MCKENNA, JAMES A. Black Range Tales, New York, 1936. Reminiscences of prospecting life. OP.
MATHEWS, JOHN JOSEPH. Life and Death of an Oilman: The Career of E. W. Marland, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1951. Mature in style and in interpretative power, John Joseph Mathews goes into the very life of an oilman who was something else.
RISTER, C. C. Oil! Titan of the Southwest, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1949. Facts in factual form. Plenty of oil wealth and taxes; nothing on oil government.
SHINN, CHARLES H. Mining Camps, 1885, reprinted by Knopf, New York, 1948. Perhaps the most competent analysis extant on the behavior of the gold hunters, with emphasis on their self-government. The Story of the Mine as Illustrated by the Great Comstock Lode of Nevada, New York, 1896. OP. Shinn knew and he knew also how to combine into form.
STUART, GRANVILLE. Forty Years on the Frontier, Cleveland, 1925. Superb on California and Montana hunger for precious metals. OP.
TAIT, SAMUEL W. Wildcatters: An Informal History of Oil-Hunting in America, Princeton University Press, 1946. OP.
TWAIN, MARK. Roughing It. The mining boom itself.
26. Nature; Wild Life; Naturalists
"NO MAN," says Mary Austin, "has ever really entered into the heart of any country until he has adopted or made up myths about its familiar objects." A man might reject the myths but he would have to know many facts about its natural life and have imagination as well as knowledge before entering into a country's heart. The history of any land begins with nature, and all histories must end with nature.