Posse Book Review Program

Currently there are nine new books available to review. Come to our monthly meetings to pick a book or two for your fun historical readings. These are new publications from universities where historical research is continually taking place.

New western historical books are available to review for the Denver Posse of Westerners. Send your reading requests to Frank Pilkington, book review editor at Apache313@gmail.com. You may pick up the book at the next meeting or the book you request could be mailed to you for a small $5.00 shipping charge. A review of the authors work needs to be returned for every book taken. The University publishers, the authors and our Roundup magazine will receive a copy of your review. In return, you get to keep the book for your personal library. Here are the current choices on deck.

  1. Borderlander: The Life of James Kirker, 1792-1852, by Ralph Adam Smith, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman OK., 1999, 326 pgs. James Kirker was an immigrant from Ireland who became a villain, a hero, or a scoundrel. When Apache and Comanche Indians from the U.S. began raiding northern Mexico, bounty warfare contracts with effective and inexpensive methods to solve the problems made him famous. This Indian fighter became an infamous frontier figure.

  2. Hispano Bastion: The New Mexican Power in the Age of manifest Destiny, 1837-1860, by Michael Alarid, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque NM, 2022, 243 pages, Groundbreaking study examining New Mexico’s transition from Spanish to Mexican, to US control during the nineteenth century. Emerging

  3. Gangster Tour of Texas, by Lindsay Baker, Texas A & M Univ. Bonnie & Clyde, the bank-robbing Newton boys, Machine Gun Kelly, Galveston’s high-rolling Maceo brothers and a host of other Lone Star rogues plus photos and narrative will keep your interest.

  4. Monumental Controversies: Mount Rushmore, four Presidents, and the Quest for National Unity, by Harriet F. Senie. The only way to move beyond toxic divisiveness is to reckon with history and this book offers a clear-eyed assessment of the contributions and failings of U.S. presidents who are immortalized at Mt. Rushmore.

  5. The Texas Frontier and the Butterfield Overland Mail: 1858-1861, by Glen Sample Ely, 2016 & 2023 University of Oklahoma Press, Norman OK: The story of the Texas frontier from the Red River to El Paso before the Civil War, a raw country punctuated by chaos, lawlessness, and violence. The federal and state government often worked at cross-purposes, their contradictory policies leaving settlers to deal with vigilantes, lynching’s, raiding Indians, and outlaws.

  6. History of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, New Edition, 2020. Univ. of Nebraska Press, Cyrus KI. Holliday envisioned a railroad that would run from Kansas to the Pacific to increase the commerce and prosperity of the nation. This is the first comprehensive history of the iconic AT & SF RR from its birth in 1859 to its termination in 1996.

  7. Class and Race in the Frontier Army: Military Life in the West, 1870-1890, Kevin Adams, U of OK press 2023 Adams proves that the frontier army was characterized by a “Victorian class divide” that overshadowed ethnic prejudices. An inflexible class barrier stood between officers and enlisted men to understand American society in the Gilded Age.

  8. The Last Lookout on Dunn Peak: Fire Spotting in Idaho’s St. Joe National Forest by Nancy S. Hammond, 2024 Pullman WA. Captures that lost era and recounts a life few will now experience - serving as a US Forest Service fire lookout.

  9. Westerns: A Women’s History by Victoria Lamont, 2016, Univ. of Nebraska. At every turn in the development of what we now know as the western, women writers have been instrumental. Yet the myth that the western is male-authored persists. Detailed studies of many women who helped shape the western are described.

  10. More books are on their way. If there is a topic of particular interest, let me know and I will try to get that for you. Have fun reading history.

Contact Frank Pilkington, Posse Book Review Chairman if you would like a book for reading and review at: apache313@gmail.com

(Reviews limited to 700 words.

Writing a Review -- A Template.

So, you have chosen a book; read it and you are ready to write a review. What is a Review?

A Review is a friendly letter back to your friends, the Posse members and to the Book Publisher. In this friendly letter you start with a standard heading that tells us and the Publisher what it is that you are reviewing:

Heading "Title: Subtitle", by author. University of Somewhere Press, 2022, 234 pp. Tables, graphs, endnotes, index. Hardcover. $39.50. (now you are 1/3 done).

Then tell us what the author was trying to tell us. Maybe 3 or 4 sentences. Then wrap it up by adding 2 or 3 sentences as to why this book would be (or would not be) of interest to other Posse members. You are probably at about 300 words but if a few more happen to be on the page, no worry. Posse etiquette says 500 words are too many. Add your name and word count ex. Virgil Earp (300 words) You are now done.

If you still have doubts about what a review should look like, check a recent Roundup magazine.  Each edition has a half dozen or so reviews that have made it through the Posse review process.  Pick one you like and model your review after it.

Send your review to the Posse Book Chair and they can take it from there.