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I. I'm looking for recommendations/suggestions for books which meet one or more of the following criteria:
1) The American west and southwest, and adjacent areas of Mexico, any time between about 1750 and 1900. The California Gold Rush would be the most relevant, but I'm also looking beyond that.
2) I'm not looking for histories which recount what happened when and why it was important, but for personal accounts written at the time (diaries, letters, etc) or retrospectively by people who lived through those times, and/or anything which focuses on daily life, ordinary people, and/or the natural environment.
3) I'm especially looking for accounts of or, ideally, by people who are not important historical figures, and are not white Christian men. The entire thing doesn't have to take place in the west, just a significant part of it.
4) If it's sufficiently vivid, detailed, and/or interesting, any first-person account of life anywhere in America or Mexico before 1900. (ie, I have read the Little House books, but if I hadn't, they would be the sort of thing you'd recommend here.)
5) Western fiction of the iconic sort that delineated the mythology of the American West (ie, Louis L'Amour, not Cormac McCarthy.) For this, white Christian men are fine.
6) Try to avoid the Civil War, if possible - it's not very relevant to what I'm writing, AND I have already read really a lot of accounts of it.
II. If walls that are twenty feet high surround an area one mile by 3/5ths of a mile, what's the area of the walls in square feet? (Not a joke question, this is for something I'm writing.)
1) The American west and southwest, and adjacent areas of Mexico, any time between about 1750 and 1900. The California Gold Rush would be the most relevant, but I'm also looking beyond that.
2) I'm not looking for histories which recount what happened when and why it was important, but for personal accounts written at the time (diaries, letters, etc) or retrospectively by people who lived through those times, and/or anything which focuses on daily life, ordinary people, and/or the natural environment.
3) I'm especially looking for accounts of or, ideally, by people who are not important historical figures, and are not white Christian men. The entire thing doesn't have to take place in the west, just a significant part of it.
4) If it's sufficiently vivid, detailed, and/or interesting, any first-person account of life anywhere in America or Mexico before 1900. (ie, I have read the Little House books, but if I hadn't, they would be the sort of thing you'd recommend here.)
5) Western fiction of the iconic sort that delineated the mythology of the American West (ie, Louis L'Amour, not Cormac McCarthy.) For this, white Christian men are fine.
6) Try to avoid the Civil War, if possible - it's not very relevant to what I'm writing, AND I have already read really a lot of accounts of it.
II. If walls that are twenty feet high surround an area one mile by 3/5ths of a mile, what's the area of the walls in square feet? (Not a joke question, this is for something I'm writing.)
