Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico: The Diary of Susan Shelby Magoffin, 1846-1847 (Yale Western Americana Paperbound, Yw-3.)
A Yale Western Americana Paperbound edition of Susan Shelby Magoffin's 1846-1847 diary, kept while she traveled the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico as a teenage bride. Yale printed it as part of the YW-3 series, the kind of paperback that university presses issued in the mid-twentieth century when they wanted to keep primary documents cheap and portable. Magoffin records births, deaths, army occupations, and the practical details of life on the trail with the confidence of someone who did not expect to be read. The introduction and notes supply context without turning her into a symbol. The binding is utilitarian, the paper is standard academic stock, and the type is readable.Ideal reader: the historian who prefers diaries to syntheses, or the reader who wants the Mexican-American War described from a wagon rather than a headquarters.
