Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express [Paperback]

Christopher Corbett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 14, 2004

“WANTED. YOUNG, SKINNY, WIRY FELLOWS. NOT OVER 18. MUST BE EXPERT RIDERS. WILLING TO RISK DEATH DAILY. ORPHANS PREFERRED.”
—California newspaper help-wanted ad, 1860

The Pony Express is one of the most celebrated and enduring chapters in the history of the United States, a story of the all-American traits of bravery, bravado, and entrepreneurial risk that are part of the very fabric of the Old West. No image of the American West in the mid-1800s is more familiar, more beloved, and more powerful than that of the lone rider galloping the mail across hostile Indian territory. No image is more revered. And none is less understood. Orphans Preferred is both a revisionist history of this magnificent and ill-fated adventure and an entertaining look at the often larger-than-life individuals who created and perpetuated the myth of “the Pony,” as it is known along the Pony Express trail that runs from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California. The Pony Express is a story that exists in the annals of Americana where fact and fable collide, a story as heroic as the journey of Lewis and Clark, as complex and revealing as the legacy of Custer’s Last Stand, and as muddled and freighted with yarns as Paul Revere’s midnight ride. Orphans Preferred is a fresh and exuberant reexamination of this great American story.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School--"Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows, not over eighteen. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred. Wages--$25 per week." Thus ran a notice in several western newspapers in 1860. Or maybe not. This is just one of many unproved "facts" about the Central Overland California & Pike's Peak Express Company, better known as the Pony Express. The Pony's day was short, a mere 18 months, from April 3, 1860, to October 26, 1861 (just two days after the completion of the first coast-to-coast telegraph line). The company was a financial disaster for its owners. The total amount of mail carried was insignificant. Ah, but the "twisted truth and lasting legend," now that is something a good writer can throw in his saddlebag and ride with. And Corbett does exactly that in this fine analysis of the famed riders of the Wild West. He does an excellent job of finding bits of truth hidden behind layers of myth. For example, Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok were not Pony Express heroes, despite numerous dime novels and Hollywood westerns to the contrary. On the other hand, true heroes were lost among the lore. The feats of Robert Haslam and William F. Fisher were impressive by any standard. This book tells two main stories: what happened (so far as is known) and how the legend grew (about which much is known). A good selection for Old West aficionados, especially those who relish the challenge of separating fact from fiction.--Robert Saunderson, Berkeley Public Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

If MBAs existed in 1860, they'd have advised Russell, Majors & Waddell that their business plan for a cross-continental courier service was a loser. But the firm's folly was the Old West's gain, creating one of its most myth-encrusted mirages--the fabled Pony Express. In Corbett's discerning hands, the saga splits in two. The first part is his rollicking account of the Express, in which Corbett wryly picks his way through the embellishments that surround its short year-and-a-half existence. The second part ambles through the afterlife of the Pony Express as entertainment, accumulating Corbett's gallery of newspaper hacks, cheap novelists, showman Buffalo Bill, filmmakers, and local history antiquarians who peddled truths and fabrications about it. It makes for fun reading as Corbett handicaps which writer was a jolly liar, who was a conscientious chronicler, or what old timer's memories of his days on horseback have a smidgen of believability. The book is great entertainment in and of itself, but buffs of the West will virtually gallop to the checkout line. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Broadway (September 14, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767906934
• ISBN-13: 978-0767906937
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #718,255 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Christopher Corbett is the author of The Poker Bride: The First Chinese in the Wild West (Atlantic Monthly, 2010) and Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express (Random House/Broadway Books, 2003). He is also the author of the novel Vacationland (Viking/Penguin, 1986).
Corbett is a 1973 graduate of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. A former news editor with The Associated Press, Corbett began his journalism career in his native Maine. Since 1995 he has written The Back Page for Baltimore's Style magazine, twice winner of best column from the City and Regional Magazine Association and honored by the Society for Professional Journalists for best editorial writing.
A Baltimore resident, Corbett is a faculty member at the University of Maryland Baltimore County where he is professor of the practice in the English Department. He was awarded the University System of Maryland Board of Regents' Faculty Award for Mentoring, 2007-2008. In 1990, Corbett was the James Thurber Journalist-In-Residence at Ohio State University. From 1990 to 1993, he was visiting journalist at Loyola College in Baltimore. His journalism has appeared in major American newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Truth, but the Truth is Legendary, October 10, 2003

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express (Hardcover)

Chances are you never heard of the great nineteenth century freight-hauling firm of Russell, Majors & Waddell. You never heard the official name of the firm's most famous effort, the Central Overland California & Pike's Peak Express Company. You have certainly heard of the popular name of the endeavor: the Pony Express. You know the Pony Express, because from its beginning, it was the stuff of legend, and the legend has never stopped growing. That is the main point of _Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express_ (Broadway Books) by Christopher Corbett. Corbett has given as good a history as can be written about the Pony Express because he has shown what difficulties there are in digging up such history. "We know that much to be true" becomes a frequent refrain in his work to emphasize how little we really know of the truth. It isn't important. The legends about the Pony Express may not be literally true, but they are real and they mean something, and Corbett's book is about them as much as it is about plain facts.

