BiblioVault - Books about Old West

Lawrence I. Berkove

University of Missouri Press

Sagebrush School is a term applied to a group of writers who spent their creative years in Nevada from the 1860s to the early twentieth century—its most illustrious representative being Mark Twain. Yet most of their work was never republished from the periodicals in which it first appeared and today remains largely unknown to many scholars and aficionados of Western literature.

Lawrence I. Berkove, acknowledged as the leading authority on this body of literature, has assembled an exceptional collection that rescues the lively works of the Sagebrush School from the dusty archives in which they have languished. The Sagebrush Anthology enlarges Mark Twain’s circle to encompass the Sagebrush Bohemians through a compelling blend of humorous and serious fiction, memoir, nonfiction, letters, and poetry. These selections convey the experiences shaped by Nevada’s rough-and-tumble culture, abounding in wit and humor—with a fondness for literary hoaxes—that were the last major formative influence on Twain.

The anthology contains sixty-eight selections—seven by Twain—representing outstanding work by accomplished Sagebrushers Dan De Quille, Sam Davis, Joe Goodman, and Rollin Daggett, plus pieces by lesser-known writers such as Arthur McEwen, Alf Doten, and Fred Hart. Berkove’s introduction recounts the history of the school and identifies and analyzes its main thematic and stylistic characteristics. He shows that Sagebrush literature records and reflects the collision of the last generation of frontiersmen with the new culture of technology, industry, and big business—men of talent, imagination, and integrity driven to work out distinctive ways of coping with an unresponsive system of justice, an economy tilted toward the rich, and a society that impinged on individual liberties.

Although many critics have noted the influence that this period had on Twain when he lived in Virginia City, few have delineated the influence of specific writers on his style. The Sagebrush Anthology not only shows that some of the ideas and literary techniques credited to Twain can be seen as characteristics of the school that he assimilated and refined, but it also fosters an appreciation of these other writers in their own right, showing that their work encompassed topics and genres that Twain barely addressed. By casting new light on the movement, it invites students and general readers to appreciate a silver flowering of Western literature that remains entertaining and instructive for our own time.

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The Forgotten Founders

Rethinking The History Of The Old West

Stewart L. Udall; Foreword by David M. Emmons

Island Press, 2002

"…an impressive new book… [The Forgotten Founders] is a gem that encompasses virtually every aspect of the development of our region." -ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS

"[Udall] offers a convincing argument that it wasn't the cavalry, fur traders, prospectors, gunslingers or railroad builders who tamed the West; it was 'courageous men and women who made treks into wilderness and created communities in virgin valleys.' Udall's spare prose adds impact to his words." -THE SEATTLE TIMES

"The West is so cluttered with misconceptions that it is hard to have a serious discussion about its history." --Wallace Stegner.

For most Americans, the "Wild West" popularized in movies and pulp novels -- a land of intrepid traders and explorers, warlike natives, and trigger-happy gunslingers -- has become the true history of the region. The story of the West's development is a singular chapter of history, but not, according to former Secretary of the Interior and native westerner Stewart L. Udall, for the reasons filmmakers and novelists would have us believe.

In The Forgotten Founders, Stewart Udall draws on his vast knowledge of and experience in the American West to make a compelling case that the key players in western settlement were the sturdy families who travelled great distances across forbidding terrain to establish communities there. He offers an illuminating and wide-ranging overview of western history and those who have written about it, challenging conventional wisdom on subjects ranging from Manifest Destiny to the importance of Eastern capitalists to the role of religion in westward settlement.

Stewart Udall argues that the overblown and ahistorical emphasis on a "wild west" has warped our sense of the past. For the mythical Wild West, Stewart Udall substitutes a compelling description of an Old West, the West before the arrival of the railroads, which was the home place for those he calls the "wagon people," the men and women who came, camped, settled, and stayed. He offers a portrait of the West not as a government creation or a corporate colony or a Hollywood set for feckless gold seekers and gun fighters but as primarily a land where brave and hardy people came to make a new life with their families. From Native Americans to Franciscan friars to Mormon pioneers, these were the true settlers, whose goals, according to Stewart Udall were "amity not conquest; stability, not strife; conservation, not waste; restraint, not aggression." The Forgotten Founders offers a provocative new look at one of the most important chapters of American history, rescuing the Old West and its pioneers from the margins of history where latter-day mythmakers have dumped them. For anyone interested in the authentic history of the American West, it is an important and exciting new work.

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Frontier Ways

Sketches of Life in the Old West

By Edward Everett Dale

University of Texas Press, 1959

Edward Everett Dale gives a first-hand account of the way pioneer families and cowboys of the frontier lived. Dr. Dale has lived in a sod house, and he once rode the range as cook to a group of cowboys. In this book he draws on his varied experiences to describe all aspects of frontier life—the building of a home, the problems of finding wood and water, the procuring and cooking of food, medical practices, and the cultural, social, and religious life of pioneer families.

This edition is a digital facsimile of the 1959 edition.

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