U.S. WEST

This is distinguished from Hungerford's Wells Fargo (Random House, P.315) through its concentration on the company's story as played out against the towns of the West in which Wells Fargo exemplified its many activities, Columbia, Bodie, Panamint, Candelaria, Tonopah, Goldfield, Rhyolite, Rawhide, and of course, San Francisco. It limns the empire of wealth, expansion, transport, high finance; it tells of the hell and high water tactics; of staging and express; of the railroad and the last of the old West. It gives a dashing history of the bold and dominant men, of detectives, agents and messengers, of freight and holdup men and robberies, of bonanzas and treasure. Stressing atmosphere more heavily than the other book, this is perhaps more florid and less chronologically coherent, albeit just as good reading.