The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 40, July 1936 - April, 1937 Page: 79

Book Reviews and Notices

wealth of anecdote; while personal knowledge of the land is
proved by vivid descriptive passages that must take high rank in
any classification of literature. For example, this description of
the South Plains of Texas and the Llano Estacado:
"Open mile after open mile, this country stretched beyond the
Cross Timbers, a gently rolling short-grass land. In many places
near the Llano Estacado it broke into vicious stretches of choppy
country, red clay badlands, where water-when there was any-
was bitter as gall to the palate and devastating to the stomach,
where game was scarce and fuel was rare, and where, unless the
scout was the best of guides, men flung fresh horses upon a trail
to come out-God only knew where-afoot.
"West of this land of gentle swells the Staked Plains reared
their high and colorful abutments, those escarpments that broke
away from the plateau in flashing reds and dull yellows; in sober
browns and subdued purples. Out of that country of shimmering
horizons, a land that has 'the vastness without the malignancy of
the sea,' gashed the rugged cafions of the Palo Duro, with their
clays and sandstones swept into turrets, battlements, totems, and
effigies by the everlasting winds of the West."
It is a book that any historian of the West might be glad to
have written-not a factual statistical record of a man's doings,
but a vivid, breathing image of the man himself and of the world
in which he lived-a sincere biography of a beloved character,
reverent-but not too reverent--witty, cheerful-though there is
tragedy enough-and admirable.
EUGENE C. BARKER.
Dictionary of American Biography. Edited by Dumas Malone.
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1935. Volume
XVII, Pages X, 636; Volume XVIII, Pages X, 657. Price
$12.50 a volume.)
These two volumes, extending alphabetically from William Joyce
Sewell to William Petit Trowbridge, contain some thirteen hun-
dred sketches, varying from half a page to seven or eight pages
in length. Some of the more important characters included are
John Gilmary Shea, Anna Howard Shaw, Isaac Shelby, John
and William T. Sherman, Benjamin Silliman, William Gilmore
Simms, Jared Sparks, Leland Stanford, Henry M. Stanley, Edwin
M. Stanton, Alexander H. Stephens, Thaddeus Stevens, Joseph