Tough Times in Rough Places: Personal Narratives of Adventure, Death, and Survival on the Western Frontier

This book is supposed to be a compilation of 15 stories, told firsthand, of desperate survival in the Old Southwest. Many of the stories are well known: the Goliad Massacre, the Donner Party, Mountain Meadows, Little Bighorn, Wyatt Earp in Tombstone, and Pat Garrett tracking down Billy the Kid. Other stories are quite obscure but nonetheless very interesting reading: Fremont's Colorado Expedition, Oatman Girls captivity, Crabb's Expedition to Sonora, James White's drift through the Grand Canyon, the Camp Grant Massacre, chasing Geronimo through the Sierra Madre, a grizzly bear attack, a man's survival along the Gulf of California when his expedition collapses, and Villa's raid on Columbus, New Mexico.Each story is preceded by the editors' offering a brief two or three page setup and/or historical perspective.The book is a highly entertaining read in general, but naturally, in a book of this type, some stories are more interesting than others. This makes one question the selection the editors made for their 15 stories. Certainly Wyatt Earp's account of his days in Tombstone has been worn out and done to death. There's no new information here. Similarly Edward Godfrey's account of Little Bighorn is a bit stale given the mountain of material available on this subject. Pat Garrett can barely write a coherent paragraph, and most people interested in Western history already know well his tale about Billy the Kid.The conclusion one inevitably draws is that the editors seem much more interested in finding FIRSTHAND accounts rather than other Old West survival stories that have no firsthand narrative, yet may be more compelling. Why leave out the Battle of Beecher's Island for example? Or the Battle of Adobe Walls, or John Colter's encounter with the Blackfeet etc. etc.The book also lacks maps. It has exactly three, all of which are quite poor. One of them is nothing more than a small map of the western USA with dots to show you in general where each story occurred. Nevertheless, the book provides entertaining light reading especially in the lesser known accounts.