"The dashing lines and pictures in action which compose this exciting book tell a new saga of the oldtime west. Here the restless procession rides again, in the wake of Daniel Boone, for adventure and freedom. This is the cavalcade of frontier cabins, Indian fights and the strong stockade, early steamboating down the Mississippi, and the covered wagons of the pioneers.
"Here is the thunder of the buffalo hunt, of cattle rustlers and long-horned steers on the Texas plains; a memory of camp fires, of the overland stage and Pony Express; and on to California where the hills were bright with gold. There was oil in Oklahoma, cowboys guarded the ranges, and steel tracks were forged across the mountains, bringing the railroad from east to west.
"For young Americans no tales of danger and daring can surpass those that were born in the unexplored wilderness and in the wild west, to grow and live in our country's history. In these thrill-packed verses and gusty drawings is the story that can never be told too often; and not often can it be told with such drama and stirring of pulse as when its interpreter is James Daugherty."
—Irene Smith, former superintendent of Work with Children, Brooklyn Public Library
In these verses and pictures the exuberant James Daugherty has disappeared down the Hudson Tannel like the white rabbin in Alice, and gone galloping in rhyme and vivid colors across the continent and American history, on the trail of Whitetops, Forty-niners, Santa Fe Trail-ers, Buffalo Hunters, Hell on Wheels, the Overland Mail and the transcontinental air lines.
"It is strange," Mr, Daugherty avers, after a recent trip to California, "how Americans are still dominated by geography—the North, South, East and West. In spite of the atomic age and the steady stream of air-liners overhead, these regions remain separate worlds which dominate our loyalties.
"The East is a semi-suburban area half-concealed by forest growth and out-door advertising. The West, particularly the Southwest, still remains a vast, largely uninhabited carved and painted fantasy through which one may drive for days without seeing a blade of grass or trees. Americans from one region go touring into the other regions with the amazement, excitement and rapture of the first discoverers, explorers and adventurers, returning to the home town awed and bemused by the incomprehensible polychrome conglomeration we call America."
It is something of the rush and rhythm of these wild crossings that James Daugherty has tossed into this hatful of rhymes and pictures.
—from the dustjacket
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