University of Nebraska Books

I had to read this book for a class, and it's definitely better than most of the required reading I've had. If you like F. Scott Fitzgerald and J.D. Salinger, where there is no action but it's a very enriching experience for the character, then you will probably like the book. If you like Michael Crichton or Tom Clancy and are stupid like 90% of everybody else out there, then you probably won't.

Choteau Creek: A Sioux Reminiscence by Joseph Iron Eye Dudley was an easy read, and I was almost turned off by the simple and straightforward style. However, in the end, it is what made the book so enchanting. There were no hidden agendas or questions left unanswered- just a simple story of a man's childhood filled with people everyone should be lucky enough to learn from. This is not to say the book did not deal with deep issues, just that the way they were presented was very easy to grasp. But then again, I would hope the love felt in this book was always this simple and wonderful.

This is a truly tremendous book! Among my personal list of favorites. I found this book quite by accident years ago in a local bookstore and it continues to impact me today. I recommend it wherever I go and have had my own teenage sons and other family members read it. It should be on high school and college reading lists. The style is simple yet heartfelt. The themes so meaningful yet rare in todays world. Themes such as real character, unselfishness, solid role models, tradition, and attachment to place are woven throughout the text. Read it!

I am reminded of a saying I once heard: People may come to dinner, but a true friend helps you wash the dishes. This book presents friends. I can picture Grandma as she tells stories of her childhood or humbly contemplates the meaning of the owl's call. She remains with me after the book is finished. This is a good book for those who need to see the beauty and small acts of kindness and generosity that are triumphant in the face of hardship.

I was told this is a "classic" and I agree...This dude wrote down every term, item, description, observation, etc along his trips to Mexico, Santa Fe and St. Louis....Great primary source book to add to your Southwest History collection

Shortly after Mexican Independence interest in establishing trade with Sante Fe, Mexico's most northerly province, became ever more popular. Josiah Gregg was preceded by Mountain Men who explored the area, but he was the first with sufficient education to describe the people, land features and Indians with whom traders would have to deal. His work constitues a PREFACE to other books dealing with the Santa Fe Trail and its growing interest to the United States. Independence, MO, and Fort Smith and Van Buren, AR. - were the northern and southern starting points for Santa Fe respectively. The book is as much a tale of encounters as it is a repository of valuable information. A 'FIRST READ' for persons interested in Santa Fe and the Westward Movement. Another of a variety of fascinating histories of the Southwest.

The full title of this book suggests that it is much more than a dry account of business practices: The Commerce of the Prairies, or the Journal of a Santa Fe Trader, During Eight Expedition Across The Great Western Prairies, and A Residence of Nearly Nine Years in Northern Mexico. Illustrated with maps and engravings. By Josiah Gregg.

The period was 1831 - 1840. On paper Northern Mexico was an immense holding that loosely included what is today Texas and New Mexico and stretched southward more than 500 miles through the Chihuahuan Desert to the Mexican trading centers of Durango and Chihuahua. Fierce, nomadic Indians prevented the Spanish and Mexicans from settling this vast domain. A large, loosely defined central section of the continent was known simply as Indian territory. American trading caravans departing from Franklin, Missouri did not encounter any settlements, not even ranches, until within 100 miles of Santa Fe. The long route southward from Santa Fe to Durango and Chihuahua was nearly as hazardous.

Josiah Gregg's narratives make marvelous reading. His style is engaging and his descriptions are accurate. We readers share his love and fascination of this marvelously wild and dangerous territory. I have read very few modern travel narratives as intriguing and well-written as Gregg's writings.

Despite their constant threat, Gregg is sympathetic to the plains Indians and documents how the behavior of unscrupulous and foolish traders have exacerbated relations with the Indians. He cites unnecessary killings of buffalo by travelers who are overwhelmed by the shear size of the herds; he even admits to doing so himself on occasion.

He is a man of commerce and tells us much about trade with Mexico. Rampant corruption among the tax collectors, custom officials, and governmental officials is an unavoidable business cost. For remote Santa Fe, Durango, and Chihuahua, American trade is much desired, but Mexicans view the American traders with suspicion. The first American traders (the Pike expedition) were immediately imprisoned for nine years.

