From the previews of Western fiction and nonfiction I am receiving, 2014 promises to be a big year for all of us. Fans of Western books should attend the upcoming Tucson Festival of Books, March 15-16. True West will have a booth right next door to the Western Writers of America and we hope if you attend, you’ll stop by and say hello. We’d love to meet you.
Two recent titles I’d recommend you read to kick off your year of reading and Western travels:
The University of New Mexico Press has published a sweeping new study of travel writing in the West, Global West, American Frontier: Travel, Empire, and Exceptionalism from Manifest Destiny by David M Wrobel. An exceptionally well-researched history, Wrobel’s book offers enjoyable reading about the numerous and varied travel writers who shaped our idea of the West.
Travelers to the Southwest may want to pick up Terry Mort’s The Wrath of Cochise: The Bascom Affair and the Origins of the Apache Wars (Pegasus, 2013), a finely crafted and well-written history of this defining event in the conflict that shaped the early decades of the Arizona and New Mexico Territories.
—Stuart Rosebrook
