Under the Banner of Heaven is a two-part book in this departure story for adventure writer Jon Krakauer.

Krakauer focuses on the murderous brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty who felt called by a god known only to them to brutally kill their sister-in-law and niece. The Lafferty's are excommunicated Latter Day Saints, thrown out from the church because of their insistence on taking founder Joseph Smith at his word and accepting such disavowed commandments as polygamy and blood atonement. Their crime was real and brutal. Krakauer was able to interview Dan Lafferty at length from his prison cell in Utah where he is serving two life sentences for his acts. Even years later, this man is externally at peace with himself in believing he answered the call of his lord to remove two who stood in the way of The Plan.

In order to explain, or give background to the Lafferty's religiously inspired killings, Krakauer explores the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS or Mormons) at length. He describes Mormonism from its founding by Joseph Smith in upstate New York, through their bloody emigration west through Illinois and Missouri to Utah, and the establishment of what the early believers hoped would be a nation apart from the rest of the world. The bloody trials at the hands of suspicious neighbors in the American mid-west are detailed (confrontations that cost the life of their founder Smith and gave rise to Brigham Young). So is Young's establishment of the Mormon state of Utah (Deseret at the time) in an attempt to separate the Saints from America. The Mountain Meadows Massacre and the killing three of John Wesley Powell's Grand Canyon explorers are detailed. These last two violent chapters -- perpetrated by Mormons and possibly with the knowledge of Young in the case of Mountain Meadows (according to the author) -- bear witness to Mormonism at its most insular and reactionary. These killings were related at least in part to the original Mormon doctrine of blood atonement, a tenet revealed by Smith that called for the spilling of blood for "crimes" (or religious failings) serious enough that only death was judged a proper set off.

Polygamy, or plural or celestial marriage, the taking of multiple wives as commanded by Joseph Smith and popularized by Brigham Young, is explored in depth. It was many things -- a distinguishing characteristic of Mormonism, the practice that caused non-Mormons to react in horror and disgust, the percipitator of Congressional laws and the tenet that kept Utah out of the embrace of the larger Union in the late 1800's.

Although the church decided to abandon polygamy around 1890 as a price for gaining statehood and acceptance, it remained a sharp dividing line among Mormons. This abandonment of one of the Church's founding testaments has caused schisms in the church, excommunications and the creation of fundamentalist outposts throughout the American West of communities of practicing polygamists who while officially removed as LDS members by the mainstream church, consider themselves the true Mormon's and keepers of God's commandments as revealed through Smith.

These Mormon fundamentalists have given rise to perpetrators of murder, statutory rape, female brutalization and other crimes in the last several decades. As true believers who are convinced that only they are living right with God and that they face an ungodly hostile world (counting LDS leadership), many turn to god-talking for revelations on how to deal with the challenges and frustrations that lay in their paths. These types of revelations have produced the Lafferty's -- convinced that God told them to take the lives of a young lady and her eighteen month old daughter, as well as the kidnappers of Samantha Smart.

Krakauer does a good job of weaving the history of Mormonism, the religious split within the faith between accommodationists and fundamentalists and the fringe fundamentalist groups that have given rise to violent men like the Lafferty's.

The author does point out that the vast Majority of Mormons -- and even the majority of Mormon fundamentalists -- are non-violent people living lives filled with close families, spirituality and wholesomeness. The religion has produced -- as have all religions -- seekers who establish at least in their own minds direct links to the almighty or revelations of the "true" plan of God that lead them to acts abhorred by their fellow travelers. These aberrants are the focus of the author. He does a good job of explaining the particular mind-set of Dan and Ron Lafferty and the background of America's only home-grown large religious denomination. Krakauer shows how this history spawned the doctrine, disagreements, schisms and personalities that gave voice and meaning to the terrible impulses that produced Dan and Ron Lafferty.

This is a very interesting book. The history of Mormonism is fascinating and I think Krakauer does a good job of exploring the religion as it unfolded. I am sure LDS will accuse him of focusing on errors and omissions of the past instead of the millions of hard working and clean living LDS who are by very many measures the epitome of a stable, productive and happy people. This is true, but Krakauer is specifically hunting for the why that has enabled excommunicated Mormons who self style themselves as fundamentalists to produce religiously inspired perpetrators of ghastly violent acts.

His exploration of some of these perpetrators, including the Laffertys, paints a disturbingly interesting portrait of some of the lunatic fringe who cloak themselves in what they see as the "true" image of Mormonism.