I highly recommend this remarkable, fascinating account of travel along the Santa Fe Trail in the 1830s. I cannot imagine a more intriguing, more engaging narrative than that created by Josiah Gregg.

This edition of The Commerce of the Prairies was first published in 1926. The editing by Milo Milton Quaife is excellent. The footnotes are interesting and add considerable value. Josiah Gregg's original publication was in two volumes and included extensive, detailed, and accurate observations on flora, fauna, and the native Indians and is often cited by historians. This shortened version by Lakeside Press (now published by University of Nebraska Press) is an ideal introduction to the Santa Fe Trail.

In 1831, on a suggestion from his doctor to travel west to improve his health, Josiah Gregg joined a wagon train of Sante Fe traders. The result is a highly acclaimed first hand narrative of the Sante Fe trade and life on the prairies during the 1830's. Gregg's vivid writing style illustrates the many hardships and adventures of life along the Sante Fe Trail and into Mexico. We read about traveling through barren deserts, inconsistencies of the weather, the always present danger of marauding Indians and Mexicans, the questionable Mexican governmental policies, etc. Being an amateur naturalist (he had several species of plants named after him), Gregg describes geographical landforms, geology, and plant and animal life extremely well. He also gives clear, precise and realistic descriptions of the cultures and customs of both the Indians and native Mexicans from how they dressed, to how they constructed their homes; religious, spiritual and matrimonial beliefs; how food was secured and prepared; theories on future agricultural practices and uses, etc. Gregg was a keen and acute observer of his immediate surroundings which is evident in both his writing style and presentation of the subject. Professor Moorhead's editing is second to none.

Just when you thought literary crit. was doomed to its staid exsistence, Ronell arrives on the scene. A critic (whose name escapes me) once said that while we can pick up a book, books can throw us across the room. I'm still recovering from the flight and trip this little book sent me on...

This book is revolutionary. If you've ever wondered what an artist (Avital Ronnell is a former performance artist) might be capable of coming up with if they became an academic (a professor) but were still devoted to the idea of performance, this is the answer. Think Kitaj and how his paintings is a form of interpretation of other artists' work in referencing them in the theme of his own work. In other words, Avital Ronnel's "Crack Wars" and its "analysis" of Madame Bovary is possible because it is from a field of study that is unique in that it is devoted to the study of an artform (literary arts) while itself operating in the same medium as that artform (words). The creativity exhibited in "Crack Wars", which is its most powerful proposition, shows that an interpretive "analysis" can be offered on a work of art ("Madame Bovery") without even wanting to answer the question, "What does is mean?". Much of the creative thrust seems to come from the way in which Ronnell re-metaphorizes certain elements or metaphors related to (current) drug use and applies them in the exploration of other facets of society that alters or simulates (ex. taking a "hit" or "scoring" of literature). What this does is to expand the reading of "Madame Bovery" to a whole crop of metaphors and their current exploration whose consideration in language may not have been in circulation at the time of its writing. And though this work may be on the edge of "literary studies", Ronnell is by no means a marginal figure. As head of NYU's dept of Germanic Languages, Ronnell co-lectured a graduate seminar last fall with Derrida (she is in the "Derrida" documentary with multi-colored bobby-pins relaying an interaction with Derrida's mother). Consider the language of the extensive quote below.

"Madame Bovary I daresay is about bad drugs. Equally, it is about thinking we have properly understood them. But if the novel matches its reputation for rendering its epoch- our modernity - intelligible, then we would do well to recall that epoch also means interruption, arrest, suspension and, above all, suspension of judgement. Madame Bovary travels the razor's edge of understanding/reading protocols. In this context understanding is given as something that happens when you are no longer reading. It is not the open-ended Nietzschean echo, "Have I been understood?" but rather the "I understand" that means you have suspended judgement over a chasm of the real. Out of this collapse of judgement no genuine decision can be allowed to emerge. Madame Bovary understood too much; she understood what things were supposed to be like and suffered a series of ethical injuries for this certitude. Her understanding made her legislate closure at every step of the way. She was her own police force, finally turning herself in to the authorities. She understood when the time had come to an end [...] for Madame Bovary opens herself to an altogether different history of intelligibility, in fact, to another suicide pact, cosigned by a world that longer limits its rotting to a singular locality of the unjust."

