True Tales of the Wild West简介，目录书摘

2020-05-25 10:42 来源：京东作者：京东

内容简介:

Noted storyteller and student of the Wild West, Paul Robert Walker presents ten legends about both famous and little known characters and events and arranges them in chronological order to create a delightfully readable and highly entertaining history of the West from the early 1800s to the turn of the century. You'll join Lewis and Clark as they search for a route to the Pacific Ocean; Jedediah Smith as he leads the first overland expedition to California; Narcissa Whitman and Jane Spalding as they become the first women to cross the Oregon Trail; and James Marshall as he discovers gold in California. You'll learn how a dead cow started 25 years of warfare between Indians and white settlers; ride with the Pony Express; have a ringside seat when the golden spike completing the first Transcontinental Railroad is driven into the ground; fight with General Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn; shoot it out with the Earps, Doc Holliday, the McLaurys, and the Clantons in Tombstone; and go north to the Klondike to make your fortune in gold. Lively quotes and historical images bring each colorful story to life. Visiting the sites, consulting with experts, and meticulously studying letters, journals, newspaper articles, and legal testimonies Walker peels away the myths from the legends to present True Tales of the Wild West.

作者简介:

Paul Robert Walker became a full-time freelance writer in the 1980s, penning books for younger readers. As an actor, he also performs his one-man traveling stage show Tall Tale America, which relates the story of the American frontier through tall tales, historical anecdotes and songs. His show complements many of his books for young adults, which focus on frontier history and the legends that have become associated with American folklore.

As Walker notes on his Web site, he was born in Oak Park, Illinois, "just like Ernest Hemingway, only later." Perhaps more relevant to Walker's interest in writing is the fact that his grandfather, Paul Hoff Kunst, edited a Danish-language newspaper in the midwest and wrote musical reviews for the Danish community in Chicago. Kunst was knighted by the King of Denmark for his work, but as Walker notes, "the knighthood isn't hereditary, or else I could sign my books Sir Paul Robert Walker." As a child, Walker was also influenced by novels such as The Swamp Fox, a historical account of Revolutionary War figure General Francis Marion.

Before becoming a writer, Walker was a teacher and a journalist. When the publisher Harcourt Brace Jovanovich advertised for writers for a young readers' encyclopedia, he applied and wrote nearly one hundred articles, but the encyclopedia was never published. Walker was also asked to write for a series of biographies that the publisher planned to package with the encyclopedia, and that project was also shelved, but his biography was published as a stand-alone volume titled Pride of Puerto Rico: The Life of Roberto Clemente.