New book: Pike’s Peak or Bust: The Life and Works of David V. Bush

S.T. Joshi’s blog brings news of a new book by Ken Faig Jr, in the form of Pike’s Peak or Bust: The Life and Works of David V. Bush (Sarnath Press, June 2022). Available now in paper, or as a budget Kindle ebook.

The new book is described by the blurb as an “exhaustive biography of Bush … a dynamic salesman with boundless self-confidence who was part guru and part charlatan”, and typical of a type that emerged in the 1920s.

He had his poetry and some of his booklets revised by H.P. Lovecraft. Bush gave Lovecraft steady revision work in the 1920s, which helped Lovecraft to get through that decade. Bush was also an early promoter of ‘marital advice’ sex books as I recall, some of which Lovecraft may have perused before his marriage. So far as we know he never ghosted any of the sex material, though he is said to have done whole chapters of Bush’s homespun popular psychology booklets. No doubt Ken Faig Jr. has all the details on that.

Archive.org’s search has become as flaky and unreliable as Amazon, and is no longer trustworthy as a guide to what an author has in there. But here are the Bush-isms I could find there after some digging and round-the-houses trips.

What to Eat (1924)

Psychology of Sex : how to make love and marry (1924)

Affirmations and how to use them (1923)

Character Analysis (1923)

Applied Psychology and Scientific Living (1923)

Psycho-analysis, kinks in the mind : how to analyze yourself and others for health and prosperity (1923)

Poems of Mastery and Love Verse (1922)

Grit and Gumption (1921)

The Silence: What It Is, How To Use It (unknown date, audiobook version only)

Inspirational poems (1921)

Humorous verse on current events and other topics (1916)

Soul poems, and other verse (1916)