Men of the West: Life on the American Frontier
Luchetti, author of Women of the West and Children of the West, completes the demographic panorama in this absorbing, lavishly illustrated historical celebration. The Old West being the mythic heartland of masculinity, Luchetti’s loosely structured thematic treatment has plenty of archetypes to explore, complicate or debunk, including mountain men, Forty-Niners, outlaws and sheriffs (often one and the same), cowboys and Indians and cavalry. Drawing on a wealth of contemporary journalism, memoirs and diaries, she colorfully evokes the casual gunplay, rough justice, Biblical weather and sod-busting toil of the Western epic, and also visits the less-sung civilizing exploits of clergymen, doctors, tradesmen and inventors. And Luchetti also pays close attention to the throbbing romantic longings of lonely men on the almost woman-less frontier, from bashful cowboys pouring their hearts out in prairie ballads to dandified city slickers writing poetry to woo sweethearts, and to the sometimes blissful, sometimes miserable, sometimes violent unions that resulted. Enriched by period photos that convey both the picturesqueness and squalor of frontier life, the result is a fascinating social history, grand in scope and intimate in detail. 139 b&w; photographs.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.