Synopses & Reviews
Perhaps once in a generation it is possible for a historian to reinterpret the
long sweep of an area and a period in our history. K. Ross Toole has chosen
Montana for this purpose, and the brilliant success of his achievement must be apparent to all who read these pages.
He has consciously avoided a systematic presentation of the history of this "uncommon land." Instead, he has chosen to put the great and many of
the smaller but significant episodes of a century and a half into new perspective. The record, in its colorful and romantic aspects, stretches from the days of Lewis and Clark; and in its more recent aspects, from the subjugation of the Indian to the predominance of big mining and timber enterprises. The resulting portrait is sharply drawn by a man who knows not only how to interpret the remote and recent past but how to write with great
effect.