long annotated bibliography in the form of an essay.

Allen's argument rests on a couple of ideas that he acknowledges are debatable. The first is that "real cowboys" (as they existed over 100 years ago out on the unfenced Plains) are for the most part a thing of the past. Today, the role of the "real cowboy" is left to the rodeo cowboy, and (this is where I'd take exception) Allen pretty much ignores the host of working cowboys who still make a living on ranches in a dozen or more western states. But I'm not a folklorist, so that's just my nonprofessional opinion.

The other idea is that the rodeo cowboy represents a "contemporary ancestor" for modern-day Americans. He harks back to the American frontier of our imagination. In his risk-defiant, untamed, wandering, individualistic behavior, he represents what fans regard as essentially American in themselves. In other words, he's mythic -- he represents our deepest values and connects us with our past. These values are embraced by the Cowboy Code, which is an unwritten set of behavioral guidelines all men must aspire to if they are to be accepted into the elite fraternity of "real cowboys." Dating from cowboy culture as it took form in the 19th century, the Code survives today, apparently stronger than ever among the men who rodeo.

The irony is that Allen also reveals the dark side of the myth and the Code, for both thrive on a kind of extreme libertarianism that can be anti-social, intolerant, and misogynistic. While the cowboy with his six-gun "tamed" the West (in popular fiction and movies, at least), the archetypal cowboy is untamable himself. While that's part of his appeal (and there are popular outlaw cowboys aplenty, e.g., Billy the Kid), it also exposes the rodeo cowboy's unsavory side. Allen may not intend this, but this casts a shadow over his argument.

For all my reservations, I recommend this book. It's so full of ideas and ranges across more rodeo cowboy literature than I ever imagined existed. He's added several titles to my reading list. As companion volumes, I'd recommend Baxter Black's hilarious rodeo novel, "Hey, Cowboy, Wanna Get Lucky?" A great book of essays and rodeo photography can be found in Bob St. John's "On Down the Road," full of interviews with rodeo stars circa 1975. For a good recent rodeo movie, there's "Cowboy Up!" about bullriders. Let 'er buck!

Nice guide with good content. Well organized, but there could me ,more pictures or mapsin the guide.

Anyone with an interest in the history of Hawaii should have Saga as a centerpiece of their collection. It takes the reader on a voyage through the decades, with a strong emphasis on the period 1850-1940. Based heavily on the post-1900 work of Ray Jerome Baker and author E.B. Scott's personal collection of 19th century photos, the work (marked volume one but in fact the only one ever published) contains hundreds, if not more than a thousand photos, each researched, documented and many times footnoted. The book is actually in two parts, with the second a photographic journey around Oahu. The only reason this book is not five stars is its relative lack of the Asian experience in Hawaii, which played as deep a role in the islands' modern history as any other ethnicity.

I bought this book for a mandatory class at college on Nevada Constitution. Although I wouldn't have chosen to read this book on my own, it is not as boring as one would have thought. It is well written and even intriguing at times.

Colorful narrative by reknowned Nevada story teller about a majestic, Victorian Gothic church, which is the architectural centerpiece in one of America's most famous mining towns. Many of the old buildings in this mining town that financed the North during the Civil War are decaying and fragile. This guidebook invites you into the interior of the mother church to Nevada Roman Catholics, which has been lovingly restored. The author has been the choirmaster to St. Mary's Church for many years.

During the period from the mid 1840s to 1869, emigration across the Great Plains from the Missouri to Oregon and California was undertaken by thousands of emigrants from all walks of life and for all kinds of reasons. The suffering they endured was indescribable.

In the early days, there was no fixed route and the emigrants were in the hands of guides who promised, for a fee of $10 per waggon, to guide them along the way. Many routes were used. Some were well-worn, others perfunctorily surveyed, and yet others were based on mere guesswork.

In 1845, one of the guides, by the name of Lansford Hastings, wrote a guide book entitled "The Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California". This sold like wildfire back east, and inspired a wave of discontented Americans to sell up and head west, following the route he described in his book.

Calling Hastings a guide is however a misnomer. He'd travelled across the USA in an emigrant train in 1842, but to Oregon, not California. And while the route to California which he was selling was probably the shortest in distance, it took the emigrants across some of the roughest country they could possibly encounter, and then right across the barren Great Salt Desert. The emigrants who followed what became known as the Hastings Cut-off suffered disaster after disaster, and the trek across the desert ended up to be the ruin of many.

