Product Description

A love story and an epic of the frontier, Lonesome Dove is the grandest novel ever written about the last, defiant wilderness of America. Richly authentic, beautifully written, Lonesome Dove is a book to make readers laugh, weep, dream and remember. Now a blockbuster television event.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5430 in Books
• Published on: 1988-12-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 960 pages

Amazon.com Review
Larry McMurtry, in books like The Last Picture Show, has depicted the modern degeneration of the myth of the American West. The subject of Lonesome Dove, cowboys herding cattle on a great trail-drive, seems like the very stuff of that cliched myth, but McMurtry bravely tackles the task of creating meaningful literature out of it. At first the novel seems the kind of anti-mythic, anti-heroic story one might expect: the main protagonists are a drunken and inarticulate pair of former Texas Rangers turned horse rustlers. Yet when the trail begins, the story picks up an energy and a drive that makes heroes of these men. Their mission may be historically insignificant, or pointless--McMurtry is smart enough to address both possibilities--but there is an undoubted valor in their lives. The result is a historically aware, intelligent, romantic novel of the mythic west that won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Review
Weaves a dense web of subplots involving secondary characters and out-of-the-way places, with the idea of using the form of a long old-fashioned realistic novel to create an accurate picture of life on the American frontier. . . . The Great Cowboy Novel. -- New York Times Book Review, Nicholas Lemann

Review
T. K. WhippleStudy Out the LandAll America lies at the end of the wilderness road, and out past is not a dead past, but still lives in us. Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves, the wild outside. We live in the civilization they created, but within us the wilderness still lingers. What they dreamed, we live, and what they lived, we dream.

Geoffrey C. Wardcoauthor of The Civil War: An Illustrated HistoryThis richly illustrated account of one man's Civil War belongs in the library of anyone interested in knowing what it was really like to fight for the American Union.

John Jakesauthor of The North and South TrilogySneden's record in words and pictures is remarkable and unique. You have never read -- or seen -- a Civil War memoir like this one.

James I. Robertson, Jr.author of Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend"Spectacular," "gripping," "unprecedented," and "unique in every sense," are overused phrases in describing a new book. Yet each applies here. Robert Sneden's diary-memoir of service in the 40th New York is extraordinary in itself. His scores of watercolors of scenes in the field have no equal in Civil War art.

Gary W. Gallagherauthor of Lee and His Generals in War and MemoryRobert Knox Sneden bequeathed a rich store in pictorial and narrative material to students of the Civil War. His drawings and paintings depict many places for which we have no other pictorial representations. This highly unusual account, which is enhanced by the editors' excellent work, quickly should take its place among the invaluable published primary sources on the conflict.

William C. Davisauthor of Lincoln's Men: How President Lincoln Became Father to an Army and a NationA prize find. Unusually full and dramatic, Sneden's Eye of the Storm is one of the most fulsome and significant prison memoirs to come out of the war. The wonderful drawings and maps only further gild an already golden human and historical document.

William Marvelauthor of Andersonville: The Last DepotRobert Sneden's detailed eyewitness sketches of Confederate prisons -- and Andersonville in particular -- offer unique glimpses of scenes that were, for the most part, never recorded by any camera or any better artist.

Jeffrey D. Wertauthor of A Brotherhood of ValorRobert Knox Sneden saw too much of the Civil War, from the slaughter of battlefields to the horrors of Andersonville. But Sneden was an astute observer, who left behind a wonderful legacy in words, drawings, and maps. Eye of the Storm is a splendid book.

Customer Reviews

The Great American Novel! (I'd give it 10 stars!).
I have never really cared for Westerns so I started this book with some trepidation. My worries soon evaporated as I read the opening chapter, this was no western in the traditional sense, but a book about people and relationships in the harsh American frontier. I was soon enthralled by the characters involved in this epic cattle drive. the quick witted Gus McCrae, the Tancturn Woodrow Call, the kid Newt, Jake Spoon, the womanizing ex ranger, Lorena the prostitute, and Gus's lost love Claire. The book is over 800 pages long but I have never been sadder to finish a book. If you liked "Lonesome Dove" I highly recomend Across the High Lonesome I picked it up after seeing Larry McMurty's recomendation, and he was right!

Tolstoy on the Range
Stay with me here. I'm serious. I think Lonesome Dove can standcomparison to Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. Of course, I've only read Tolstoy in translation, so chances are I've missed alot, but there is no question that McMurtry creates something here very close to that impossible dream: The Great American Novel. I dont know that any other American writer has ever suceeded on this scale, which is why I go to Tolstoy.

McMurtry uses the Western as a starting point, but there is a little of everything here. Surely there has never been another American Western with so many varied characters, both men and and women. McMurtry juggles many different points of view, but manages to give each of his characters a unique voice. Most remarkable of all, I think, are the women in the book, who manage to escape the usual stereotypes of madonna or whore, even though many of them are, quite literally, prostitutes.

Lonesome Dove is written in a deceptively simple, unpretentious style. I've just finished reading it for the second time. Despite its length it is really a fast read, since it is one of those books that demands to be taken with you where ever you go until you are done.

One word: magnificent
I have never been a fan of the literary western genre and confess that I read this book solely because I watched the movie based upon this book. Incredibly, the book supercedes the movie and McMurtry's characterization of Woodrow and Gus are truly stunning. It's the characters that turn this book into a compelling classic, rarely does the reader encounter such deftly-drawn and intriguing men as McCall and McCrae. You feel as if you are in Lonesome Dove with these men, and with them every step of the way from Texas to Montana. It's a magnificent journey and McMurtry is a superlative writer.

Even if you've never read a western book in your life, this is a literary masterpiece, the Shakespeare of the range, so to speak.