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A Marvelous Hundred Square Miles: Black Hills Tourism, 1880-1941
cloth cover with dustjacket, illustrated, maps, bibliography, index
232 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
November 29, 2011
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
I've spent time in the Black Hills on a few different occasions and I love the history and the landscapes of the area. As such I was looking forward to learning more about the area and how it was started, but I was disappointed in the layout and the writing style of the book. While it is evident that the author has a great passion and knowledge of the area, she lacked a good editor to make the book readable.
It is evident from the beginning that the author has a passion for the area and is extremely knowledgeable about how it came into being. From the introduction I had hopes that it would read more like a travelogue taking the reader on a journey into the areas past and letting us into the hidden details. And although the information is solid, the book doesn't read that way at all. In fact its often downright confusing. Within one chapter we're reading about tourism, but in the span of four pages we start at 1897 go to 1913, then jump back to 1911 and introduced to even more people. There are no clear delineations to help the reader focus on one time period or one area within the chapter and it's very difficult to keep up with what area you're in.
The overall information and photographs used within the book however are fairly solid (she does gloss over the fact that Mt. Rushmore's land was essentially stolen from the Native Americans and was sacred land to them). It's a useful book if someone is writing a history paper on the area or has specific facets of information that they are looking up, not so much for a pleasure read.
I've spent time in the Black Hills on a few different occasions and I love the history and the landscapes of the area. As such I was looking forward to learning more about the area and how it was started, but I was disappointed in the layout and the writing style of the book. While it is evident that the author has a great passion and knowledge of the area, she lacked a good editor to make the book readable.
It is evident from the beginning that the author has a passion for the area and is extremely knowledgeable about how it came into being. From the introduction I had hopes that it would read more like a travelogue taking the reader on a journey into the areas past and letting us into the hidden details. And although the information is solid, the book doesn't read that way at all. In fact its often downright confusing. Within one chapter we're reading about tourism, but in the span of four pages we start at 1897 go to 1913, then jump back to 1911 and introduced to even more people. There are no clear delineations to help the reader focus on one time period or one area within the chapter and it's very difficult to keep up with what area you're in.
The overall information and photographs used within the book however are fairly solid (she does gloss over the fact that Mt. Rushmore's land was essentially stolen from the Native Americans and was sacred land to them). It's a useful book if someone is writing a history paper on the area or has specific facets of information that they are looking up, not so much for a pleasure read.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review