Reviews for Lifetrends

The average rating for Lifetrends based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-06-12 00:00:00 David Morris World War II found librarian Dee Brown stationed in Washington, DC. He was assigned to Army Ground Forces headquarters at the old Army War College. Here he met fellow librarian Martin Schmitt and, through the course of their service together, they bonded over a shared interest in Western history. Their duties sometimes brought them to the Signal Corps photograph files stored at the Pentagon - a treasure trove of ancient images, the most compelling of which were cached in the Indian Wars collection. In the waning days of their military employment they set about making prints of these pictures, which were eventually turned into three books: Fighting Indians of the West, Trail Driving Days, and The Settlers' West. Brown captioned the pictures and composed a loose narrative thread to set the images in context. This is important. It's important to know that photographs were the impetus for this author. His inspiration did not come through ideas, disputes, determinations or events, as it does for most historians. He had no ardent desire to grapple with the Beast of Posterity. Here was a mind less concerned with the how and why of the past than it was with what, exactly, it was he was looking at. A rare angle of approach - and, truth be told, that's where a lot of the fun is tapped for the reader of history. I grow as bored as the rest with chronologies, charts, graphs, maps, the dull whine of a dusty academic and the chalkboard screech of any intellect presumptuous enough to imagine I need my thinking done for me. It's tough to tolerate...and refreshing, every so often, to discover you don't have to. It is true that, in terms of scholarship, The American West skims over several important incidents and consequential stages of the settlement process, but what it does bring to the table is material rich in anecdote, personality and descriptive force. Brown builds on the bones of character - be it the character of a person, a tribe, a garrison, a ranch, a railroad or a landscape; he's sketching the volatile temperament of the frontier thrust. It's fundamental stuff, filled with life and legend, triumph and atrocity, grace and greed. In short, while he may have moved on from his photographs, Brown certainly hasn't abandoned his images and shares that fascination with scenes like this: The Medicine Lodge Creek Council which was held in Kansas in October 1867 was a marvelous spectacle in which both the uniformed troops of the army and the bedecked warriors of the southern plains performed splendidly. General W.S. Harney marched his soldiers and wagon trains to the meeting place with considerable pomp and ceremony, but the Indians surpassed him by riding up in a swirling formation of five concentric circles, their horses striped with war paint, the riders wearing warbonnets and carrying gay battle streamers. The great whirling wheel of color and motion stopped suddenly at the edge of the soldiers' positions. Then an opening was formed, and the great chiefs waited dramatically and silently for the outnumbered white men to step inside and prove their bravery and good faith. Not every history can read like that. Most history probably shouldn't. But, and you really can't escape this, more people would buy it if it did.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-11-11 00:00:00 Storm Raven This was my second read (the last was years ago now) - and overall I enjoyed it once more. Numerous different topics are touched on in the course of the book. Some of them could have been dealt with in greater detail to my way of thinking. I was left wanting to know more on several occasions. The Introduction looks at what was involved in gathering the source information required to put the novel together. A lot of work! To my way of thinking the last chapter (Law, Order and Politics) doesn't allow the book to end on anything like a high. That alone probably contributed the most to giving me a feeling of being happy to get to the finish. It's probably the most boring twenty pages of the whole book. Shame it was where it was. For someone starting out to explore the stories of the Old West, its characters and its history, 'The American West' would make a good starting place. For that reason I'd recommend it.