Jack Rittenhouse: A Western Literary Life

Farmer (Willard Clark), the former director of DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University, offers an in-depth biography of Jack Rittenhouse, a writer, printer, publisher, and historian of the West. Born in 1912 in Kalamazoo, Mich., Rittenhouse had an insatiable curiosity and a penchant for adventure, Farmer explains. After dropping out of college during the Great Depression, he rode the rails to New York City, where he got a job as a bookseller. By 23, Rittenhouse was working in the mail room at Knopf, where he learned the ropes of advertising and marketing. Drawn to the history of the American West, he began collecting books on the region and founded Stagecoach Press in 1946, through which he published a popular guidebook to Highway 66, among other titles. Rittenhouse oversaw every aspect of the publication process at Stagecoach, from acquisitions to design and printing. Ever the book collector, he began publishing the newsletter New Mexico Book News, which “helped lay the foundation for a vibrant statewide renaissance of the New Mexico book community.” In 1968, he became an editor at the University Press of New Mexico, where he established a successful reprint series of books by Larry McMurtry, Mary Austin, and others. Complete with admiring reflections and lively prose, this is a solid tribute to a celebrated bookman. (May)