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Showing posts with the label Zane Grey

ONE SUMMER: AMERICA, 1927 (audiobook) by Bill Bryson

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Published by Random House Audio in 2013. Read by the author, Bill Bryson. Duration: 17 hours, 3 minutes. Unabridged. Boxing champ Jack Dempsey (1895-1983) Bill Bryson's  One Summer: America, 1927  is an immensely interesting book, as would any book that featured Charles Lindbergh, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Sacco and Vanzetti, Jack Dempsey, Gutzon Borglum, Charles Ponzi, Al Capone, Al Jolson, Zane Grey, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Henry Ford, several Hollywood stars and more. The book starts out with the story of Charles Lindbergh and the other flyers that were attempting to cross the Atlantic in a non-stop flight to claim the $25,000 Orteig Prize. Bryson moves on to tell the stories of the other people I named above - often cleverly lacing them together with the story of Charles Lindbergh. We learn about baseball, boxing, Hollywood (there's a hilarious story about Jack Dempsey with a starlet), the beginnings of "talkies" and the mov

Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey

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A Classic Set in 1871 and written in 1912, Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage is a classic, perhaps THE classic of the Western genre. The plot is a little more complicated than most Westerns - it features two concurrent stories. Jane Withersteen is a wealthy Mormon with no husband. Her local church leader (an Elder) wants to marry her, in fact has all but ordered her to do so even though she has no interest in him. Tull orchestrates a plot to have the local Mormons shun her as much as possible (including not working for her) and not help her as rustlers steal entire herds of cattle that are no longer tended. Zane Grey (1872-1939) In the meantime, a stranger named Lassiter arrives. He has a reputation as a Mormon-hater and a gunslinger and becomes a defender of Jane Withersteen. Meanwhile, one of her last employees (Venters) goes after a herd of cattle that is being rustled and discovers a secret pass and a secret valley that they have been using. The story splits at

The Bold West: Edition 4 (audiobook) by Steve Frazee, Zane Grey and T.T. Flynn

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Up and down quality. So, here's the scoop on the audiobook The Bold West: Edition 4 . Zane Grey (1872-1939) There are 3 unabridged stories read by three different readers. The stories are: 'Death Rides This Trail' by Steve Frazee. It is the longest and definitely the best of the three stories. It concerns a family of settlers and the struggles they have after the father is killed in a senseless gunfight. Good character development and an entertaining story. Often funny and often sad. It was originally published in 1953. I give this story 4 out of 5 stars. 'Yaqui' by Zane Grey. Originally published in 1920, this is the story of Yaqui, the young chief of the Yaqui Indians of Western Mexico. The Yaqui were hunted down and killed or moved to the Yucatan Peninsula to be enslaved in the Sisal plantations to make rope. This is the worst story of the three by far. The writing was stilted and overly formal and the reader was the worst of the three. T