Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - March - 2006 Issue
American Adventure, Exploration &c. From Arthur H. Clark
The six survivors, including Adolphus Greely (seated, center), of the Greely Arctic expedition.
Everyone knows about Buffalo Bill (Cody) and Wild Bill (Hickok), but how many remember Alfalfa Bill? Here is your chance: Alfalfa Bill; An Intimate Biography, by Gordon Hines (1932). William Henry Murray was a native of Texas who moved across the border to the Oklahoma territory at the turn of the century. He was involved in the transition to statehood, and legal and political affairs for many years. His career peaked in the early 1930s when he was elected governor. Murray was a Democrat, but anti-New Deal. He ran against Roosevelt for the party's presidential nomination in 1932, but despite garnering only a handful of votes, he resented his party's nominee. His was a colorful governorship, characterized by calling out the National Guard, for causes as varied as keeping toll-free bridges to Texas open, to collecting tickets at University of Oklahoma football games, to enforcing segregation (Bill had an ugly, racist side). However, it was his promotion of planting alfalfa to renew the soil that gave him his nickname, "Alfalfa Bill." Item 68. $42.
Item 225 is a rare first edition of Among the Shoshones, a book also known as the "White Indian Boy," by Elijah Nicholas Wilson, also known as "Uncle Nick." Wilson spent a few years living with the Shoshone as a youth in Utah, and later became a pony express rider before moving on to Wyoming. The small town of Wilson, Wyoming, outside of Jackson, is named for him. Along the way, he met many of the characters of the Old West and witnessed memorable events. Wilson's adventures became a popular tale of the Old West, but this rare first edition is particularly notable as it contains his account of how he lost his Mormon fiancée to a polygamist. According to Wilson, this edition was suppressed, only twenty copies printed for his private collection, after which a revised edition without reference to his fiancée and the polygamist was published. From 1910. $2,950.
Here is a much more recent, and much less exciting book: The Quotable Richard M. Nixon, compiled by Perry D. Hall. One hesitates to call this a "wit and wisdom" book as Nixon was not terribly noted for either, but this 1967 book contains some of his most notable lines from the years before he became president. However, being pre-presidential, it lacks Nixon's most famous quote of all, "I am not a crook." Item 16. $20.
The latest Arthur H. Clark catalogue is now available for download online at www.ahclark.com They may be reached at 800-842-9286.
