Excellent book on the history of some of Wells Fargo's top express messengers, including dismissing many urban legends. (Among these is that the term "riding shotgun" was used for the express messengers at the time they were riding next to the driver of a stagecoach; Boessenecker shows the term only came into use in the 20th century.

Boessenecker clearly knows his stuff. He moves from the express riders on stages to express messengers guarding Wells Fargo cars on trains. He also looks at some of the company's detectives.

The last chapter, "A Legacy Squandered," is also worth it. Boessenecker notes that Wells Fargo had been in banking as well as express shipping from its early days, but left the shipping business after Woodrow Wilson forcibly consolidated all express companies during WWI. (Another stupidity of his.)

So, they were just a banking company after that. And primarily California. Then, in the 1990s and beyond, a spate of mergers — starting with that with Norwest in 1998 — led the company to both get greedy in its banking practices, as we all know, and to also abandon its history. I had no idea it has a dozen museums. Nor that it has removed authentic firearms from them, or stopped investing in maintaining much of that history.

Boessenecker also notes that the greed — and the failure to thoroughly address it — also cuts against the company's early history.

Anyway, this is a great book all around.