Seeking Pleasure in the Old West

USA: University Press of Kansas, 1997. Book. Fine. Soft cover. 1st Edition. 9h x 6w. A real nice 364 page first University Press of Kansas printing (stated) with 1 low in number line. first printed in 1995. Has numerous photos scattered throughout. Pioneering Americans of the nineteenth century did not merely rush for gold, lust for land, and thrust aside the West's original inhabitants. These mountain men, cowboys, homesteaders, and cavalry troopers played nearly as hard as they worked, exploiting to the hilt what little leisure they could steal from their labors. Nor did they only carouse-drink, gamble, and womanize-as the West's fiction might suggest. They were spectators at bull and bear fights in California; actors in amateur theatricals in Army garrisons; and participants in communal barn raisings and quilting bees on the prairie..