Description
Book SynopsisThe Aimless Life is a historical memoir that tells the story of Leonard Worcester Jr. and provides a clear example of the capitalist development of the American West and borderlands regions in the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century.
Trade Review"Worcester, who felt that he never struck it rich and hence the title, has left us with his life, richly observed and remembered."—Reed Weimer,
Denver Westerners Roundup“Leonard Worcester Jr. lived across interesting times and places and, thankfully, he wrote about a lot of what he experienced. Here is the everyday set against the backdrop, and occasionally the foreground, of world-shaping events. Andrew Offenburger knows this terrain well but he lets the story unspool with a light touch, always helping us frame Worcester’s story in context and circumstance. The result is pitch perfect: the life and the times of a historical figure whom history would otherwise hide from view.”—William Deverell, director of the Huntington–USC Institute on California and the West
“This beautifully edited tale of a jack-of-all-trades adrift in the U.S. West and Mexico in an age of empire and revolution captures the spirit of its border-crossing time, opening a portal into the wider horizons of North American borderlands history.”—Samuel Truett, author of
Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands“The itinerant Leonard Worcester Jr. had a knack for being in big places at big times, from the mining towns of Leadville and Cripple Creek to revolutionary Mexico. Edited adeptly by Andrew Offenburger, Worcester’s memoir offers a compelling glimpse into many familiar stories of the turn of the twentieth century—and as much into what Worcester neglects as to what he describes.”—Derek R. Everett, author of
Creating the American West: Boundaries and BorderlandsTable of ContentsList of Illustrations
Major Events in the Life of Leonard Worcester Jr.
Introduction
1. Childhood and American Transformations, 1863–1881
2. A Pragmatic Professional, 1881–1893
3. Colorado, 1893–1905
4. Borderland Mining and the Early Revolution, 1905–1914
5. Business in the Borderlands, 1914–1939
6. Coda
Acknowledgments
Index