Ronell's book is a tour-de-force on many levels: for its lucid and startling close-reading of -Madame Bovary-, for the densely glittering energy (and humor) of her prose, and above all for its insight -- never before so comprehensively and convincingly argued -- into addiction as a symptomatic structure of the modern condition. (The addict, she points out, embodies a peculiar challenge for thinking about the inside/outside, mind/body relation. Emma Bovary takes us farther into questions of expenditure and circulation.) This is a must-read not only for those interested in Flaubert's novel, but in the history of subjectivity more generally. Even in its craziest moments, the book is provocative and perceptive.

Avital Ronell examines drugs addiction & mania in this amazingly well written and concisely beautiful book. A book-as-object, containing installations, special sections and poetic-philosophic passages, Crack Wars is sure to please the patient reader. Draws from Flaubert, Heidegger and Derrida...contends that this "culture inspires and supports destructive play only to punish it." A must read!

Early book by the great western writer Robert Utley provides a brief description of the Indian situation that evolved before the LBH and then he provides an abbreviated but well described sequence of battle events. Utley then describes the press' role in developing the story that caught General Sherman and Sheridan off guard as Sherman provides Terry's second controversial report to a reporter by accident. Utley describes the fireworks that arises between Custer supporters such as his old classmate Confederate Rosser and Reno and other military men such as Colonel Hughes, Terry's adjutant and relative. The controversy is even made even more complex by the chapter spent on the Indian's version of events that has elements of truth combined with confusing facts or half truths perhaps aggravated by poor translations and the Indians unique individualistic versions of battle that lack time and spatial realities. Finally, Utley tackles a number of the mythical stories about Custer and the LBH including Frederick Whitacker's quick print and fanciful book on Custer that became a best seller. The best part of this chapter is the discussion about the last four crow scouts to see Custer particularly the debate over when Curley departed from Custer. An excellent book that frames the controversies about Custer's battle which also explains the fascination, nothing is totally certian but amongst all the testimony and physical evidence, somewhere lies the truth.

Anything by Robert Utley is indispensible, especially when it comes to Custer as he wrote CAVALIER IN BUCKSKIN, probably the best biography of the man. Also to his credit are the official NPS Little Bighorn Battlefield guide, a biography of Sitting Bull, and numerous other Custer/Indian Wars/Western history books.

This book is primarily focussed on an examination of the immediate aftermath of the Little Big Horn and how the various lines of controversy were established that still echo (unresolved) and are with us today. These include Did Custer Disobey Orders? Was Reno a coward when he fled from the valley fight? Were both Reno and Benteen negligent in not responding to Custer's written order for the packs, an order with an audible reminder of the gunfire four miles away that, two days later, the men on Reno Hill learned signalled the end of Custer and his command. All of the seeds of future books and endless debates were firmly planted by the end of the 1870s, topped off with the Reno Court of Inquiry. Excellent insight into that event and some of the second-hand talk and gossip sorroundingsthe officers who testified and why they may have said what they did. Utley is his usual dispassionate, detached self as he explores these issues in his highly engaging writing style.

Originally published in 1962, the book concludes with Utley's brief commentary on most of the major battle books published up to that time. One can only wish that this section were revised and updated. Lacking that, we can all look forward to the autor's CUSTER AND ME, due in October 2004.

Despite its age (it was first published in 1962) this book is probably the best of the scores of books available to start with for those interested in exploring the ever elusive and controversial life of George Armstrong Custer and the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Utley, while steering clear of making judgments of his own ("I do not aspire to offer the last word on the subject"), lays out the scene of the battle, shows how the press and early writers colored events and created heroes and villains, looks at the Indian side of the story, and discusses some of the myths that have gone into creating the Custer Legend. The Custer literature is prodigious in amount, and tends to be either Custerphilic (pro-Custer) or Custerphobic (anti-Custer). Again, Utley refuses to take sides, but points out that virtually every "fact" regarding the battle and its participants issues up opposing interpretations. This short book gives a powerful sense of what the student of Custer and especially the Little Big Horn is up against. A useful and straightforward introduction.