A very intersting non-fiction book.

Kudos to Dan Brown for writing a gripping novel that pushed a lot of my buttons (in a positive way).

This book has great pacing, with a twist or important occurrence happening about every three or four pages. Amazingly, the author has written a plausible plot that hurtles through four hundred plus pages covering a period of less than twenty-four hours.

For history buffs, this book captures the imagination. Great figures like Leonardo Da Vinci and Sir Isaac Newton figure prominently in the plot. The Vatican, Opus Dei, the Knights Templar and a secret society that may still exist called the Priory of Sion are part of the story.

For those who like mysteries and codes, the book abounds with them. The author gives the reader enough background information and clues that it is possible to appreciate and even figure out some of the codes that drive the story forward from solution to solution and the ultimate prize.

And a clever story it is. Without revealing the central mystery, this book revolves around two forces continuing an almost two millennium battle over information that could rock the very foundations of the Catholic Church and Christianity. A murder in the Louvre of one of the principals in this battle brings Dr. Robert Langdon, -- Harvard Symbologist who specializes in church symbols, mysteries and codes -- together with the beautiful Sophie Neveau -- French police code breaker with a few mysteries of her own. The eighteen or so hours after the murder involve the two central figures, flight and manhunts across the France and England, double crosses and mysterious personages, quick lessons in church history, the art of Leonardo Da Vinci, the Knights Templar and the very early Christian Church (as early as it gets) and code breaking from verse, art and symbols.

Brown gives the reader a heck of a ride. This book works as a thriller, intellectual exercise, and historic fiction.

I have to say historic fiction because Brown has taken some license with history to create the situation needed to foster his story. My only criticism of the book is the author's forward note in which he claims truth regarding the organizations and events portrayed in the book. It is true that the Knights Templar, the Priory of Sion, the Dead Sea Scrolls and symbolism in Da Vinci's art exist. However, the author does use these truths in a subjective way to support his thriller.

He makes claims for the Council of Nicea and the Dead Sea Scrolls that are not accurate, or are tenuous at best. His statement that most Christians at the time of the Council believed Christ was a fully human, non-divine being is contradicted by everything I've read of Church history (without going into it here, see www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/sbrandt/nicea.htm which states that those holding the non-divine position were a very distinct minority of contemporary Christians). Also, the Dead Sea and other recent scrolls do not give the statements ascribed to them by the author, except for one which contains an ancient Greek word that can be translated in various ways -- and upon one translation not generally accepted he bases his assertions).

The above are important because the general statement of truth the author makes would lead some to believe he meant existence of the historic characters, groups and happenings as well as the conclusions he takes from them.

That digression aside, this is one of the best novels I've read -- great pacing, fascinating history, terrific conspiracy and interesting symbology and code breaking. Truly a book you'll stay up late to read.

Krakauer is fine author. His stories read like well honed long magazine articles and capture the drama and danger of high altitude mountain climbing (Into Thin Air) as well as mental soloing(Into The Wild).

Eiger Dreams is a collection of stories about mountaineering and mountaineering culture. This collection of a dozen or so chapters (I suspect all were magazine articles first) regales the reader with the danger of high-altitude climbing, the uniqueness of attitude among many of the climbers and a slice of the culture that surrounds the climbing world.

On the whole the stories are gripping and interesting. It falls short only in one or two instances when the author delves into set place stories like describing the town near Mt. Blanc that seems to derive it's personality from the towering rock and those who are drawn to it in great multitudes each year.

The chapters on individual climbs introduce the reader to the thrills and dangers of high-risk climbing, without the chance that one will tumble out of an armchair 10,000 feet to become part of a mountain. Particularly enjoyable are the articles on the North face of the Eiger, the author's own journey to solo climb Alaska's Devil's Thumb at age 23 and a chapter on the Burgesses -- two mountaineering hobos who combine moxie with single mindedness as they climb the world's tallest peaks. I also enjoyed the chapter detailing early attempts to divine whether or not Everest was really the tallest mountain -- some of the journeys associated with ascertaining the claims of competing peaks remind one of Scott's Polar expeditions -- fueled more by British resolve than planning and logistics.

