I had the chance to take a much delayed trip to the states this spring and hit the “front range” first, landing in Denver Colorado.
I took a clockwise trip round the southern rockies where the Colorado (Grand Canyon bound) and Rio Grande (New Mexico and Texas bound) rivers both rise.
The trip took in Colorado Springs, Raton, Santa Fe, Moab and ended in Boulder just north of Denver.
On my trip I bought a few books but I am getting ahead of myself. Trips like this invariably start with trains and planes. For which a book is useful.
My first book therefore was Eckart Frahm’s recent “Assyria” the rise and fall of the worlds first empire.
This got some airtime both ways when I was not watching both parts 1 and 2 of Dune. Dune I enjoyed and seemed a lot better than the one Sting was in – that’s showing my age….
The book also got some train time too. However it’s got a long way still to go and is still promising to be a great read in the future now I have moved on to other things!
My first USA purchase was completely unexpected. While waiting in a Walmart till exit queue near Fort Collins I was confronted not with Hershey bars but a pile of national geographic civil war atlases. I succumbed.
Moving south I landed up in Raton – the Raton pass is the mountainess northern route of the Santa Fe trail running from Kansas in the east.
Then it was onto Santa Fe where I got two books.
The first book so to speak in Santa Fe itself, I picked up at a niche bookseller. We had a good chat about the book world and I then asked him if he had something on the military history of the region – civil war or earlier.
I picked up this Mexican War book secondhand on the owners recommendation seeing as I would never have spotted it either and it turned out to be a top buy. It proved an excellent read for someone who knew nothing about the conflict.
I also did a check on the various titles for civil war histories in the region of Colorado/New Mexico and was happy with the book I had brought with me from the UK.
I had also read it before travelling as the battlefield is not straightforward. Essentially a main road runs smack through the extended site with all the development/disruption that results.
And when I made a trip to the nature park near the battlefield there was a fantastic choice of military history books on offer. Again the reserve is another story but I only bought this one book – about the civil war in Texas.
I found that mid west bookshops generally covered the Indian wars post civil war better than the civil war itself. Understandable given the distance and geography involved and the fact that the civil war was much more an east coast affair.
Durango and Moab were great places to stay but no compelling books to be had.
So it was left maybe to Boulder to finish on a high. Boulder was renowned for its bookstores in the past and I found two excellent ones still going and very well patronised when I visited.
At Trident booksellers and cafe I bought iron empires…..and the union pacific hits the rockies nearby……….
At Boulder bookstore I bought of dice and men….
Both stores were on Pearl Street which is the main shopping and retail street in Boulder.
Well that wraps up the book tour which was a success giving me plenty to consume during the rest of 2024 and well into 2025.
So those pesky brushes are back which means I can do some miniatures painting again!
And just maybe a few more posts will follow on what I saw on my travels…….
The Wargaming Erratic 