Good reading offers some good insight into the whole Custer and Little Bighorn 'fiasco'! I'm more prepared now to find out what possibly happened on that fateful day. The case has been well made that there may 'never' be a definitive conclusion?

I must admit that in my mind the myths around Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid were all tied up with the 1969 movie starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. I had a vague idea that the characters were based on real people, but I wasn't very curious about them. Then I ran across this book. I meant to give it a desultory glance, but I got hooked by the charming George Leroy Parker aka Butch Cassidy and his hothead partner, Harry Longabaugh aka the Sundance Kid. I found myself peering at the photographs and thinking, "They were real!" I was particularly entranced with the mysterious Etta Place (if that was actually her name). This is a very entertaining account of obsessive sleuthing. The author and her husband even went to Bolivia and witnessed the digging up of remains of an outlaw purported to be Sundance. Ms. Meadows reaches no definite conclusions, and that's just fine with me. Perhaps if we knew exactly what happened to them, they wouldn't be so intriguing.

Meadows, an exceptionally skillful writer, takes you along on a fascinating adventure to uncover the remains of two of the old west's most colorful outlaws. You feel you are right there at the side of the author and her husband every step of the way as they try to solve the mystery of the famous outlaw pair's last days. It's a trip well worth the taking. Highly recommended.

Digging Up Butch and Sundance is as engrossing as any fictional detective story, thanks to Anne Meadows' exceptional writing style and dogged pursuit of the facts. She brings to life the men behind the myth, and deals with a wealth of confusing and conflicting accounts with clarity and intelligence, spicing her story with numerous fascinating details about her and her husband's countless trips to South America in search of the truth. While her final answers may not have solved the mystery of the outlaws' fate with 100% certainty, she has done more than anyone else to come to a solution, which is certain to satisfy all but the most of skeptical of critics. May be the most complete (and accurate) book about their final days, and is likely to remain so. Highly recommended.

We loved the Butch and Sundance we saw on the screen. Their humor, looks and everything else. But sadly, we gained not quite enough information on the two except their robbing career, loves and their escape to Bolivia.(Ha!)
So, for those of you who want to know more about the two outlaws, I strongly suggest Anne Meadows book, DIGGING UP BUTCH AND SUNDANCE.

I am not quite done with the book yet. It's a big read. But from what I have read so far, I have learned a lot about the two. Anne Meadows takes us to a home and other places where Cassidy and the Kid were said to have stayed and visited. She gives us detailed information about their lives, robberies and even room to doubt about their final fight. There has been speculation about whether or not they died in the last battle in Bolivia and whether that battle even occured. I haven't reached that far in the book yet, but I like it so far and encourage anyone who is interested to read DIGGING UP BUTCH AND SUNDANCE.
Anne Meadows did an excellent job in writing this book. Don't pass it up!

This little gem of a book should be on the shelves at every library. Aside from the likable Sarah, the wonderful social history is very absorbing for those interested in women's lives during the 1850's. Even if you are not particularly interested in the Gold Rush, you will be interested in the experiences of one of our formothers. Buy this as a gift for your daughters.

Joy Melcher, Civil War Lady Magazine

Sarah with husband and daughter, Mary, move to California in 1849. Trusting the God of the Bible, the Royces experience life (and almost death) on the trail to California. Second to the last party to complete the trip into northern California before winter, they eventually settle in Grass Valley. Her son, Josiah Royce, becomes the famous Harvard historian and philospher with new ideas (Royce Hall of UCLA), but his mother, Sarah, retains her faith in the God of the Bible. First hand look at San Francisco and northern California in the 1850's. Sarah is my great-great grandmother and Mary, the little girl in the story, is my great-grandmother. Easy reading and great book to take on a plane. We buy and give these books to many guests at our company ...they are very popular.