One wonders at the bent of mind that draws climbers to the highest climbs. Mountains like Everest and K-2 are littered with well over a hundred corpses (it is to arduous in the thin air and brutal conditions to haul reachable bodies down -- and impossible for those who tumble a mile off the edge or several hundred feed down a crevasse). Something like one person perishes for every four who reach the summit of Everest. A strikingly large number of survivors endure amputations of fingers or toes. It is the same or worse at some of Nature's other monoliths.

This is a sport that makes auto racing and boxing seem like rational athletic endeavors. One is left to ponder why (perhaps no better answer exists than Mallory's "Because it is there") some are willing to risk life itself for the privilege of standing ten or so minutes atop one of the tallest mountains. Krakauer does not pursue this question directly, though the brief character sketches he paints of climbers -- including himself -- offers some conclusions.

A fast read and entertaining book.

Jim Lehrer has spun a great premise that grabbed me as a fan of both the Civil War and good fiction.

Human remains are found on the Antietam Battlefield by relic hunters. The archaeological exploration by the National Park Service reveals that the man buried on that bloody field was a Union Lieutenant whose body supposedly rests hundreds of miles away -- under a glorious Monument in a small town in Connecticut that still remembers his devotion in fond memory.

The book is a mystery that solves the identity problems of switched Civil War bodies as well as unraveling hundred and forty year old secrets about how the bodies came to be in unexpected places.

Lehrer tells the story in two tracks. The current historical and detective work centers on Dr. Don Spaniel of the National Park Service. The second track speaks to the reader with a voice from the 1880's in a remembrance of the bloody battle and the weight of events that happened there. Those events, while giving today's reader a good first hand account of the battle around Burnside's Bridge (Lehrer used the words of real participants), bear directly on Dr. Spaniel's efforts to unravel the mystery of the past.

The premise is great -- inspired by occasional findings of whole bodies at Civil War battlefields in recent years. The voices of the past reverberate with the horror an infantry charge into concealed positions must entail. The least satisfying part of the book is the present day detective work undertaken by the good Dr. Spaniel and other characters who pop into the story. I have to agree with one other commenter who thought they were flat and under developed. I also thought Lehrer had a tendency to have Dr. Spaniel over-react to other characters and occurrences in the story. This is a thin book, an instance where another forty or so pages could have led to more well-rounded characters -- and perhaps avoided their seemingly convenient popping into the story when needed.

Those criticisms noted, it is not a bad story. In fact, this is an engaging read. The story does move along quickly and the size of the book makes it an ideal candidate to polish off over a long rainy afternoon.

So there it is -- a great premise and an average story. Not bad, although I had the feeling that it could have been done a little better.

Having greatly enjoyed "Confederates in the Attic" and "Blue Latitudes," as well as "Baghdad Without A Map", I am a Horwitz fan. This book, "One For The Road" was his first book, written as a 27 year old and about his hitchhiking journey across Australia.

The book is thin and narrowly focused in comparison with Horwitz's later work, particularly "Confederates" and "Blue". While these books combine the road trip with the local history and background of related topics, "One for the Road" is all about the trip.

The basics of the book can be summed up as follows: wait in the hot sun for a ride, get picked up by an Aussie (transplant or Aborigine), drive with the Aussie as they consume tinnies of beer as fast as they can pour it down their gullets, get off at the first pub in the next town to drink, find a place to sleep (often the dirt beside the road). Repeat 57 times as you wind your way around the continent.

While Horwitz's wit and descriptive skills are evident, this is a drinking and travel book. The people he meets are all pretty much cut out of the same cloth. Part of the problem is that he often travels to two or three places in each day, leaving little time to reflect or penetrate the continent beyond the confines of the nearest roadside tavern.

There are exceptions. He writes well of Ayer's Rock and the Aborigines who live in it's shadow. A day spent on a lobster boat in rough seas is also a diversion for both author and reader. His attempt to find one Jewish person in Broom with whom to share Passover introduces a few Australians whose existence can be described more broadly than by the number of beers they can quaff. But for the most part, this book plods on as relentlessly as the roads over which he travels.

Bill Bryson's journey book of Australia is a much better read, with more varied characters and much more of Australia's interesting history and peccadilloes.

This is not a bad book, but I am glad I read Horwitz's latter books first before trying this.

Stephen Sears is in the first rank of current Civil War writers. His specialty is campaign coverage. Having already done wonderful treatments of Chancellorsville, Antietam and the Peninsula Campaign, Sears now turns his talents to chronicling "The" Civil War battle (in the eyes of many): Gettysburg.

