Hippocrates in a Red Vest: The Biography of a Frontier Doctor. By BARRON
B. BESHOAR.
(Palo
Valuable as political history, Hippocrates is priceless as social history.
Alto:
American West Publishing Company, 1973. 352 pp. $9.95.) Twenty years a correspondent with Time, Life, and Fortune, formerly a stylist for several nationally known newspapers, and author of a biography on John Lawson, Barron B. Beshoar here applies his well-honed pen to a biography of his extraordinary grandfather, Michael Beshoar, M . D . An early settler in the Trinidad region of southwestern Colorado, Michael Beshoar considered his primary calling that of physician. But he was infinitely more. As crusading editor, political party leader, judge, educator, entrepreneur, and social eccentric, Dr. Beshoar was a titan of the time and tailormade to serve as the focal point for a charming sectional history. T h e book is handsomely bound and further embellished by numerous photographs, but in lieu of footnotes the reader is presented with the explanation that the work proceeded from the doctor's "books, papers, diaries, daybooks, notebooks, letter-books, ledgers, journals, writings of various kinds, filing boxes and cases filled with letters, and box after box of newspaper clippings." Fortunately, the bibliography refines this welter somewhat. Dr. Beshoar's accounts of the white, Indian, and Mexican medical practices of the day are not less than intriguing and themselves alone justify the volume.
A Venture in History: The Production, Publication, and Sale of the Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft. By HARRY CLARK. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. xiii + 177 pp. $8.00.) Employing a direct style and a wealth of knowledge, Harry Clark offers the reader new pleasures with the familiar story of Hubert Howe Bancroft as a historian and an editor. But it is in its emphasis of Bancroft as a promoter and publisher that Clark's book makes its greatest bibliographic contribution. Through such innovations as subscription sales, by manipulating favorable reviews, by soliciting assistance from prominent friends to the outer limits of taste and decorum, and through the exploitation of several other promotional devices, Bancroft quickly became and has long remained a figure of controversy. Possessing a strong personality and a deep commitment to material goals, he naturally had many stormy relationships. Most notorious of these was with his vice-president, Nathan Stone. Their feud lasted an incredible twelve years, involved suits and countersuits as well as personal threats and intimidation, and resulted in an explosive demise for the History Company. Clark describes other, though less cataclysmic controversies, such as those be-
