Seeking Pleasure in the Old West

Shedding Puritan prejudices, people of the American West learned to enjoy themselves between approximately 1800 and the early 20th century. The men on Lewis and Clark's 1804 expedition square-danced to fiddle music. Cowboys did more than drink, gamble and chase women; their leisure pursuits included singing, storytelling, dominoes, reading, footraces and, among wealthy ranchers, collecting fine paintings. U.S. Army soldiers played the newfangled game of baseball and even enjoyed debating and attending concerts. Drawing on diaries, recollections and early newspapers, Dary's (Cowboy Culture) irresistible narrative, marvelously illustrated with 110 old photographs and engravings, recreates Cheyenne ceremonial dances, card games on Mississippi steamboats, New Orleans balls, frontier campfires and cafe-theaters, Santa Fe saloons, Wyoming bicycle clubs and mineral spas as he charts the emergence of a middle class that came to disapprove of prostitution, gambling, drinking, bear-baiting and buffalo-hunting. Much more than a catalogue of diversions, his engaging chronicle offers a stirring and enlarging vision of American culture and character. (Nov.)