Bücher von Donald E. Worcester

This is an account of the history and activities of the Apache Indians, as well as the tortuous course of events that led to the tribe's subjugation. The author examines a racial and cultural struggle in which the duplicity of white government officials proved to be a decisive factor.

"Arizona was, I knew, a land of cowboys and Indians, and both ranked high in my esteem. It was also where our father lived, and even though our mother had divorced him after he wandered off and didn't return, we knew he was somewhere in Arizona and always hoped he'd come and take us there." So writes Don Worcester, and for everyone else who ever dreamed of riding off to the West his tales will hold the poignancy and truth of that dream. Worcester, his brother and sister lived most of their childhoods with their grandparents on "the homestead" in the Southern California desert, scraping by during the Great Depression. Some seasons they joined their mother, who was creating an academic career as an astronomer. Those times with her--in Berkeley, Winter Park, Florida, or Poughkeepsie--were welcome respites in the hard routine of life. Most days, though, were spent on the homestead doing chores or at school. But there were horses. Some wild, some tame. All teasing with a freedom and a power that kept hope alive. There were friends, like A.P. Aldrich, the surrogate father who told the boys they could amount to something. There were escapades with brother Harris. And there was the day their father showed up at school--driving a powerful, shiny late-model car--for a half-hour visit. With understated narrative and vivid detail, Worcester spins tales of childhood and growing up between the two World Wars, of the West lived as both fact and myth, of family and loneliness. It is sprightly telling of a most human story, a nostalgic memoir of an unusual rite of passage, evoking times and places that today have reality only in the mythos of the American Dream.

This brief and entertaining history of the Texas Longhorn details the development of the first distinct American breed of beef cattle. The Spanish herds that had roamed Texas for generations, when mixed with English Longhorns brought by Anglo settlers in the early 1800s, yielded a rangy hybrid that could thrive in Texas' climate and was ideally suited to ranchers' aspirations. Almost extinct by the turn of the century, the Texas Longhorn was preserved by the efforts of just a few people who recalled with fondness the days when the cattle had thundered on the trails. Some U.S. Forest Service officials, several ranchers, and even a folklorist--J. Frank Dobie--gathered the animals for breeding and successfully managed the small herds until they stabilized and began to increase. The Texas Longhorn Breeders Association of America was formed in 1964 to preserve and promote the breed, and a growing interest in improving health by eating leaner meat has spurred renewed interest in the lean Longhorn as more than just a nostalgic novelty.