Customer Reviews

How the West Was Won

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I saw this book in the leatherbound version a couple of years ago, and have read it so mant times that I think I need to get another copy! It's a really great book, but which came first-The book or the movie. I ask this because the book follows the movie, scene for scene and some of the dialogue from the movie is in the book, almost word-for-word, and I mean this as a sincere compliment, not a knock on the book at all. I have so seldomly read a book that Hollyweird didn't butcher so badly that the movie hardly resembles the book. But in HTWWW, the movie follows the book so closely that it almost reads like a script, but very enjoably so! I reccommend this book highly, and get the leatherbound copy; it's beautiful and really holds up. Thanks, Mr L'Amour! A GREAT BOOK!!!

I just finished reading How the West Was Won and have got to say that it is a mighty fine read! This Western has it all, fun, funny, scary, exciting, a fabulous tall tale of adventure.
If for some reason you have never read any of Louis L'Amour's books, you have been missing out on a real treat. I am a writer myself (Allergy-Free gardening, safe sex in the Garden, and other books) and I have to admit that for most of my life I was snobby about reading any Louis L'Amour. However, less than a year ago my brother encouraged me to try some of them, and immediately I was hooked. I, like many others, no am almost always reading one, and as soon as I finish it I find another and start in on it. I mean, they are just too much fun to be missed.
Some think too that his books are only for men, but I have found that women and many kids too really enjoy them. No one could write better adventure than L'Amour, and certainly no one could write a better Western.
This particular book, How the West Was Won, is one of his best. It is a big, fun, rip-snorting book and I highly recommend it.

Sure, this is a L'amour novel in the sense that Louis put the pen to paper...but the characters, action, and sequence were by necessity based straight from the movie. The writing seems forced and contrived, due to Louis having to work within the framework of an existing story.

If you love L'amour, this book will be a struggle for you. Books that are adapted into movies, are often great. Novelizations based on movies...not so much...

Mr. L'Amour wanted to be remembered "as a good story teller" -- those of us who admire and enjoy his work know he more than succeeded and this book is no exception , it is one of his best !!

How the West Was Won
I thought How the West Was Won is an exciting and all around great book. It is about Linus Rawlings, a fur trapper, and Eve Prescott, a woman who is moving west with her family. The story is about their lives and their son, Zeb Rawlings, who serves in the Indian wars, Civil war, and becomes a Marshall in the southwestern states. Then he has to fight a vicious outlaw.
I thought How the West Was Won was so good, I bought the movie and the book. It has drama, like the part where Linus and Eve fall in love, but Linus leaves for Pittsburgh. It has excitement, when the Harvey and Prescott families face an epic battle against Colonel Jeb Hawkins and his family. I think this is one of the best books because it has all the things to make a great book; drama, humor, excitement, and more. If you take the time to read this book, you will probably like it to.
One of the best things I learned is I got a whole new perspective of the young west. There were things I never knew until I read this book. It's a great book with an amazing story. It starts out slow, but gets better. I think you would like How the West Was Won.

An epic western spanning two generations of a family - from the days of the early settlements to the laying of the railroads - which tries to portray the development of the West. Memorable characters, action, adventure, romance, honour - all the usual L'amour elements are there in abundance in the book.

They made a popular movie out of it too, starring Jimmy Stewart!

The book was shipped on time and the condition as described. I would gladly use this seller again in the future.

A movie novelization, to work properly, has to do two things: follow the script as we view it, and also provide background and motivation that the movie can't, or doesn't have time to. This example ("based on the screenplay written by James R. Webb") does both. Having watched the movie more times than I can clearly recall, I was well equipped to notice whether it was accurately followed, and for the most part it was: I counted 32 discrepancies, most of them rather small (as for instance when Cleve Van Valen is portrayed as riding a horse, rather than a mule), although one fairly major scene (between Zeb Rawlings and Jethro Stuart) is left out--if you've seen the film you'll realize which one it is.

The story begins (after a brief introduction of Linus Rawlings that didn't take place in the movie) with the Prescott family--Zebulon, Rebecca, and their four children, romantic Eve (age 20, though in the movie she's said to be 21), ambitious Lilith (16), practical Sam (19), and ailing Zeke (about 10)--who have sold their farm in upstate New York and are heading west on the Erie Canal to take up new land in the Ohio Country. En route they meet mountain man Rawlings, heading east to "whoop it up a mite" in Pittsburgh, and fall afoul of river pirates before Zeb and Rebecca are killed in a rafting mishap and Linus, hearing of it, doubles back to offer himself to Eve. From there the focus switches several years later to Lilith, who wants "silk dresses and fine carriages...[and] a man to smell good;" staked by Linus, she has returned East and become a songstress and dancer in St. Louis, where she learns she's been left a gold mine in California. Signing on with Roger Morgan's westbound wagon train as a partner to the man-hungry Aggie Clegg, she attracts the attention of gambler Cleve Van Valen, and although at first she scorns him as a tinhorn, she gradually falls in love with him, rejects Morgan's offer to "share my life" and expansive ranch, and starts out with $1200 to "build something." Part Three returns us to Eve and her older son Zeb, who marches off to fight for the Union in the Civil War. In Part Four he has transferred to the Regular Cavalry and is guarding the railroad a-building, butting heads with tough Mike King and meeting Jethro Stuart, a former partner of his father's, while he tries to stave off a war between the Arapahoes and the railroaders. In the final section, now a married man and father and a lawman of a decade or more in experience, he is reunited with his widowed Aunt Lilith and faces off with an old enemy, outlaw Charlie Gant, before heading off to take over the management of Lilith's Arizona ranch.

L'Amour takes off imaginitively from the story as filmed, providing several excellent instances of background (such as the story of how Gant and Zeb came to be enemies, or the roots of Cleve Van Valen) and fill-in (the way the Van Valens made their first and their last fortunes). And in following his characters' thoughts (something a visual medium can't conveniently do), he gives us a good deal of factual information about the West (as when Zeb reflects on the general character of gunfighters). As in most of his work, he often has characters speak a bit too correctly for their place and era, but that's something you'll get used to if you go on to read any number of his books. If you can adjust to it and don't mind his occasional errors of adaptation (he may have been working from an early form of the script), you'll probably like the book.

If you saw the movie, you know the story. What I liked about the book is Louis L'Amour's explanation about the characters thought process...why they stay off the ridges, how the wagon trains work, why they don't sleep in the camp where they light the fire, etc. Really brings the wild west to life.

Don't you just love it when you find an author who can paint vivid word pictures on a wide canvass of action? This is that type of book. It is a fast-paced story that begins in the late 1700s written by a very prolific published author. I enjoyed the movie production even more than the book.