Clyde A. Milner II and Carol A. O'Connor are professors of History at Arkansas State University, and co-editors of The Oxford History of the American West. For eighteen years--from 1984 to 2002--Clyde Milner edited the Western Historical Quarterly.
"Milner and O'Connor, two leading historians of the American West,
deliver an outstanding history of Granville Stuart... He left
behind a room full of diaries-material that Milner and O'Connor, a
husband-and-wife team and both history professors at Arkansas
State, put to superb use as they probe the complexities of this
archetypal Western settler."--Publishers Weekly starred review
"Mr. Milner and Ms. O'Connor's story of this full and complex life
is rich in substance and meticulous in its revelation of discovered
fact... they have provided in this volume an extremely valuable
account of the history of the upper western United States. They
also offer an enlightening view of the second half of the 19th
century in American history from the standpoint of a
larger-than-life individual who not only lived through it, but who
also was
instrumental in shaping its direction."--Dallas Morning News
"In fully revealing Stuart's fascinating and complex life, Milner
and O'Connor illuminate the conflicting realities of the frontier.
This well-written biography is highly recommended."--Library
Journal
"Richly detailed...A welcome addition to the literature of the old
Northwest."--Kirkus Reviews
"The story of Granville Stuart-Montana cattle king, high-toned
vigilante, bookman extraordinaire, self-conscious pioneer and
memoirist-is one of the unlikely wonders of western history, so
strange it has to be true. Blessedly leaving no scrap of Stuart's
record unexamined, Clyde Milner and Carol O'Connor have
comprehensively pieced together this complicated and conflicted
life, to the benefit of us all who seek to savvy this glory-driven
prairie forebear."
--Ivan Doig, author of The Eleventh Man
"Milner and O'Connor have done a great service to the craft of
biography-giving us a life lived on an unimaginably large canvas, a
life that was full of greed and adventure, surprising
broadmindedness and staggering vanity. In the end, Granville Stuart
emerges as a towering figure who lived out his own bodacious creed
of self-reliance. Thanks to Milner and O'Connor, Stuart will rise
at last to his rightful place in the hoof-beaten lore of the
American
West."--Hampton Sides, author of Blood and Thunder
"An extraordinary feat of storytelling. Rescued from his own
self-made myths and placed in the context of his complicated
family, Granville Stuart emerges in these pages as a son and
husband and father-as well as a cattleman and vigilante-subject to
the hopes and disappointments of the human heart. Milner and
O'Connor reveal Stuart to be a new sort of pioneer, driven by love
as well as profit, shaped by loss as much as success."--Martha A.
Sandweiss, author of
Passing Strange and Print the Legend
"Granville Stuart lived an extraordinary and complicated Western
life, and then in his published writings he invented another one.
Clyde Milner and Carol O'Connor operate in the interstices of those
lives to uncover a fascinating, surprising, and disturbing west
that lies outside the terrain of the usual faith promoting
biographies."--Richard White, Professor of History, Stanford
"Granville Stuart had more lives that a dozen cats. A miner and
rancher, part mountain man, a frontier free-thinker and
intellectual, vigilante hangman and a diplomat in South America, he
knew everybody, the Butte millionaires and labor agitators. As Big
as the West is a terrific saga which Milner and O'Connor researched
for a decade and have told masterfully and eloquently. And it's
also a portrait of the northern West as it evolved. This is one
really good, useful book."--William Kittredge, author of The Willow
Field and The Next Rodeo
"This sensitive and brilliant biography reveals the extraordinary
human complexity behind a life that edges on the mythic. And like
all good biographies, it uses that single life to explore the
deeper questions that really matter."--Philip J. Deloria, author of
Playing Indian
"With a breadth as wide as Montana itself, this fascinating
biography of Granville Stuart digs deep into the history of a
complicated place and its people. It revisits traditional topics
with new sensibilities and explores fresh subjects with insight and
wisdom. As Big As the West is a masterful narrative that will
delight, while it educates, students and scholars alike."--Sherry
Smith, University Distinguished Professor of History, Southern
Methodist
University
"This biography is beautifully crafted by the team of Carol
O'Connor and Clyde Milner. It was not an easy task, as their
subject sought to 'rewrite' and 'recreate' history according to how
he wished it to have happened... Stuart's life most certainly was,
as the title explicitly states, 'as big as the West,' and Milner
and O'Connor have captured this Westerner splendidly."--John
Wunder, Pacific Historical Review
"Milner and O'Connor have obvious gifts for storytelling as well as
an insatiable appetite for research, making As Big as the West
rewarding for the layperson and indispensible for the scholar of
nineteenth-century Montana." --Western American Literature
"A well researched and carefully documented life story...a
compelling story." -- Salem
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