Wondrous Times on the Frontier

"In his first work of nonfiction in more than a decade, Dee Brown draws on more than fifty years of research, and offers a vivid, loving portrait of the considerable joys, wonders, and hardships of the frontier West. Brown puts famous tall tales in their true perspective, and reveals how often the unknown truths are far more fantastic than the celebrated fictions. Turning to frontier newspapers, journals, and diaries, and the observations of such sojourners as Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, and Horace Greeley, Brown portrays the true diversity of the frontier experience, telling the stories of the pioneer women, lawmen, outlaws, newspapermen, schoolteachers, cowboys, tenderfeet, and prostitutes who made their way West via wagon, stagecoach, steamboat, horseback, and on their own two feet"--Back cover.