Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for ExcellenceFinalist for the Oklahoma Book AwardA Publishers Weekly Holiday Guide History Pick“A book so gripping it can scarcely be put down.... Superb.” —New York Times Book Review"WESTWARD HO! FOR OREGON AND CALIFORNIA!"In the eerily warm spring of 1846, George Donner placed this advertisement in a local newspaper as he and a restless caravan prep...

From the #1 bestselling author of The Boys in the Boat and Facing the Mountain comes an unforgettable epic of family, tragedy, and survival on the American frontier“An ideal pairing of talent and material.… Engrossing.… A deft and ambitious storyteller.” — Mary Roach, New York Times Book ReviewIn April of 1846, twenty-one-year-old Sarah Graves, intent on a better future, set out west from Illinois with her new hus...

A tribute to Jane C. Goodale, Pulling the Right Threads discusses the vibrant ethnographer and teacher's principles for mentoring, collaborating, and performing fieldwork. Known for her ethnographic research in the Pacific, development of the Association of Social Anthropology in Oceania, and influence in the anthropology department at Bryn Mawr College, Goodale and other contributors renew the debate in anthropology over the authenticity of field data and representations of other...

From the #1 bestselling author of The Boys in the Boat and Facing the Mountain comes an unforgettable epic of family, tragedy, and survival on the American frontier“An ideal pairing of talent and material.… Engrossing.… A deft and ambitious storyteller.” — Mary Roach, New York Times Book ReviewIn April of 1846, twenty-one-year-old Sarah Graves, intent on a better future, set out west from Illinois with her new husband, her parents, and eigh...

In late October 1846, the last wagon train of that year's westward migration stopped overnight before resuming its arduous climb over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, unaware that a fearsome storm was gathering force. After months of grueling travel, the 81 men, women and children would be trapped for a brutal winter with little food and only primitive shelter. The conclusion is known: by spring of the next year, the Donner Party was synonymous with the most harrowing extremes of human surviva...

A fascinating history of women on America's western frontier by the #1 New York Times –bestselling author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee .Popular culture has taught us to picture the Old West as a land of men, whether it's the lone hero on horseback or crowds of card players in a rough-and-tumble saloon. But the taming of the frontier involved plenty of women, too—and this boo...

In the nail-biting western *Last Stand at Sabre River*, a Civil War veteran returns home to find a Yankee's private army living on his land, while another enemy waits to strike...**Paul Cable has come home to Saber River, Arizona. But things have changed since he went away to fight for the Confederacy. A gang of Union men have taken over his house, and they’re refusing to give it back. It seems the war is not over yet for Cable. He is determined to fight for his fa...

"William C. Davis's Three Roads to the Alamo is far and away the best account of the Alamo I have ever read. The portraits of Crockett, Bowie, and Travis are brilliantly sketched in a fast-moving story that keeps the reader riveted to the very last word." — Stephen B. OatesThree Roads to the Alamois the definitive book about the lives of David Crockett, James Bowie and William Barret Travis—the legendary frontiersmen and fighters who met their des...

"Vivid, Comprehensible . . . cuts through decades of mythmaking." —Texas MonthlyPopular culture transformed his memory into “Davy Crockett,” and Hollywood gave him a raccoon hat he hardly ever wore. In this surprising New York Times bestseller, historian Michael Wallis has cast a fresh look at the flesh-and-blood man behind one of the most celebrated figures in American history. More than a riveting story, Wallis’s David Crockett is a rev...

This newest volume in Oxford's acclaimed Pivotal Moments series offers an unforgettable portrait of the Nez Perce War of 1877, the last great Indian conflict in American history. It was, as Elliott West shows, a tale of courage and ingenuity, of desperate struggle and shattered hope, of short-sighted government action and a doomed flight to freedom. To tell the story, West begins with the early history of the Nez Perce and their years of friendly relations with white settlers. In an initia...

An expanded edition of one of the most original and provocative works of American history of the last decade, which documents the pioneering experiences and grit of American frontier women.

The diaries and letters of women who braved the overland trails during the great nineteenth-century westward migration are treasured documents in the study of the American West. These eight firsthand accounts are among the best ever written. They were selected for the power with which they portray the hardship, adventure, and boundless love for friends and family that characterized the overland experience. Some were written with the skilled pens of educated women. Others bear the marks of ...