Take the title of the book, for a start. An ad that supposedly ran in newspapers all through California in 1860 sought "Young, skinny, wiry fellows, not over eighteen. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred." The ad has been reproduced many times as part of the Pony Express's history, in such journals as _The New York Times_, but there is no documentation of any original. Such a title for the book is thus perfectly emblematic of its contents, and also ensures that the undocumented quotation will continue to be attached to the Pony Express. Such are the risks of writing fact about legend. Russell, Majors, & Waddell instituted the Pony Express in 1860 as a commercial gamble that mail could get in days from the western edge of civilization (St. Joseph, Missouri) to the western edge of the country (Sacramento, California), almost two thousand miles. The most surprising thing about _Orphans Preferred_ is that almost exactly halfway through the book, the Pony Express is disbanded. This reflects its short life; it ran for only eighteen months, overtaken by the first transcontinental telegraph. So much legend was based on such an ephemeral institution that the second half of the book examines the making and continuance of the legend. One name looms largest: Buffalo Bill Cody, who had a Pony Express performance at every show.

Buffalo Bill's representation may well have been heroic, but it must have been realistic, too. That is much more than can be said for the Pony Express in novels, and especially in movies. Corbett lists various movies through which the Pony Express rides, and could never have actually ridden due to its northern route or restricted months of operation. _The Pony Express_, made in 1953 and staring Charlton Heston, is "the best bad movie" about the service, and is "a spectacular fraud," containing "virtually no facts in its entire 101 minutes." But it is wrong to let facts get in the way of a legend; Buffalo Bill never did, and because of him, everyone still knows about the Pony Express. Corbett's entertaining book is certainly not a debunking of the myths as much as an appreciation of them.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THIS MUCH IS TRUE, November 5, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express (Hardcover)

Virtually everyone has heard of the Pony Express, the thundering horses, and the spirited young men who rode risking life and limb. All have seen a multiplicity of images, the stereotypic Pony Express horse and rider, that grace a variety of corporate stationery, restaurant menus and billboards. But who really knows the truth of the history of this singularly American venture?

Living in Pony Express country and having done my share of reading and having visited various Express-related sites I thought I was fairly well versed. But after reading "Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express" by Christopher Corbett I have to admit that my supposed knowledge was more a collection of the myth surrounding this short-lived, though spectacular, chapter in history.

"Orphans Preferred..." was thoroughly enjoyable read. Corbett does what all responsible authors tackling a dubious subject should do: he collects all of the information, both factual and fabricated, puts it in the hopper and does his best to sort things through. Then he leaves it to us, his readers, to maker our own conclusions. Not once in the book does Mr. Corbett claim to be totally convinced that this or that piece of information is undeniably true or undeniably false. He correctly leaves it to various quoted sources to do that.

But what else could he do? The information available about the Pony Express is at best a jumbled mess. Such notables as Buffalo Bill Cody and James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok muddied the waters with their efforts to link themselves to and take credit for various aspects of the Express. Hollywood, playing on this hearsay and extensive legend, did its best as well to further mess things up. The result: not one of us, including Author Corbett (and that made very clear by his own admission in the book), has a clear picture of what really went on.

But who's really counting? Corbett does a masterful job of setting straight, at least in my mind, what is absolute fact and what is absolute fiction, leaving a considerable amount of gray area in between.

Corbett eloquently points out in "Orphans Preferred..." that the legend will ride on regardless. Thank goodness it does. Legends are great so long as we know they are legends. But as Americans would we really let any of our favorite legends go, among which the Pony Express holds an honored place, without a considerable fight?

John Ford's movie, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" perhaps says it best: "This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend!"

Douglas McAllister

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Light, enjoyable read 3-1/2 stars, May 10, 2006

By 

Christina Lockstein "Christy's Book Blog" (Oconto Falls, WI USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express (Hardcover)

Orphans Preferred by Christopher Corbett is a fun history of The Pony Express. Corbett does his best to piece through the mythology of the "Pony", but he doesn't always have a lot to work with. Sometimes he spends pages explaining all the different possibilities of a fact which isn't all that important. There are neat, short biographies of some fascinating characters from the Wild West including Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickock. Corbett treats the whole book as fun and not to be taken too seriously, and that's exactly how I suggest you read the book. He does his best to give us the facts, but sometimes the legend is more interesting, so he recounts that as well. I have a new understanding of The Pony Express and some of the people who helped create its myth, but many mysteries remain, including the "orphans preferred" newspaper advertisement.