Grade 5-10-In this impressive biography, Stanley illustrates two aspects seldom highlighted in histories of the U.S.: business development in pioneer communities and the role of Jewish immigrants in building the economic foundation of the American West. Sons of a Polish merchant who went to California with the gold rush, the Jacobs brothers grew up in San Diego and soon joined the family firm. While still in their 20s, they departed for Tucson, Arizona Territory, in 1867, driving a 12-mule freight wagon loaded with goods to stock a new venture in the unfamiliar desert frontier. Their struggles, adventures, and eventual successes are interspersed with information about the Jewish-American experience, 19th-century business practices, and the relationship of the Jacobs' lives to larger events occurring throughout the "Wild West." As related in Stanley's well-wrought chapters, it all makes fascinating reading. Period photographs complement the prose.
Starr E. Smith, Marymount University Library, Arlington, VA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Product Description
Alongside the cowboys, miners, railroad builders, and soldiers whose role in the settlement of the American West is well known there was another, equally important figure: the pioneer merchant who supplied the rapidly growing towns of the West with manufactured goods. In Taming the West, Jerry Stanley tells the story of Lionel and Barron Jacobs, who in 1867 set out from California for Tucson with a wagonload of canned goods. After a two month trek across the desert, they arrived in Tucson--then a lawless one-street Wild West town--and set up shop. Within a week they were sold out; within two years, they had established a prosperous mercantile business. As Tucson grew, so did Lionel and Barron's business, expanding first to money exchange and loans and finally into the Arizona Territory's first formal bank.
From their gritty beginnings in an open wagon to their eventual role among Tucson's wealthiest and most influential citizens, Jerry Stanley tells Lionel and Barron's story with vigor and an eye for colorful period detail. Weaving threads of Jewish history and immigrant history, and the settlement of the frontier, Taming the West is a rich and fascinating look behind the scenes of the American West.
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