Though others have told this campaign story well (masterfully by Coddington, recently and well by Trudeau), its seminal importance in the outcome and to the memory of the war leaves it always worth the perspective of new authors and generations.

Sears has produced a highly readable and detailed telling with his turn. It is a full history of the campaign, starting in the aftermath of Chancellorsville, the command crisis in the Army of the Potomac, Lee?s decision to go once again North, and ending with the Confederate re-crossing into Virginia in the fortnight after the Battle. The three days at Gettysburg receives the Sears treatment: detail enough to satisfy the enthusiast (the fighting is described at brigade and regimental level as well as the big picture) and written in a very engaging style -- well enough to hold the attention of the curious.

Sears is not a revisionist. What this book presents is an opportunity to introduce new readers to the epic that was Gettysburg. He does explore the command relationships of both Meade and Lee. Lee comes off somewhat worse than in some tellings I have seen. The communications and remembrances Sears uses to explore the workings of the Confederate high command reveal Lee's command confidence as lax control of his subordinates and portray Ewell's and Longstreet's efforts to modify Lee's desires as evidence of a lack of decisiveness and knowledge on the part of the Great Southerner. I don't have a quibble with that analysis, it is supported by the first hand evidence presented by the author. Longstreet in particular receives a more sympathetic treatment by Sears than he has by some. His questioning of Lee's July 2nd and 3rd attack directives is presented as the proper interplay between a chief lieutenant and his commander and he does not fault Longstreets's execution when Lee finally decides to send his troops in.

Meade comes off very sympathetically, particularly his generalship in the defense and his decision not to make Lee?s mistake of attacking head on a fortified position after Pickett?s Charge or while the Confederates were backed up the Potomac River some ten days after. Buford, Reynolds and Hancock also are given their proper due, Sickles and Howard their proper criticism. For 20th Maine fans, Chamberlain?s stand is described in exciting detail, but great credit is also given his brigade commander, the sometimes overlooked Strong Vincent.

The only surprise was a minor one: Stuart's encounter with the 1st Delaware Cavalry at Westminster, MD was omitted. Others have portrayed this brief engagement as forcing Stuart to lose a day or more and lengthening the time of his separation from Lee's army (thereby leaving Lee blind as to the Union forces against him through most of the battle). A curious omission, but one that does not detract from an excellent addition to the growing Gettysburg library.

If you followed Enron, Worldcom, the conspicuous consumptions of Donald Trump or any of the other seamier of capitalism's excesses over the last several decades, this book will show you that history was repeating itself. In fact, comparing the ostentatious displays of wealth and brutal no-holds-barred corporate infighting between then (1900) and now, our capitalists sound like mere echoes of men who defined the terms "Gilded Age" and "Robber Barons."

Patricia Beard, in "After the Ball" has used the events and people surrounding the Equitable Life Assurance Society to illustrate a bygone era of business and living at the top level of wealthy society. In addition to dissecting a nasty takeover corporate takeover attempt well, Ms. Beard writes in a way that holds the reader's attention.

The Equitable was one of the big three life insurance companies at the dawn of the 20th Century. Important to policy holders because life insurance was the only means of support available at the time if the man of the house died with dependants, it was important to Wall Street because the premiums sat in a vast cash pool and were available to finance much of our industrial growth of the period. The Equitable had been created by one man, Henry Hyde, who grew it from a store-front business to vast size in the forty years after the Civil War. Henry Hyde was a founder, a decisive man who knew his business, could make decisions and had the respect of his company officers as well as his fellows.

His son, James Hazen Hyde, had none of his father's characteristics and had not been schooled by his doting parent in the arts that would be necessary to run the Equitable when it was his turn. When Henry died, James, in his early twenties, was the product of money and society -- finishing schools in Paris, the best clubs, debutante balls, and the kingly sport of coach riding. In short, he was trained to compete in the world of Mrs. Astor, not Mr. Astor.

To compensate for these deficiencies, father Henry had established a trust for his son. A vice presidency with the Equitable and the tutelage of James Alexander, President of the company and the man entrusted by the founder to school young James until he could assume the Presidency himself.

Alexander had other ideas. Put off by James Hyde's public and ostentatious lifestyle (including the Hyde Ball, one of the most talked about and over the top dinner productions in an era of societal excess among his class), claiming that it did not befit a corporate leader who could keep the "sacred trust" of a life insurance company, and wanting control of a company he had contributed mightily to, Alexander organized a takeover fight among the board members. His goal was to strip James of control of the Board of Directors and to do it by using James' social prominence against him in a public as well as behind-the-scenes attack.

