JON E. LEWIS

THE WEST THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN WEST

DANE TECHNICZNE (K1)

OPRAWA: miekka

LICZBA STRON: 558

STAN: dobry ++

OPIS:

Jon E. Lewis has edited a series of stories of the Old West outlining a path through the chronology of American history's last frontier from the early days of the Lewis and Clerk discoveries, through to the Indian Wars and the white cowboy settlements that followed the railroad and the gold fever boom towns.

The accounts are easily digestable in short chapters and discuss many of the well-recognised names and events such as Billy the Kid and the Battle of the Little Big Horn familiar to most Hollywood film audiences. The narrative appropriately dismantles many of the inaccurate legendary positions of the West's characters informing the reader that Calamity Jane may well have been a prostitute at one time and that Billy the Kid killed relatively few people compared to less-known gunmen. Punctuated with interesting facts and as much a social commentary on the harsh and basic reality of being a frontiersman, the book connects and corrects many of the isolated events that occured over such a vast area over such a long period of time.