During his more than 40 years of newspaper and magazine work, Harry Chrisman has been answering questions about the American West — both the standard and the oddball queries, such as "What is the most fantastic bear story you ever heard?"

Chrisman first encountered many of these questions in his monthly column "Roundup Time," which appeared in The West, a national monthly magazine.

Concentrating on the puzzlers, Chrisman has gathered in his illustrated volume over one thousand of the most frequently asked questions about the American West. Readers will find chapters devoted to the people of the West (cowboys, Indians, lawmen, outlaws, and gunfighters), chapters on the Western lifestyle (culture, pioneer life, folklore, and business and commerce), as well as chapters on the land (geography and geology, and towns and territories).

Here, then, is an entertaining volume to which readers can turn for information and recreation and which will remain a constant source for the younger generations who wish to learn of their forefathers and of the many problems they encountered and resolved during the settlement of the Great American West.