NONFICTION - June 28, 1987

OUT WEST by Mike Flanagan (Abrams: $27.50; 208 pp., illustrated). Denver Post readers have been fortunate in seeing Mike Flanagan’s articles on colorful Western characters places and events. Good columns and photographs, however, don’t necessarily make a totally engrossing or coherent book. “Out West” is difficult to assimilate quickly. It should be read as it was written--a column at a time.

Anyone with some interest in the West, especially Colorado, which provides the setting for many of these hundred columns, will find worthwhile discoveries in this handsomely-produced collection. Knowledgeable Westerners will find fresh facts in sketches of such figures as Billy the Kid, Geronimo, Horace Greeley and Zane Grey.

Flanagan doesn’t voice many comprehensive ideas about the West, but his portraits are suggestive. The reader is impressed by how little time lies between the hard reality of settlement and capitalizing on this romantic history in show business. Wild Bill Hickock and Sitting Bull were not alone in traveling the East in shows. Not so long after Emmett Dalton survived 20 wounds when the Dalton gang raided Coffeyville on horseback, he moved to Hollywood to make money in construction and in the movies. That’s the spirit of many Western figures--just an enterprising band of vagrants passing through the Plains, ready to ride off whenever a new chance arises. Mike Flanagan understands their drama and their opportunism.