She concludes that almost without exception, these children-and their parents, too-were severely traumatized by their unnatural, inverted roles.īy Virginia Bergman Peters The Shoe String Press Maps, illustrations 319 pages, $22.50 Weaving in her own story with those of other child stars, she writes swift, revealing biographies of the infant royalty that brought money pouring into Hollywood before World War II. As Baby Peggy, a top child star of the early 1920’s, her own heyday was even shorter than most it ended when she was seven and shed her two front teeth. “A child star’s life expectancy was roughly equivalent to that of a dog,” Diana Gary says in this sad and intriguing book. Hollywood’s Children! An Inside Account of the Child Star Eraīy Diana Serra Cary Houghton Mifflin Company Photographs, 290 pages, $11.95 The overland migration spawned almost as many diarists as the Civil War, and Unruh has steeped himself in these rich contemporary sources. Groups could hire a “pilot” to guide them, or for two hundred dollars an individual emigrant could join a “passenger train.” The usual method of travel was by covered wagon, but some emigrants used pack animals, and one group successfully made the trip pushing wheelbarrows. Joseph, Missouri-vied for the emigrants’ trade. Outfitters in the jump-off towns-notably Independence and St. In fact, “many overlanders rarely saw an Indian during the entire trip.” On the other hand, the journey was grueling work, particularly for migrating urban dwellers who weren’t accustomed to hard physical labor. And disease was the main killer, not Indians. Unruh shows that the mortality rate on “the plains across” was probably not much higher than for those who stayed home.

The truth, as we learn in this fascinating and definitive study, was somewhere in between. The overland migration-that extraordinary journey to California and Oregon made by a quarter of a million Americans in the 1840’s and 1850’s-was “palpable suicide” or a trip “merry as a marriage bell,” depending on whom the emigrant consulted before setting forth. University of Illinois Press Illustrations, tables, maps 565 pages, $20.00 The Plains Acrossi The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-60īy John D.

The Plains Across by John D. Unruh