The Loggers

The Old West #14

by Richard L. Williams

Padded,faux leather covers with unblemished pictorial insert.Clean,unmarked text.Small amount of tarnish on gilt spine bands.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Westerns

240 pages, Leather Bound

First published January 1, 1976

Reviews

[Pat Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The next in my collection of Time Life "The Old West" series. This issue was interesting in its own pool of history. It told of the trees and their history of being harvested and turned into money, then their final meet with people who worried about their future. The first part of the book had and interesting three pages of tree species which were common in the US. We moved on to the jargon of people who worked in the lumber industry. There are short histories of men who heard about the trees from earlier pioneers and came west to make a living off the forests. There is a detailed couple of pages that describe how to cut down a tall tree and what tools they used. There's a great part describing the machinery and action that was used to move the trees from where they were cut down to the lumber mills where they made the final products. The lives of the loggers, how they lived, what their days were like, and their struggles forming union power. These people were of course the ones who were paid the least, worked the hardest, faced the deadly dangers, and were the epitome of rugged individuals. One quote said that there was about one death per day of lumber workers in the early times before unions and government tried to improve that. Finally, the last part of the book tells of the people who saw the complete removal of entire forests and made moves to do it better. Men like Gifford Pinchot, John Muir, and Teddy Roosevelt. As I read these Old West books I am finding that my assumptions about the cowboys and the gunfighters being the most interesting, and the farmers, women, miners, etc. being less so is not true. (Maybe, I still have to read the cowboy and the gunfighters editions.) Anyway, I found this book to be a pretty fast and interesting read.

[Autumn Kearney · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Loggers was a book from The Old West Series by Time-Life. There were black & white photos of the loggers. The trees were huge and so were the hand saws. It was a shock to see just how gigantic those trees were. The cover was made from tooled leather. The book was made to look and feel like a horse’s saddle.

[Steven Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another addition to the Time-Life "Old West" series. This volume focuses on the loggers, those intrepid souls who went west to bring down trees to support homebuilding, shipbuilding, and many other industries dependent on timber. The work was hard and many injuries occurred. The book does a nice job of exploring logging in California, Oregon, and elsewhere. Great photos and illustration, good maps, and many sidebar stories make this a quick read--and informative. . . .

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read many of the Time Life Books in this series and this one was the best so far. I have ten still to read but I am confident that Williams has done the best job of putting the reader into the history and the inner workings of the logging community.

[Christian Walding · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, and engaging, this book gives a comprehensive history of how the Pacific Coast developed secondary to timber.