“Colorado in the Civil War,” by John Steinle (Arcadia Publishing)
For a small territory of just 30,000, Colorado contributed an outsized number of volunteers — some 5,000 men — during the Civil War. And they made a significant difference in stopping the war from going west to the California gold and silver mines. At the Battle of Glorieta Pass, Colorado volunteers, led by Maj. John Chivington, routed the Confederates and sent them back to Texas. The engagement was known as “the Gettysburg of the West.”
After distinguishing himself in that battle, Chivington, of course, went on to become the despised commanding officer at the Sand Creek Massacre. Colorado’s volunteers went on to fight the Rebels in Kansas and Missouri and confront Quantrill’s Raiders.
The territory’s role in the War Between the States is summarized in “Colorado in the Civil War.” Using early photographs, many of them rare, author John Steinle pictures the scenes of the war in the West and the men who participated. A copy of a rare recruitment poster for sharpshooters reads, “Hunters Come Forward and Join.”
“Last Paper Standing,” by Ken J. Ward (University Press of Colorado)
In December 1907, Thomas M. Patterson, owner of the Rocky Mountain News, was on his way to work when he was beaten with a cane by a man who attacked him from behind. The assailant was Frederick G. Bonfils, co-owner of The Denver Post. While the caning was the most virulent assault during a long-simmering war between the two newspapers, it was neither the first nor the last attack. In fact, for more than 100 years, the two papers attempted to drive each other out of business. In 2006, The Post finally came out the victor.
In “Last Paper Standing,” Ken J. Ward, a journalism professor at Pittsburg State University, writes about the century of competition between the two papers. The book is an academic account, so you won’t find many colorful stories about the newspapers in their heyday — but, then, the demise of a once-powerful, century-old newspaper is dramatic enough.
The News was founded in 1859. It was a political sheet and Denver’s leading newspaper until Bonfils, an opportunist, and partner Harry H. Tammen, who ran a curio company, bought the floundering Post in 1895. They turned it into an apolitical, yellow-journalism sheet, attacking anybody and everybody.
The Post dominated Denver’s newspaper world until Bonfils’ death in 1933. Then it slumbered for another decade or more until Bonfils’ daughter Helen brought in Palmer Hoyt to revitalize the paper. Meanwhile, the News, then owned by Scripps-Howard, hired Jack Foster, who turned it into a tabloid.
Ward details the conflicts between the papers in the early years, then concentrates on the problems of more recent years that led to the demise of the News. He questions the wisdom of the two papers forming a joint operating agreement, which he writes was to the disadvantage of the News. And the 1997 subscription war, known as the “penny war,” nearly brought the papers to their knees. Moreover, a recession and changing economics were at issue. Eventually, the News went on the market. When there were no purchasers, it abruptly closed.
If there were heroes in those last days of the News, they were editor John Temple, who fought valiantly to keep his paper alive, and Post owner Dean Singleton. Officials of Scripps-Howard, based in Ohio, considered the News only one of many assets. But Singleton, who lived in Denver, fought for his hometown paper.
Ward ends his history the day the Rocky Mountain News printed its last paper.
“Paradise Undone,” by Annie Dawid (Inkspot)
Thirty years ago, more than 900 members of the People’s Temple in Jonestown, Guyana, committed mass suicide by drinking a cyanide-laced beverage. The question that remains: Why would so many people blindly follow the order of their demagog leader, Jim Jones, to die, and to do it willingly?
Colorado writer Annie Dawid tries to answer that question in her novel, “Paradise Undone.” She tells the Jonestown story through the eyes of half a dozen real and fictional characters. They include a tractor driver who managed to escape just before the suicides, and a woman so enamored with Jones that 10 years after the cult leader’s death, she has sex with a stranger in order to have Jones’ spiritual child. There is also a Guyanese diplomat, who discovers too late that the woman he left his wife for was a spy who reported details of their relationship to Jones.
Jones’ wife, Marceline, is the saddest character in the novel. In the beginning, she was a full partner with Jones in building the church. Her work as a nurse paid the bills. She helped as Jones rehabilitated alcoholics and drug users and gave hope to the poor and discouraged, most of them Black. She kept on working, and over time, became responsible for many aspects of the church, including care of the children. She followed Jones from the People’s Temple in San Francisco to the Jonestown settlement. As the church grew, she saw Jones turn into a megalomaniac, a drug user and an adulterer. If Jones was Father to his congregation, Marceline was Mother.
Dawid’s “Paradise Undone” is a story of one of the world’s greatest tragedies and of the people whose lives were wrapped up with those of Jim Jones.