What ensued was a year long debacle that quickly spun out of control, as first the Alexander side and then the Hyde forces battled for advantage. The board members, financiers like Harriman, Ryan, Morgan, Frick and others backed the side that stood to gain them the greatest advantage in victory. Plans, compromise offers, press leaks, attacks intrigue and back stabbing came forward in a flurry as the fight became very public and enthralled ordinary people (over 100 front page stories in the NY Times in about a year's period). Regulators soon got involved, the NY Legislature, political bosses and any number of money-men, eyeing easy capital if they could assume control. President Theodore Roosevelt worried that the fight would harm the Equitable, dissolve commercial confidence and bring the economy to a grinding halt.

When it was over, neither side got what they wanted or expected, the NY Legislature was spurred into reforming insurance oversight, Charles Evans Hughes was launched on his path to the US Supreme Court and his run for the White House and the Gilded Age (from hindsight) set on a path toward memory.

Beard weaves this corporate intrigue with a biography of James Hazen Hyde. He is the archetypical society man of the Gilded Age, spending on livery, costumed balls, big houses, fast women, a sport very few could even afford to compete in and his love of French culture. She does a good job of entwining the two threads of her book, stumbling only when she sometimes over-lists what various guests were wearing to various parties and engagements. On the whole, she does a good job of painting a picture of life as James Hazen Hyde knew it, and demonstrating that he was both cut from too fine a cloth to effectively run a competitive business and that he wore that cloth too proudly, helping to make his lifestyle a large issue in the corporate meltdown that froze the Equitable as titans battled for control.

The author writes well and generally keeps the pace moving along swiftly. The story weaves many famous business and historical personalities (it was a much smaller world at the top then) into the saga of a now forgotten business drama that held the public in fascination. This is a good book for readers interested in business history as well as viewing the lifestyles of the fabulously wealthy a hundred years ago.

Peter Bernstein has written an overview of the relationship between money and gold throughout the centuries. This book serves up many interesting stories of gold and its service as money or as a financing instrument. In this, the book entertains. However, I found it to be somewhat disjointed as it moved from place to place and time to time chasing the illustrious metal as it assumed its different forms in kingdoms and nations far and wide.

My sense after finishing the book was that it was somewhat incomplete -- and that the author could not precisely focus on what the books focus was. While he mentions the twin uses of gold -- both as money and adornment throughout the book, almost all of the tales and statistics are relating to monetary gold. Also, for much of the latter half of the book, his focus is on the development of banking and financial instruments -- and their replacement of gold as a medium of exchange and a source of finance. Perhaps a better title would have been "Money through the Ages" or something that reflected the breadth of the journey the reader takes while stopping briefly at various historical events involving gold, coin, money, banking, minting and finance.

Not to say that the book isn't informative or interesting for the most part -- it is. I learned many new anecdotes and information from the author -- much of it fascinating. For example, the "Great" Kublai Kahn printed money that was backed by his will only, centuries ago. And it worked; apparently fear of not accepting the Kahn's paper was enough to make it a working medium of exchange. The Bank of England resisted machine minting with raised edges for years after the technology was available, even though the country was losing a fortune to clippers and shavers of hand stamped coin. West Africa was long a source of gold to Europe across the Sahara via long camel caravans and in barter on the coast (where the local custom was that Europeans would bring goods they thought appropriate to a place and then leave. The Africans would then take the goods and leave an amount of gold -- neither side ever seeing the other in the ultimate "hand-shake" deal). For centuries, Europe was frustrated in not discovering the location of the mines. One also reads of the Spanish gold caravans, the California and Klondike Gold Rushes, the era of nations moving gold from one vault to the next in the same New York bank to settle balance of payments and Nixon's abandonment of a gold tie to the dollar in the early 1970's.

