Jeremy Agnew

Kevin McDermott

A History of International Communism from Lenin to Stalin

The Comintern

The healing arts as practiced in the Old West often meant the difference between life and death for American pioneers. Whether the challenge was sickness, an Indian arrow, a gunshot wound, or a fall from a horse, a pioneer in the western territories required care for medical emergencies, but often had to make do until a doctor could be found. This historical overview addresses the perils to health that were present during the expansion of the American frontier, and the methods used by doctors to treat and overcome them. Numerous black and white photographs are provided, as well as a glossary of medical terms. Appendices list commonly used drugs and typical surgical instruments from the 1850–1900 era.

A History, 1850–1900

Medicine in the Old West

As business interests have commercialized the American West and publishers and studios have created compelling imagery, the expectations of readers and moviegoers have influenced perceptions of the cowboy as a hero. This book describes the evolution of the cowboy hero as a mythic persona created by dime novels, television and Hollywood. Much of our concept of the cowboy comes to us from movies and the book’s main focus is his changing image in cinema. The development of the hero image and the fictional West is traced from early novels and films to the present, along with shifting audience expectations and economic pressures.

Fiction, Film and Fact

The Creation of the Cowboy Hero

For many years, movie audiences have carried on a love affair with the American West, believing Westerns are escapist entertainment of the best kind, harkening back to the days of the frontier. This work compares the reality of the Old West to its portrayal in movies, taking an historical approach to its consideration of the cowboys, Indians, gunmen, lawmen and others who populated the Old West in real life and on the silver screen. Starting with the Westerns of the early 1900s, it follows the evolution in look, style, and content as the films matured from short vignettes of good-versus-bad into modern plots.

History Versus Hollywood

The Old West in Fact and Film

Miners, loggers, railroad men, and others flooded into the American West after the discovery of gold in 1848, and entertainers seeking to fill the demand for distraction from the workers' daily toil soon followed. Actors, actresses and traveling troupes crisscrossed the American frontier, performing in tents, saloons, fancy theaters, and the open air. This exploration of the heyday of popular theater in the Old West chronicles its emergence and growth from 1850 to the early twentieth century. Here is the story of the men and women who provided myriad types of entertainment in the Old West, and brought excitement, laughter and tears to generations of pioneers.

Theater, Music, Circuses, Medicine Shows, Prizefighting and Other Popular Amusements

Entertainment in the Old West

The traditional narrative of the American West tells of a frontier settled by pioneers emigrating from the east to the Pacific coast. Yet Spanish conquistadors arrived in Central America 150 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. With them came missionaries who tried to convert the Pueblo and Plains Indians to Christianity by force, a suppression of native religious beliefs that led to cultural clashes and outright war. This is the story—fully documented—of how Spanish explorers, soldiers and men of the church pushed north from Mexico in the 1500s, seeking riches and establishing settlements from Texas to California 250 years before the influx of American settlers in the mid–1800s.

A Collision of Cultures

Spanish Influence on the Old Southwest

Brides of the Multitude is a fascinating, historically accurate account of why prostitution ran rampant in the Old West during the prudish Victorian period of the United States. It explains who these women were, their reasons for becoming prostitutes, the types of establishments of prostitution, the conditions under which the women worked, and problems associated with sexually transmitted diseases and contraception. Weaving facts with colorful anecdotes, the author presents an in-depth look at the "ladies" who conducted business in the infamous red light districts located throughout the frontier.

Prostitution in the Old West

Brides of the Multitude

Modern spas are wellness resorts that offer beauty treatments, massages and complementary therapies. Victorian spas were sanitariums, providing “water cure” treatments supplemented by massage, vibration, electricity and radioactivity. Rooted in the palliative health reforms of the early 19th century, spas of the Victorian Age grew out of the hydrotherapy institutions of the 1840s—an alternative to the horrors of bleeding and purging. The regimen focused on diet, rest, cessation of alcohol and foods that upset the stomach, stress reduction and plenty of water. The treatments, though sometimes of a dubious nature, formed the transition from the primitive methods of “heroic medicine” to the era of scientifically based practices.

A History of Victorian Spas

Healing Waters

Through the Victorian and Edwardian eras, various health movements emerged in the transition to the modern age of scientific medicine. Strange medical devices and quack cures were pushed, often using crude remedies based on simplistic beliefs and the placebo effect. Currently, some of these treatments appear absurd, even cruel. Because some were properly used as appropriate therapies, it is difficult to label them altogether as bogus. This book takes a thorough look at unconventional medical gadgets, as well as the strange devices and therapies used by both fringe and legitimate healers, and places them in the perspective of modern medicine. The author argues that quackery should not be defined by the ineffectiveness of a therapy, but rather be based on the fraudulent intent of the people who pushed dishonest and deceptive remedies.

Medical Devices and Treatments from the Golden Age of Quackery

The Electric Corset and Other Victorian Miracles

This accessible text provides a comprehensive narrative and interpretative account of the entire history of the Communist International, 1919-1943. By incorporating the most recent Western and Soviet research the authors explain the legendary complexities of Comintern history and chart its degeneration from a revolutionary internationalist organisation into an obedient instrument of Soviet foreign policy. Key themes include: continuities and discontinuities between the Leninist and Stalinist phases, Bolshevisation versus national traditions, and the role of leading individuals in the Comintern apparatus. A selection of documents will elucidate these central themes.

This book explores the role and influence of drink and drugs (primarily opium) in the Old West, which for this book is considered to be America west of the Mississippi from the California gold rush of the 1840s to the closing of the Western Frontier in roughly 1900. This period was the first time in American history that heavy drinking and drug abuse became a major social concern. Drinking was considered to be an accepted pursuit for men at the time. Smoking opium was considered to be deviant and associated with groups on the fringes of mainstream society, but opium use and addiction by women was commonplace. This book presents the background of both substances and how their use spread across the West, at first for medicinal purposes--but how overuse and abuse led to the Temperance Movement and eventually to National Prohibition. This book reports the historical reality of alcohol and opium use in the Old West without bias.

Use, Abuse and Influence

Alcohol and Opium in the Old West

From the dime novels of the Civil War era to the pulp magazines of the early 20th century to modern paperbacks, lurid fiction has provided thrilling escapism for the masses. Cranking out formulaic stories of melodrama, crime and mild erotica--often by uncredited authors focused more on volume than quality--publishers realized high profits playing to low tastes. Estimates put pulp magazine circulation in the 1930s at 30 million monthly. This vast body of "disposable literature" has received little critical attention, in large part because much of it has been lost--the cheaply made books were either discarded after reading or soon disintegrated. Covering the history of pulp literature from 1850 through 1960, the author describes how sensational tales filled a public need and flowered during the evolving social conditions of the Industrial Revolution.

A History of Sensationalist Literature, 1830-1960

The Age of Dimes and Pulps

"From the dime novels of the Civil War era to the pulp magazines of the early 20th century to modern paperbacks, lurid fiction has provided escapism. Covering the history of pulp literature from 1850 through 1960, the author describes how sensational tales filled a public need and flowered during the evolving social conditions of the Industrial Revolution"--

Jeremy Agnew

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