I selected this book from a list given in my college English class. The list of books were all nonfiction so I knew it would be a book based on fact. I knew nothing more. As I read, I could not put this book down. The story takes place beginning in Iowa the year 1849. "Gold fever" was born. The Royce family was on the move from their home to the great golden state of California. Sarah has more passion, faith, and drive than I've ever seen in a book. She is an example indeed of strength and inner peace throughout many challenges in a small amount of time. I was so grateful to see this book is still in print! It was first published in 1932 never meant to be a book at all. It was Sarah's gift to her son. She wrote about her journey using her journal she kept as they traveled. I will buy this book not only for my children, but for gifts as well. By the way, Sarah and her family end up living here, in the Sierra Foothills, and that is where I live! I've never read a story about the Gold Rush or the 49er's. I always thought it would be too depressing. There are sad times in this book, but as you read you can't help but believe with Sarah that they will beat all the odds.

As a historian an author of the book: SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA MISCELLANY, I rate this book with 5 stars for its excellent overview and in-depth look at the true lives of women who came to California during the Gold Rush. This is not a book filled with the fanciful notions of a romantic's point of view. No, this is a gut-wrenching look at the realities of pioneering California and the women who tamed the wild land and the wild men!

Dorothy M. Johnson's stories echo real life. I got the sense that most of her characters came to her from bits and pieces of the people she grew up around. Although she wrote for the 40's and 50's, there is nothing dated about this book.As a people , we haven't changed much.

This isn't the "bang-bang, shoot-em-up" West, but tales of life where the reality jumps off the pages. They are tales of quiet heroism and patient sympathy, in a language of wonderful imagination. People in these stories are just trying to live, love, and get through the day. I'm grateful to the friend who told me about Dorothy Johnson; her work reads just like yarns told around a campfire, and you can almost hear a grizzled old cowpoke's voice. If only an imaginative publisher would issue them in audio!

THE HANGING TREE is a wonderful collection of frontier tales by a woman who has gotten unfairly short shrift as a very fine American writer. Dorothy Johnson's stories, set mostly in her native Montana, dealt with men and women, frontier riff-raff, lawmen, and Indians. These are no stereotypical westerns, they are stories of the human condition that happen to take place on the frontier. The title story in this collection, THE HANGING TREE, is the best, I think. A haunting tale of an ill-fated frontier doctor -- Joe Frail -- it works as a pure western, as a moving love story, and as a psychological character study. It was the basis for Gary Cooper's last western, one of the finest westerns ever made, the masterful THE HANGING TREE.

My husband and I have never had similar tastes in westerns, but we both loved this book of short stories! It is one of the best collections of western stories I have ever read. I have read it several times and find it a must to own!

Hannah is a wise book written by a man with a huge heart. I love how the cabin-building provides a framework, always something to fall back on when loss otherwise wants to swamp me. I love the honest voice describing people who love each other enough to risk anger and fighting. I love how there are always elk or eagles, mud, a river, a runoff--how grounded the book is in the created world. I hunger for that & Jonathan Johnson feeds it to me. I myself am a better person with more to give when I finish this book.

