Western Researcher

I rode out the trail to the end, but it was rough.

Revisado: 04-27-19

The Texas cattle drive era fascinates me. I've read a lot on the subject and have even wandered out in to isolated "Red River", Texas where the Chisholm Trail began and drove it all the way to the Kansas shipping points. Over the years I've visited and revisited these Kansas cattle towns, each time armed with a little more information which allows me to see them differently. Picking up this book felt like a great opportunity to build another layer of information. If my current self could give advise to my former self, I would say don't waste your time. The author has no doubt spent a lot of time (measurable in years) harvesting information. The preface to the book outlines this, which I can respect being a researcher myself. He wraps up said intro by inviting you to come along for a ride down the Chisholm Trail. I was excited at this point. It equated to packing for a one in a lifetime vacation, but never actually leaving the house.

What you won't get in this book is the opportunity to actually be on the Chisholm Trail. You won't get any dirt on you, you won't meet any people along the way, you won't walk in to the Kansas cattle towns, you won't travel anywhere, you won't have a better understanding of the life span of the Chisholm Trail usage or a better intimate sense of its interworkings. What you will get is dictionary style writing, average rainfall amounts measured down to the tenth of an inch per month (in Kansas as well as England....yes I said England), an in depth look at prairie grasses, the history of prairie grasses, repeating of history of prairie grasses, and the repeated phrase "stored solar energy" over and over and over and over. I cannot discount that learning weather patterns and ecology of that time to be important and interesting factors in to the success, failure and risk of Joseph McCoy's endeavor, but these become to focal points of the book which comprise 90% of your reading. All information critical to understanding these points could fit in a magazine article, yet this information drolls on and on and on. Every chapter, which as a different title, felt like a continuation of the previous chapter, repeating the same information, never advancing the reader in to a logical advance of story and intrigue. After getting half way through the book, I couldn't believe half of it was wasted on this, only to realize the monotony of over emphasis was just beginning. You do get a fairly good view of McCoy and more background on him than you can find in a lot of other books, but I would not suggest to anyone that they should pick this book up solely for that given how much other dissatisfying content you have to wade through to get it.

I saw this book through to the end, despite my continuous frustrations. I figured if author Sherow could spend so much time in his life working towards this book, I could at least give it a full listen. I also kept faith that at some point the book would come around. It never did. I grew more and more frustrated. I've tried to frame my frustrations for anyone thinking of reading this book so that they can make a better buying decision or "enter and your own risk".

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Weak research muscle.

Revisado: 11-16-17

The story told here is a product of research that proves to range from competent to deficient. Too often parts of the narrative are sourced from questionable places, and while there are high points (when the story follows a good path based on credible sources), there are too many in between that fill the gaps with conjecture or just flat out western romanticism. The narrator flubs pronunciations on so many names which are said over and over that it becomes distracting, even mistaking events in the "1800s" by saying 19xx. Though the narrator does have a pleasant delivery otherwise.

There are too many times within the narrative that wild side stories are introduced, such as an entire run about Pat Garret killing Billy the Kid and specifics about it that have zero relation to the title. Calvin uses this same topic skipping to seemingly include every famous western name in the scope of this book.

Overall this is a decent listen, but given this area of western history is so muddied by misinformation, I get a little disappointed when another author comes along and cites misinformation printed in books of decades past. The success of books like this rest very heavily on the strength of the author's ability to research. Being a researcher myself in this specific scope of history, I recognize that while Calvin isn't entirely weak in this area, but there are too many sentences within this book that are derived from short cuts or lack of research for me to want to recommend it.

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