Don't buy this book

[PonoBill]

Unless you want to spend half your summer reading a slow moving story that continually pulls you along, and makes you read it in every spare moment.

Texas Ranger: The Epic Life Of Frank Hamer

I read very fast, even books that I'm not deeply engaged with. I usually have three or four books going at a time--a useful feature of my rampaging ADD. As an example, I picked this thing up after I just re-read the 38 Spenser books by Robert Parker, in a little over a week. A little over an hour apeice.

Right now I'm reading just one, and I can't put the damned thing down. I have two other books I want to read, and I can't leave this thing alone. It's non-fiction, about the history of the Texas Rangers and texas in general, from the late 1800's though (I guess) the early 1940's. Don't know for sure, I'm not halfway through). Fascinating history. Mexican banditos, klu klux klan, lynching, prohibition, texas politics, land grabs, corrupt lawmen and politicians, oil, the changing landscape of the west, and on.

I can't say I recommend it, but it's certainly compelling.

[SupPadre]

Now I know what I'll be reading when I finish Game of Thrones. You have probably driven more book sales on this forum than STC has driven board sales.

[PonoBill]

Another life sink. the only good news with Game of Thrones is that when you read the last one, you can trust that R.R. won't be tossing books at you in a big rush. He has to be the slowest writer since Hemingway, or maybe Harper Lee.

[TallDude]

I'm grinding my way through 'Empire of the Summer Moon'. It's interesting but a little too much rehashing. Sort of a lot about the same thing over and over but there is a story line developing.... I think.

[PonoBill]

Yeah, that was kind of tough going. I finished it, but kept setting it down. Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides is a more engaging book about the same era. And Holy Smoke, Kit Carson was the Forest Gump of the west. Involved in everything.

The challenge with the book I'm reading is that every time things get a little quiet and I think about kicking off a backup book, something outrageous happens and I get sucked back in. Calling Frank Hamer's life Epic is simply wrong, unless they retire the word after using it for him. You can't say a hamburger was epic after reading this book. Even the ones at the Rider's Club.

[freetobeme]

"Don't read this book" = fantastic marketing

[PonoBill]

Steal this book=Much better marketing.

[digger71]

I'm grinding my way through 'Empire of the Summer Moon'. It's interesting but a little too much rehashing. Sort of a lot about the same thing over and over but there is a story line developing.... I think.

I am in the exact same place!  Loved it at first - never realized the extent of the Comanche dominance in the west - but definitely some grinding now.

[headmount]

The title topic of this thread reminded me of a story of a pal driving towards a scene of a gristly car accident.  He told his friend in the shotgun seat, "Man, don't look.  Whatever you do don't look.  It's horrible, don't look."  And then when he was right next to the scene where any close up glance would reveal all the brains mashed all over the road, he shouted, "LOOK" which prompted the friend's knee jerk reaction to do so.

The subject matter of this book you mention is right up my alley so I got it.  Thanks.

[ford]

Empire of the Summer moon is worth finishing though.... some amazing events there in west Texas.

[PonoBill]

I finally finished it. Wow. What a strange time the 20's were, and what an amazing piece of research.

[TallDude]

Calling Frank Hamer's life Epic is simply wrong, unless they retire the word after using it for him. You can't say a hamburger was epic after reading this book. Even the ones at the Rider's Club.

The Riders Club has been kinda black listed by my doctor. Though I did sneak in the back door two days ago, as if my doctor would know I sat there eating my burger, trying not to drip the bloody juice from the medium rare top sirloin ground beef patty, fire roasted roasted Anaheim peppers and melted Havarti cheese on my Kindle. It's hard to even set that burger down once you've committed to it.

[SUPcheat]

I read some journals a couple of years ago about traveling to California in the mid 1850's.  The Indians were happy to have horses and guns, but really were more interested in killing their traditional Indian rivals than the white man.

Gun accidents killed a hundred European settlers for every one harmed by an Indian.  A lot of the Indians lived scattered, nomadic lives, and many just ran around by foot. 

If Indians stole something, the settlers wouldn't look for a guilty party, they would just slaughter whatever Indians they ran across for awhile.

One of the books outlined a defeat of the Blackfeet by the Crow, and the horrendous tortures, maimings, castrations, amputations and disembowelments performed on the surviving Blackfoot by the Crow.

The so called epic battles by General Fremont for California involved tiny armies by today's standards, and the populations in California were extremely low.

The world is so overpopulated now, it is hard to grasp how thinned out the populations were in those days.   

[PonoBill]

There's a fair amount of evidence that by the time white men arrived in quantitiy that the indians had already been more than decimated--more like ninty pecentimated (decimated means reduced by ten percent) by diseases they had few immunities for. But yes, the cultures were generally warlike and pitiless.  Hard to get a clear picture because the contemporary accounts are so one-sided, but the more you read about american history, the more understandable our current odd culture becomes. People view guns in America as a recent problem, but they are as central to American culture as the automible, telephones, and electricity.

[headmount]

What I read was, that with Columbus's crew was a man with smallpox.  When they went ashore at Hispaniola it spread and eventually spread across to the central american mainland, decimating the Aztecs so that by the time Cortez arrived he could do what would have been impossible before 1492.  The numbers were estimated at 25 million before the plague and 800,000 when Cortez arrived.  The book I read was 1491.