One of the best-selling authors of all time, Western and adventure writer Louis L'Amour penned more than 100 books that have sold 200 million copies worldwide since they began appearing in the early 1950s. Decidedly outside of the genteel traditions of the Eastern publishing establishment, L'Amour's works are noted for their spare prose, rugged situations, unambiguous morality, and colorful casts of straight-shooting characters who tamed the American frontier West with grit and determination. Himself a North Dakota native and an adventurous soul, L'Amour dominated Western popular fiction for four decades, from the post-World War II years through the Reagan era of the 1980s. Some of his novels have gone into more than 20 printings, and 30 of them have been adapted for the movies, including Hondo (1953), the book that first made him famous. He is especially noted for his series of novels in the...