In his book, Kelly recounts the stories of some of the parties who crossed the Salt Desert, including that of the legendary Donner party, and the dreadful disasters that befell them. He includes a lengthy account of a drive across the desert that he undertook in 1929 following the still-visible trail of the emigrants. There are fascinating photographs that he took, and absorbing interviews with some of the ancient pioneers who had occupied the fertile parts of the land when the emigrant trail was still fresh and littered with the abandoned belongings of those who had come to grief.

It's clear from the book that he has a fascination with the fate of the Donner Party, and devotes a great deal of his time to their journey. Much of the account of his own journey across the desert is concerned with looking for artefacts connected with their plight as they abandon their belongings in the desperate struggle towards water. His delight is overwhelming when he finally identifies the remains of the Reed family's "Pioneer Palace Car", abandoned in the desert when the oxen escape.

But herein lies the rub. There is a great deal of contemporary evidence for the abandonment of the Reed's family waggon, but when the Reed diary was eventually published in 1947, it clearly states that Reed borrowed a team of oxen from another group of pioneers and went back a few days later to recover the wagon. In any case, there's no contemporary evidence to suggest that the Pioneer Palace Car was anything like as large as more modern sources suggest and as large as the remains that Kelly found.

Now of course it's all very well saying that a 1929 book won't normally contain any evidence that wasn't published until 1947. However, in the 1969 revision, Kelly quotes extensively from Reed's diary, including the passage where Reed returns to rescue his waggon, yet makes absolutely no revision to any of his conclusions.

Kelly is an excellent historian who has written a considerable number of books on pioneer life in the Utah area. He has made a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the conditions of that era and before his death, donated all his notes and photographs to the Utah State Historical Society. His crucial importance should not be overlooked. Yet it's his rather cavalier approach that casts a great deal of suspicion over the thoroughness of his work. It's as if he has already drawn his conclusions and is looking for facts to back them up rather than examining the facts first and then drawing the conclusions.

Factually, it's doubtful if there's much on this subject that is better-written than Kelly's account of life on the Great Salt Desert. On that score alone, there's every reason to buy this book. Just be very wary about jumping to the same conclusions that Kelly does, without having read any other material on the subject.

Just on the other side of the Arizona and California border, Searchlight is about an hour south of Las Vegas. While Vegas currently has over one and a half million people, Searchlight only has around eight hundred. It wasn't always that way. There was a time when Searchlight's population and modernity eclipsed that of Sin City. "Searchlight: The Camp That Didn't Fail" is a history of this town. Written by the current U.S. Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid is a son of Searchlight. Reid examines the hypotheses surrounding the origin of the town's unusual name. This history begins with the site's prospecting days. The story continues with the mining boom and bust and finishes with Searchlight's reincarnation as a retirement community and stop off for Lake Mojave recreationalists. Being one of the most productive mines in US history, the Quartette gold mine is largely responsible for Searchlight's former greatness. Reid spends a good deal of time on founding fathers Benjamin Macready and Colonel Hopkins. Other people associated with the town include Scott Joplin, James Cashman, Rex Bell, Clara Bow, John Macready and Queho, the outlaw Paiute. Topics include banking, the mining strike, newspapers, education, prostitution and the railroad. While the author recounts some of his personal experiences, much of the research for "Searchlight" is based on surviving newspaper articles. The handsome book includes photographs, appendices, end notes, maps and a foreword by former governor O'Callaghan. In terms of drawbacks, the book could have included a tri-state regional map. Harry Reid discusses places that are either not marked or are located off the included Nevada map. Anyone familiar with the region will know the whereabouts of places like Bullhead City, but some readers will wonder about the locality of places like Lanfair Valley, Nelson and Barnwell. Beyond this, there is nothing extraordinary about Searchlight. Sure, there were some interesting characters but unlike places such as Tombstone (Arizona), readers shouldn't expect a theatrical adaptation any time soon. Even Reid appreciates the town's modest place in the big scheme of things. This isn't necessarily a drawback because in this context, Searchlight is a satisfying case study of a typical boom to bust mining town. Thus "Searchlight: The Camp That Didn't Fail" is also recommended for readers who have an interest in Western History, mining and the Mojave Desert. While Harry Reid's hometown may be the camp that didn't fail, his book didn't fail to capture the story of Searchlight.