Book Notices

Hippocrates in a Red Vest: The Biography of a Frontier Doctor. By BARRON B. BESHOAR. (Palo 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.

The 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. Valuable as political history, Hippocrates is priceless as social history.

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 between Bancroft and two of his major literary assistants, Henry Oak and Frances Fuller Victor, w r hose alienation and subsequent exposes of the "workshop" history made Bancroft a favorite target for such journalistic sharpshooters as Ambrose Bierce.

Containing several photographs, amply documented, and well indexed, Clark's volume is an essential complement to Bancroft's Works and a worthy addition to the library of any serious student of history. It can be read and enjoyed as a biography, but in reality it is a good deal more. It is an engaging and enlightening history of an enterprise.

American Indian Ceremonial Dances: Navajo, Pueblo, Apache, Zuni. Drawings, lithographs, and etchingsby IRA MOSKOWITZ, and text byJOHN COLLIER. (New York: Bounty Books, 1972. 192 pp. $3.95.) Revised edition of the more appropriately titled Patterns and Ceremonials of the Indians of the Southwest originally published in 1949.

The American West: An InterpretiveHistory. By ROBERT V. HINE. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1972. x + 371 pp. $12.50.) Destined to become a standard text in the history of the Trans-Mississippi West.

Apache Chronicle. By JOHN UPTON TERRELL. (New York: World Publishing Company, 1972. xv + 411 pp. $12.50.)

Cheyenne Memories. By JOHN STANDSIN TIMBER and MARGOT LIBERTY with the assistance of ROBERT M. UTLEY. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972. xv + 330 pp. Paperback, $2.25.) First published in 1967 by Yale University Press.

The Fifth World of Forster Bennett: Portrait of a Navaho. By VINCENT CRAPANZANO. (New York: Viking Press, 1972. vii + 245 pp. $7.95.)

Fort Custer on the Big Horn, 1877— 1898: Its History and Personalities as Told and Pictured by Its Contemporaries. Compiled and edited by RICHARD UPTON. (Glendale, Calif.: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1973. 316 pp. $11.50.) Contains over sixty photographs.

Hostiles and Horse Soldiers: Indian Battles and Campaigns in the West.By LONNIE J. WHITE with contributionsby JERRY KEENAN, STANLEY R.DAVISON, JAMES T. KING, and JOE A. STOUT, JR. (Boulder: Pruett Publishing Company, 1972. xix + 231 pp. $8.95.)

Jackson Hole. By FRANK CALKINS. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973. x + 299 pp. $7.95.)

Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan. By CARLOS CASTANEDA. (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1972. 315 pp. Paperback, $2.95.) Castaneda continues his conversations with a Yaqui Indian sorcerer.

The Life of Jim Baker, 1818-1898. By NOLLE MUMEY. (New York: Interland Publishing, Inc., 1972. 234 pp. $20.00.) Reprinted in limited quantity from the 1931 edition.

The McCartys: They Rode with Butch Cassidy. By RICHARD E. CHURCHILL (Leadville, Colo.: Timberline Books, 1972. 43 pp. Paperback. $1.00.)

On the Way to the Sky. By DOUGLAS KENT HALL. (New York: McCall Books, 1972. 224 pp. $5.95.) Raised in Vernal, Utah, during the 1940s and 1950s, the author uses this time and place as the setting for a fine novel of boys probing the timeless question of sin and yielding their innocence to manhood.

Red Rock Country: The Geologic History of the Colorado Plateau. By DONALD L. BAARS. (Garden City: Doubleday / Natural History Press, 1972. 264 pp. $9.95.)

Stephen A. Douglas. By ROBERT W. JOHANNSEN. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. xii + 993 pp. $19.95.)

Surely the Night. By CLAIRE NOALL. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1972. 273 pp. Paperback. $6.00.) A careful blend of history, lore, and creative writing has produced an excellent novel of a Mormon girl growing to maturity in Utah during the late nineteenth century.

The Ungodly: A Novel of the Donner Party. By RICHARD RHODES. (New York: Charterhouse, 1973. 371 pp. $8.95.)