American Character: The Curious Life of Charles Fletcher Lummis and the Rediscovery of the Southwest

Description

Explore the colorful life of the legendary Old West author-adventurer in this "engaging and spirited biography" (Publishers Weekly). Charles Fletcher Lummis's remarkable career began in 1884, when he walked to from Cincinnati to Los Angeles to accept a job writing for a fledgling newspaper called the Los Angeles Times. That was just the beginning of a life marked by spirited ambition and excess. By turns a writer, an editor, and a self-taught photographer, Lummis lived large. At one point, he undertook an archaeological expedition to Peru, at another he became the head librarian for the Los Angeles Public Library, and later took over as the editor of the successful magazine Out West. Always a free thinker, battling racism and discrimination and championing the Southwest, Lummis's passionate defense of Indian rights—and his friendship with Theodore Roosevelt—helped to reshape American policy on the subject. Called "an important work" by Library Journal, this thorough and affectionate biography will help others remember a man who was once a household name in the America West.