(4 of 6)
He was the first sheriff of Independence, Mo., the first white man to lead a party to the brink of the Yosemite Valley and the first to lead a wagon train into California, in 1843. Frontiersman Joseph Walker, says Biographer Bil Gilbert, "should have become a gaudy boon to the toy and TV industries" like his contemporary, Kit Carson. The reason he did not: Walker's stubborn refusal to embroider his achievements for legend-hungry Eastern journalists. So they "moved on to men and events that could be conventionally romanticized."
Prudent, fair-minded and humane, Walker roamed the West for 50 years, often living with Indians because, he said, "white people are too damned mean." Although the frontier echoed with violence, Walker favored adventure over fighting. Nearing his 50th birthday, he rode 800 miles from Santa Fe to Fort Leavenworth in an astonishing 23 days. The amateur naturalist was even interested in prairie dogs. On all fours he tried to capture one alive to obtain a study skin. A happy combination of luck, skill and attitude helped Walker to prevail over the wilderness; he died a proud and prosperous rancher in 1876 at the age of 77. Westering Man offers an unfamiliar frontier landscape. Here, the Indians are con men, whisky distilling is a regional pastime, and meteorites terrify intrepid explorers. The mood is antic, but the True West is not always the most appealing of places. Still, Joseph Walker is its true exemplar, and Bil Gilbert is its true celebrator. Those in search of myth should try Louis L'Amour or Zane Grey.
THE VON BÜLOW AFFAIR by William Wright Delacorte; 372 pages; $16.95
It was a case that had everything: European aristocracy and American money, a Newport palace and a fiercely loyal servant, a philandering stepfather and vengeful children, a blond heiress wife and a brunette TV-star mistress.
The trial of Claus von Bülow for the attempted killing of his wife Sunny transformed family griefs into a Roman circus, and Journalist William Wright adopts a barker's tone in his recollection of the slack, tedious life of the idle rich. (Sunny rose at 11, rarely left the house except to go shopping, and employed eleven gardeners to manicure eleven acres.) He deftly records the countless lies and petty sins of the accused murderer, starting with the facts that Claus was neither a von nor a Bülow (his father, Svend Borberg, was a convicted if not especially culpable collaborator with the Nazis in Denmark).
Wright wittily eviscerates the adolescents and haughty matrons who defended Claus (Character Witness Ann Brown, one of Rhode Island's grandest dames, addressed a lawyer "in a tone surely known to every butler in Newport"). But for all its malicious detail, The Von Bülow Affair never really answers the question that nags at every reader: Did Claus really do it? Wright plainly believes Von Bülow is guilty, and even Defense Attorney John Sheehan labeled the prosecution's case "overwhelming." But the examination of the clues is so clumsily marshaled that the reader is left to wonder whether Von Bülow could have been set up on evidence planted by his stepchildren or by Sunny's devoted maid Maria Schrallhammer. The case that had everything still needs a book that has everything—including a plausible solution to the crime.