Dreams of El Dorado: A History of the American West

 

Dreams of El Dorado: A History of the American West by H.W. Brands

The nomenclature “old west” brings to mind various things when one reflects on the history of the United States, say, 150 to 200 years ago.  Much of this history has been romanticized on television, the movie screen, and various novels and short stories.  What this book does is give us a brief history of the many different movements and events that happened beginning with the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, and culminating around the beginning of the twentieth century.  There are actually a lot different events in different parts of the country that we read about, yet author H.W. Brands seems to suggest that whereas places and events may be varied, the reason for such quests are part of human nature.  We want to explore, we want to conquer, we want to acquire.  Such is the mindset of all of these adventures.

And there are a lot of adventures.  We read of the most famous ones: The Oregon Trail, Texas and the Alamo, The California Gold Rush, and the various squabbles with Native Americans that led to less than memorable battles and personalities such as General Custer and Crazy Horse.  These are only some, but they’re the ones that resonated the most.  What works so well is that H.W. Brands tells these stories in nice, short manageable chunks.  Each section of this book contains about six or seven chapters and most chapters are about eight pages in length on average.  The adventures that we read about all have a plethora of books already devoted the particular event, so if you’re looking for a long detailed account of, say, Santa Anna and Davey Crockett at the Alamo, you should probably look elsewhere.  Author Brands is essentially giving us the ‘Cliffs Notes’ versions of such events.

There were several times when I wanted more.  I felt like I could have easily digested another 50 pages or so when reading about The California Gold Rush, but again, the author’s goal here was to be somewhat succinct.  Telling the actual story of the people and the events is only part of his overall goal.  As I mentioned earlier, he’s trying to capture the human condition, and what exactly it is that drives a person to trek over one thousand miles in the unforgiving desert and the bitter frigid cold.  We must remember that this was a long time before Rand-McNally entered the picture, so such journeys were quite arduous, dangerous and awfully haphazard.  We read much more about tragedies and travails than we do celebrations and successes.  Such were the times.

Other than some instances where I wished we could have learned more over more pages, the only other drawback for me was that the author seems to spend a bit more detail than I would have liked in describing “things”; such as a detailed description of a covered wagon, or the sophisticated devices miners used for filtering rocks from water to find the ever elusive gold piece.  Still, with the chapters being somewhat brief, it was a very minor hindrance.  There are such times when these details were welcome.  Example: What image does the average citizen think of in their mind when they hear the term “cowboy”?   Do many actually know where the term came from, and what these individuals actually did?  Well, H.W. Brands tells you, and as detailed as the section gets, I found it all an extremely rewarding history lesson.

Most other H.W. Brands books (he’s written quite a lot) deal with individual people.  Some of his subjects that immediately come to mind are Ben Franklin, Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan.  So this book was a bit of a different experience for me, as I had read several books by this author already.   Like his other books though, this one didn’t disappoint.  I would recommend any book that you come across by this author.  It takes a special author to keep a reader’s mind excited about history without drifting into ennui, and H.W. Brands does an excellent job.  If you have read and enjoyed any of this author’s previous works, I see no reason why you wouldn’t thoroughly enjoy this one as well.