Jonathan Johnson, Hannah and the Mountain

reviewed by Jacob Powers

It is difficult to find a text that gives balance between nature and family. Granted, each genre holds its own, but to find a book that discusses both the love of the wilderness and the love of family is rare. Fortunately Jonathan Johnson, with his memoir Hannah and the Mountain, has successfully done just that.
Johnson's narrative at first focuses on his goal to renovate a cabin owned by his extended family for over forty years for him and his wife, Amy, in the Idaho wilderness: "[We] came to the mountains because our adult lives were rushing toward us and we wanted to go out and meet those lives in a place that would keep us young and free and filled with passion. After years of school we were ready to settle into the long story of home." This feeling of home quickly takes a step forward when Jonathan and Amy discover that she is pregnant with their first child. Now, with the combination of extensive renovations and the limited amounts of resources to do so, the intent to form a home suitable to raise his future child in quickly takes off. Yet Johnson does it all in hope-hope that his firstborn will experience the beauty and awe of the wilderness that he and his wife adore.
Tragedy, however, ensues as the memoir (which reads a lot like a novel) quickly disintegrates from its optimistic dreams into the harsh realities of a complicated pregnancy. The baby is carried too low, putting pressure on and stretching the lower uterus, threatening a premature birth: "Amy'd been having pains low in her abdomen all along...the hope was that the pains were the result of these problems, not the contractions that could be causing the problems." Yet all hope is not lost as Johnson guides the reader through his and his wife's pains and grief towards a strong anticipation that they will be able to tame their dreams again: "We've got our little cabin on land I've come to think of as an extension of my own body...that will be more than enough for Amy and me to build a life on. I will not create sorrows in a life where sorrows find me on their own."
While most of the themes and settings in the book take place Idaho, many are reflective of Michigan's landscape as well. Johnson writes of Marquette where both he and Amy grew up several times throughout. There are also moments where he and his wife consider where they would rather have the baby-in their own formed home in the Idaho wilderness, or back in Marquette where their parents and past lives are. But what stands out the most is Johnson's connection with a past friend and writer, Mac, who experiences the death of his sixteen year old son when he died in an accident on the icy roads just outside of Marquette. It is in this moment of the book where Johnson connects his own experiences of a possible future father with the tragic loss that Mac experiences: "Odds are that being a father will forever be like walking on the thick crust on top of four feet of snow in the cold, February sunlight." As the memoir progresses, it becomes apparent that the love and fear of family cannot simply be contained within the borders of our own state or within Johnson's past life. Michigan may be where Johnson grew up, but Idaho is where his home and life is now.
Although the story is one that has been heard before, it is Johnson's heavy experience in the poetic realm and ability to capture emotions of joy and distress that makes Hannah and the Mountain stand out amongst others. With an interwoven reflection between the lyrical love of the wilderness with the preferable avoidance of the busy city life, Johnson paints a landscape that is powerful and unforgettable. Yet what lies in the foreground of Johnson's affection of the wilderness is that irreplaceable love and desire he has for family itself-"If any of us are ever saved, whatever that might mean, we aren't saved by the stories we create for ourselves to inhabit; we are saved by our loves." For Johnson, it is the family that makes the life; the rest is replaceable.



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Jacob Powers is a senior at Grand Valley State University, graduating in the winter of 2006 with a degree in Creative Writing and a minor in English. After graduating, he plans to take a year off and then apply to graduate programs.

Jonathan Johnston writes with the evocative prose of a poet. He tells the story of his path toward fatherhood and toward the fulfillment of his childhood dream of building his family's cabin home in the mountains of Idaho. He does so with passion and care. The reader sees clearly the autumn twilight as it fills the fields and sees the full moonlight come spilling through the windows of the cabin. On these beautifully written pages the reader learns of the profound love Johathan and his wife Amy share. It is a book I shall love giving so others might come to know this incredible author.

I am a former student of Jonathan's...in fact, I am one of the students who sat on the lawns of the Western PA College during his Nature in Lit class that he mentions in the book. That was six years ago and I have been a fan of his work ever since.

This memoir is beautifuly crafted as only a poet-turned-prose writer could do. He weaves the story of building his home, following his dreams, and starting a family in a touching and compelling fashion. The reader relates to the joy and hope of the young couple and feel their pain in times of trouble. This is not a memoir that serves to glorify the life of the author, but rather, it serves as a connection to each of us who are in pursuit of identity (be it individual or family or whatever else)and who are all on the journey through life.

This is a beautiful work. I have never cried so hard over the pages of a book before. Johnson has been couragous and honest in his prose which makes it such an inspiring read.

I was given this book by a patient. The people in the stories are the same as today. The truths he tells and the antedotes are priceless. A must read for medical students and young professionals.

When I first picked up this book, I was interested in it because it was so old. As I read it, especially the first few chapters about his adventures in elementary school (I teach fourth grade) I was pleased. I feel better about the antics my students have gotten into. The rest of the book is an entertaining, yet infomative first hand account of the growth of the medical profession. We have come a long way. I am looking forward to seeing where we go.

