Review of Owning Western History: A Guide to Collecting Rare Documents, Historical Letters, and Valuable Photographs from the Old West By Warren B. Anderson

Authors

Warren W. Caldwell, Clearwater Valley Historical Society

Date of this Version

1995

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly 15:2 (Spring 1995). Copyright © 1995 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Abstract

As the reader will have surmised, this volume is about collecting. It might well have been titled, "Western History: Via Waste Paper, Photographs and Other Ephemera." Be warned, it is not concerned with literary debris, but rather the remains of defunct stock companies, failed businesses, "wanted posters," and seemingly an infinity of other secular paper.

There is little to review here. The book is unabashedly descriptive, anecdotal, and largely non-critical. None the less, it has the virtue of directing the scholar to many documents of "western" society that otherwise might be neglected, and the pay-off can be interesting.