Of America, East and West

by Horgan, Paul

• ISBN13: 9780374518967
• ISBN10: 0374518963
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1985-07-01
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux

Summary

"No historian writes with such command of language or feeling for human nature. The difference is his luminous imagination, as Henry Steele Commager observes in the introduction to the newest Horgan volume, Of America East and West, a sumptuous selection from fifteen of the earlier works, many of which have been long out of print. I began reading Paul Horgan more than twenty years ago and he has given me no end of pleasure ever since. Whether in fiction, history or biography, he is a writer of large vision and manysidedness. He can be serene, funny, elegant, earthy and lyrical. He can range across art, opera, politics, natural history, military history and intellectual history. Narrative energy suffuses everything he writes. But it is his gift of empathy that lifts his work to the level of art and gives the history he writes 'reality.'" Book jacket.

Author Biography

Paul Horgan is the author of Lamy of Santa Fe (1975), Of America East and West (1985), Rome Eternal (1959), Saintmaker's Christmas Eve (1955), Songs After Lincoln (1965), and Toby and the Nighttime (1963).

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. xi
Foreword	p. xvii
History
Great River: the Rio Grande in North American History
Prologue	p. 3
The Indian Rio Grande
The Stuff of Life	p. 7
The Spanish Rio Grande
Possession	p. 15
Collective Memory	p. 21
Hacienda and Village	p. 33
The Mexican Rio Grande
A Colony for Mexico	p. 37
The United States Rio Grande
"Way, You Rio"	p. 44
Upstream and Inland	p. 46
Counterdance	p. 54
Biography
Citizen of New Salem	p. 65
Josiah Gregg and his Vision of the Early West
To Mexico
The Doctor	p. 74
Alien Abroad	p. 76
"Service to My Country"	p. 79
Prelude to Battle	p. 81
Battle Piece	p. 83
The Missouri Independent	p. 85
The "Unaccommodating"	p. 88
"Ways and Doings"	p. 90
Lamy of Santa Fe: his Life and Times
Homeward	p. 95
Prairie News	p. 98
The Battle of the Arkansas Crossing	p. 99
The Gardener	p. 106
Changeover	p. 112
Day's End at Santa Fe	p. 117
Encounters with Stravinsky
Concerts in Houston	p. 122
Promise Kept	p. 139
Notebook Pages and an Essay
Approaches to Writing
Notebook Pages
Of the Mode	p. 143
Preface to an Unwritten Book	p. 153
Short Story
The Peach Stone
National Honeymoon	p. 169
The Peach Stone	p. 186
Novel
No Quarter Given
The Rose Arbor	p. 207
A Distant Trumpet
The Escape of Olin Rainey	p. 245
The Richard Novels
Things as They are
Muzza	p. 261
Everything to Live for
Fireworks and Quarry	p. 284
The Thin Mountain Air
The Animal Creation	p. 309
Far From Cibola	p. 322
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