I just finished this book last night. I have an interest in medical history, particularly american. The author gives a detailed insight into early american medicine. He was truely a wonderful man and physician. I am a physician and am surprised how many problems he experienced that are still currently problems in medicine. This book is a must read for anyone interested in early american medicine.

This book is excellent for understanding life in the mid to late 1800's, for understanding the speed with which the "practice of medicine" has grown, and growing in honesty with oneself. The humor and joy is the best! And I empathized with the pain and difficulty.

"The Indian War of 1864" is a reissue of a memoir originally published in the early 1900s. It recounts the day-by-day adventures of Eugene Ware, a young officer in an Iowa cavalry unit serving in far western Nebraska toward the end of the Civil War. The author, who later in his life was a published poet and friend of Mark Twain's, writes beautifully of life in the ranks on the far edges of civilization. He not only recounts the nitty-gritty of service in a volunteer cavalry unit, he wisely and graphically documents the clash of settlers and Indians. As a serving Army officer, I most enjoyed the many hard lessons Ware learned as a junior officer trying to maintain order and discipline among his soldiers. The volunteer soldiers of his unit were a rough and unruly bunch who had the signal virtues of being fearless fighters who never shirked their duties. All other soldierly qualities--such as the ability to stay sober--were in doubt and posed extreme leadership challenges for Lieutenant Ware. I have often shared anecdotes from the book with my peers and subordinates as examples of both how to earn the respect of American soldiers and how to live up to the demands of duty as an officer under extreme stress in remote locations. I strongly recommend this book for anyone interested in the settling of the West, the US Army of the time, and the sad downfall of the American Indian.

I picked this book up by mistake. What a wonderful mistake.

This is a first hand account of the Indian War of 1864. In terms of its chronological time slot, these remembrances of Captain Eugene F. Ware, Seventh Iowa Cavalry, fit smack in the middle of the flood tide of Western migration from all parts of the east. Captain Ware's responsibilities were to keep the overland migration routes free from Indian attack while simultaneously protecting the Indians from white depredations. The story depicted is one of continual conflict resolution, long, weary hours of patrol, inadequate manpower and intense exposure to drought, flood, heat and cold. It is a story of fifteen mile wagon trains, vast buffalo herds and space, truly wide open space. It is a story of the OLD west, that which existed before fences and cattle ranches, before complex Indian reservation systems and most of all, a time when Native American tribes were still a force to be reckoned with. It is extremely well written.

That portion of the trail which Eugene Ware patrolled is today Interstate 80 as it passes through western Nebraska.

Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, and Nebraska around the Platte river --1864. Cheyenne, Sioux, Pawnee, Kiowa, and others. Wagon trains from horizon to horizon. Confederate deserters. How to build a fort. Drunken troopers. A prairie fire moving at the speed of a train. A fort surrounded by thousands of Indains. Watching the beaver play. Surrounded by wolves. Brave soldiers. An incompetent officer. The secret society. A phonetic roster of Indian scouts. Hunting buffalo. The price of bacon, flour, rice, coffee, and other supplies. The different landscapes described. Tracking and running from Indians. An "accidental suicide." Premonitions. Real people as they really lived. A thousand vignettes as seen by Captain Eugene Ware of the Seventh Iowa Cavalry.

This is the memoir of a young cavalry officer serving on the Plains at the end of the Civil War. It is very interesting in the way it depicts day to day life, and merges the two conflicts. I was not aware, for example, that the Union was so concerned about Confederate attempts to ally with Indian tribes.

Having said this, I caution, that it's not exactly like reading about Custer. The most exciting encounter with the Indians involves Ware and his troop trying to make a mad dash for the fort before the Indians have time to persue, and the major accomplishment is replacing the telegraph wires that the Cheyennes destroyed. Thus I would not recommend this for an individual new to the topic of the Indian Wars, but if you're at the point where you want to delve deeper, and get more insight into the times, this is a very valuable work.