[Jeff Higgins]

The Saga of Hugh Glass by John Meyers Meyers (that's not a typo) is a fantastic historical account of this man's life. Required reading for those of us into the old fur trade era and life in the Rocky Mountains from around 1800-1840 or so. Very well researched, with an extensive bibliography, Mr. Glass's is a very real story. How closely the movie follows it may very well be another matter. It usually is...

Jim Bridger himself was along on that fateful trip whereupon Glass was left for dead. Bridger recounts the details in his own biography. Osborn Russell's A Journal of a Trapper provides a firsthand account as well. Russell's work is particularly fascinating, as it is left written in his semi-literate hand, warts and all.

We hear much about the "Wild West". Cowboys and Indians, cattle drives, gunslingers with their Colts and Winchesters... pffft... the really wild times were long over before the first travelers plied Oregon trail. "Winchester, the gun that won the West" and all of that, right? Sorry, but the Hawken brothers and many other St. Louis rifle makers "made the West safe for Winchester"...