By Matthew Ilseman Ever wanted to visit a place does not exist? Ever wondered where exactly a favorite fictional setting was? Well, this book, Atlas of Imagined Places: From Lilliput to Gotham City is for you. The premise of this book is to map out places that do not exist in the real world but do in various forms of media whether these are … [Read more...] about Atlas of Imagined Places

  Time spent with Colin G. Calloway is always time well spent. He’s one of the most important and prolific of the academics engaged in what is known as Borderlands History.  Wednesday afternoon, I listened to a Ben Franklin’s World podcast with Calloway discussing his most recent work, The Chiefs Now In This City: Indians and the Urban … [Read more...] about The F Word

* The white gulls wheeled above the cliffs, the air was slashed with foam, The long tides moaned along the strand when Solomon Kane came home. He walked in silence strange and dazed through the little Devon town, His gaze, like a ghost's come back to life, roamed up the streets and down. — Solomon Kane’s Homecoming Robert E. … [Read more...] about ‘A World Just A Little Sideways From Ours’

If there’s a cooler job description than Explorer-in-Residence for the Royal Canadian Geographic Society, I’ve never heard of it. That gig actually exists, and it belongs to Adam Shoalts. Till Tuesday, I’d never heard of him. Named one of the “greatest living explorers” by CBC and declared “Canada’s Indiana Jones” by the Toronto Star, Adam Shoalts … [Read more...] about The Whisper On The Night Wind

By Matthew Ilseman Stories of pirates have been popular for centuries. The most famous of these are probably Treasure Island by Stevenson and Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini. Robert E. Howard often wrote about pirates. One thinks of Conan and Belit raiding ships in Queen of the Black Coast or Solomon Kane hunting pirates down in The Blue Flame … [Read more...] about Confessions Of A Time-Traveling Pirate — A Review Of ‘Pirate Freedom’ By Gene Wolfe

By Paul McNamee Captain, New England Ranging Company If you’re no stranger to Frontier Partisans, then no doubt you will have come upon mention and discussion of Robert E. Howard’s classic tale, Beyond the Black River, wherein Conan (the Barbarian) is thrust into a frontier tale, spiced with black magic and other elements to present a … [Read more...] about Ablaze — Beyond The Black River

  Lee Child found his own stash of Urca de Lima gold in the person of his character Jack Reacher, who is  can readily be seen as a throwback Frontier Partisan, wandering the wilderness of contemporary backroad America. I’ve read a couple — my brother has knocked ’em all down. Every one. They’re Westerns. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a … [Read more...] about Reacher Goes Big

  A Review By Matthew Ilseman * There are more good books than one can read. Those who say otherwise are either those with extremely narrow reading or those that find criticizing a work more enjoyable than any aesthetic pleasure the work itself. The fact is if you are willing to look for them you can find extraordinary books in any … [Read more...] about The Cowboy And The Cossack

Blame Bob Boze Bell for this one. The publisher of True West Magazine posted a picture of himself reading this book to his dog as a bedtime story. As one does.  It’s written by a friend of his (Mariotte) and a well-known TV showrunner who happens to share the name of the protagonist. Well, you know what happens next, right? Gold Camps of … [Read more...] about Blood & Gold And Murrieta’s Head

The contemporary Western is a big thing these days, with the Empire of Taylor Sheridan spreading from Yellowstone to 6666 to Y:1883. There’s plenty of room for more, especially when its drawing from top-flight source material. On December 6, Joe Pickett arrives, and it looks like hell’s comin’ with … [Read more...] about Joe Pickett