The Best of the West: Anthology of Classic Writing From the American West, An Review

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(More customer reviews)Among the history books about the Wild West this is like a siver dollar among paper money: While many of them are just so much rustling paper, unable to wake the spirit of the time or bring the people to life, this one speaks with their own voice, loud and clear. To me, a student from Germany, who knew the West only from Hollywood movies and Karl May (the only author I missed in the anthology, but he is rather a German speciality), the whole time gained flesh and bones while reading the accounts of such divers people as Indian chiefs and Philadelphia ladies turned Cowgirl. The possibilities of a place where conventions didn't count as much as your ability to ride a horse or rope a cow strike one very vivid from these pages. Besides - not all cowboys were white (or male). All the different people that made up the Wild West get to have their say and your can, after reading this anthology, truly say for yourself that you can picture, say Dalton City at it's peak.

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A sterling collection of classic and contemporary fiction and nonfiction evoking the unique spirit of the West and its people, selected and introduced by one of today's premier chroniclers of the Western landscape and a New York Times bestselling author.

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The Falcon (Penguin Classics) Review

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(More customer reviews)"The Falcon" is the autobiography of Shaw-Shaw-Wa Be-Na-Se or John Tanner, a White Indian captured by the Shawnee along the Ohio River in 1789 and later sold to an Ojibwa family in northern Michigan. He went on to live a long and fascinating life among the Indians of the Old Northwest working as a trapper for the Hudson Bay Company and serving as the interpreter at the trading post at Sault St. Marie. He spent some time searching out his white family in Kentucky before returning to Michigan to be with his Indian children, forever spurning the white way of life. He went on to write this narrative in 1830 shortly before becoming a murder suspect and disappearing into the north woods forever.
Tanner's narrative is truly amazing for it's matter-of-fact style and the wealth of information it contains on every facet of Indian life in the late 18th and early 19th century including hunting, family life, Indian-white relations, foodways, views on war and murder, even attitudes toward sexual orientation. Tanner tells a story from the point of view of a man who has lived a hard life but is determined to live it as well as he is able. He makes no romantic notions about the Indians nor does he have sentimental longings for his white family. Unlike other famous captivity narratives like those of Mary Rowlandson, James Smith, or Oliver Spencer, this story is of the unredeemed captive who willingly chooses to embrace the neo-lithic lifestyle and the hardships that such a life entails, but makes no regrets of his life choices.
The historical and ethnographical information contained here alone makes it worthwhile reading, but the pure human content the author puts into this work makes it truly great.

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John Tanner's fascinating autobiography tells the story of a man torn between white society and the Native Americans with whom he identified.

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