It is interesting to see how completely wedded to gold some governments became, particularly in the late 1800's early 1900's. England, and other nations, were willing to see millions become unemployed rather than change the exchange rate - a position that sent Winston Churchill into his period of dormancy in the 1920's. FDR shocked the establishment - particularly if unsurprisingly Herbert Hoover, by setting gold at $35 dollars and ounce. In fact, the last third of the book relates story after story of smart men who were thought to absolutely understand the crucial relationship of gold to the money of their nation - and how almost all of them saw their policies produce completely the reverse of what they desired. For more than 100 years, the money men of Europe and the United States believed an unchangeable gold standard was the only route to growth and prosperity. The one astute observer, if contrarian, was Benjamin Disraeli, who observed in 1895 that "Our gold standard is not the cause, but the consequence of our commercial prosperity." His observation fell on deaf ears, only to be illustrated as possibly the right relationship after the turmoil of the 1920's and the Great Depression forced countries to begin to unhitch their currencies from absolute and unchanging values as measured in gold.

All of the information and stories are somewhat loosely tied together. Although it is apparent to the reader that the central point to the book is how money developed and gold's role in the various systems, I don't think the author traced the development as well as one might have or drew conclusions that would have made this interesting collection of stories into one story. Maybe I expected to much from an author who developed the story of insurance and risk better in his work "Against the Gods," but I thought this had a more thrown together feel.

Most of the information is interesting and even fascinating in some places. All in all, it is a decent survey of gold, money and the development of finance if one is interested in the topic.

This book picks up right where Sin Killer left off. Literally. I read these books consecutively and they could easily had been packaged as one six hundred pager.

This is not Lonesome Dove in several ways. Where any of the four Lonesome Dove books could be read as a stand-alone, I don't think The Wandering Hill would make any sense to someone who had not first read Sin Killer. McMurtry is also writing this series as a sort of Black Comedy. The characters are less well developed, the plot just conveniently happens and there is scant background or development. Just action and happenings.

As for the Black Comedy, think of an R-rated version of the old TV show "The Adams Family." Quirky characters abound, led by a loony father, unreal supporting characters and a strong female who by far possesses the most intense drive and assertiveness of any of the lot.

In this book, the Berrybenders and hangers-on -- reduced by Indian attacks, self-inflicted wounds, attempted familycide and the elements -- winter on the Yellowstone River before heading South toward Santa Fe.

Various Indians come into play and the fearsome "The Partezon" looms on the edge of the story, ready to strike havoc like Blue Duck or Mox Mox in McMurtry's other westerns. Historical figures are also woven into the plot, including Lewes and Clark's French guide Charbonneau to Kit Carson and other mountain men. The central part of the story remains the wily Tasmine, oldest of the Berrybender children and Jim Snow, aka "The Sin Killer" an American mountain man who alternates between remaining the wild loner of the range and being Mr. Tasmine Berrybender now that he has fathered a child by his amazing English bride - a woman he can't begin to fathom and who astounds him at every turn.

This series remains quite a ride. The action -- much of involving fornication or rutting (as the characters put it) -- comes quickly and certainly page after page. Although thin with somewhat weakly drawn characters, McMurtry can still tell a good story.

This book picks up right where "Sin Killer" left off. Literally. I read these books consecutively and they could easily had been packaged as one six hundred pager.

This is not "Lonesome Dove" in several ways. Where any of the four Lonesome Dove books could be read as a stand-alone, I don't think The "Wandering Hill" would make any sense to someone who had not first read Sin Killer. McMurtry is also writing this series as a sort of Black Comedy. The characters are less well developed, the plot just conveniently happens and there is scant background or development. Just action and happenings.

As for the Black Comedy, think of an R-rated version of the old TV show "The Adams Family." Quirky characters abound, led by a loony father, unreal supporting characters and a strong female who by far possesses the most intense drive and assertiveness of any of the lot.

In this book, the Berrybenders and hangers-on -- reduced by Indian attacks, self-inflicted wounds, attempted familycide and the elements -- winter on the Yellowstone River before heading South toward Santa Fe.

Various Indians come into play and the fearsome "The Partezon" looms on the edge of the story, ready to strike havoc like Blue Duck or Mox Mox in McMurtry's other stories. Historical figures are also woven into the plot from Lewes and Clark's French guide Charbonneau to Kit Carson and other mountain men. The central part of the story remains the wily Tasmine, oldest of the Berrybender children and Jim Snow, aka "The Sin Killer" an American mountain man who alternates between remaining the wild loner of the range and Mr. Tasmine Berrybender now that he has fathered a child by his amazing English bride - a woman he can't begin to fathom and who astounds him at every turn.

This series remains quite a ride. The action -- much of involving fornication or rutting (as the characters put it) -- comes quickly and certainly page after page. Although thin with somewhat weakly drawn characters, McMurtry can still tell a good story.