Historical American West

Jake was born during a time that was as turbulent as any in American history. Mexico claimed Texas, but the American settlers who'd recently flooded in were more independent, and when the dictator Santa Anna set aside the Constitution of 1824, he launched a series of changes he had not foreseen. With his partner Jean-Louis Lafitte, Jake worked when he could, fought when necessary, and in the process, began a career that would make him one of the most well-known men on the Texas frontier.

The explosive true saga of the legendary figure Daniel Boone and the bloody struggle for America's frontier by two best-selling authors at the height of their writing power - Bob Drury and Tom Clavin. This fast-paced and fiery narrative, fueled by contemporary diaries and journals, newspaper reports, and eyewitness accounts, is a stirring chronicle of the conflict over America’s "First Frontier" that places the listener at the center of this remarkable epoch and its gripping tales of courage and sacrifice.

Unwilling to die behind the bars of the hellish prison where life is worth less than a peso, Long's band of desperadoes break out of jail and split up to escape. Now, Two-Horses, Luke Fischer, Gabriel Santana, Billy Lightning, and Long are scrabbling along a desolate landscape, heading for Texas to reclaim their ill-gotten gains, hunted by dogged lawmen, merciless Comaches, and a violent gang of bandits who also want the stolen gold.

Edward Jennings grew up during the turbulent years after the Texas Revolution. While still a teenager, he found himself responsible for two enormous tracts of land and the well-being of two families. And then came secession. Ed, like many in central Texas, voted against the ordinance only to be overruled by east Texas cotton-growers. The resistance led to a declaration of martial law, followed by an order that every able-bodied male must join the Confederate Army. Will he obey the law? Or will he risk everything rather than betray his principles? What will Ed do?

The Open Range cattle era lasted barely a quarter-century, but it left America irrevocably changed. These few decades following the Civil War brought America its greatest boom-and-bust cycle until the Depression, the invention of the assembly line, and the dawn of the conservation movement. It inspired legends, such as that icon of rugged individualism, the cowboy. Yet this extraordinary time and its import have remained unexamined for decades. Cattle Kingdom reveals the truth of how the West rose and fell, and how its legacy defines us today.

The New Mexico Territory of the 1870s - 1880s was as wild and dangerous as any part of the American west. Murders were commonplace. Corruption was the norm, and the Santa Fe Ring controlled the courts. Every man went armed and bad whiskey was commonplace, as was over-indulgence. Rustling was, for many, a way of life. But it was a way of life that threatened the honest ranchers and herdsmen of the time. Liam Clancy, Irish immigrant and recently-discharged veteran of the Union Army, had lost his young wife and unborn child to cholera. Grieving, he sold his homestead and headed west.

In 1873, a Cheyenne chief offers President Grant the opportunity to exchange one thousand horses for one thousand White women, in order to marry them with his warriors and create a lasting peace. These women, "recruited" by force in the penitentiaries and asylums of the country, gradually integrate the way of life of the Cheyenne, at the time when the great massacres of the tribes begin.

1916. The two-street town of Wallace is not exactly what Ellen Webster had in mind when she accepted a teaching position in Wyoming, but within a year’s time she’s fallen in love—both with the High Plains and with a handsome cowboy named Charlie Bacon. Life is not easy in the flat, brown corner of the state where winter blizzards are unforgiving and the summer heat relentless. But Ellen and Charlie face it all together, their relationship growing stronger with each shared success, and each deeply felt tragedy.

Bryce Andrews was raised to do no harm. The son of a pacifist and conscientious objector, he moved from Seattle to Montana to tend livestock and the land as a cowboy. For a decade, he was happy. Yet, when Andrews inherited his grandfather’s Smith & Wesson revolver, he felt the weight of the violence braided into his chosen life. Other white men who’d come before him had turned firearms like this one against wildlife, wilderness, and the Indigenous peoples who had lived in these landscapes for millennia. This was how the West was “won.”

John Augustus Sutter came to the wide and wild California country to build an empire. At his side was Morgan Beck, out to stake his own claim at the confluence of two powerful rivers, the Sacramento and the American.

Our American West, Volume 4 completes the collection of historical stories written by Gary McCarthy. These include tales of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which proved once and for all that the storied and hoped for river across America didn't exist. That long before the Gold Rush of 1849, a diminutive but courageous priest, Fr. Junipero Serra, sacrificed everything to bring Christianity to the coastal Native Americans, while faithfully establishing a string of beautiful California missions.

American Indians remain familiar as icons, yet poorly understood as historical agents. In this ambitious book that ranges across Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, and eastern California (a region known as the Great Basin), Ned Blackhawk places Native peoples squarely at the center of a dynamic and complex story as he chronicles two centuries of Indian and imperial history that profoundly shaped the American West.

Our American West, Volume 2 begins with America’s first colonizers, the prairie dogs, and how out on the ranges they were so hated by ranchers that they were almost made extinct. Conestoga Wagons were once called “prairie schooners” crossing America long before the famed Pony Express. The indomitable courage of Sarah Winnemucca, the “Prairie Princess” rivals that of a tall Swede named Showshoe Thompson who skied the snowy river passes of the Sierra Nevadas.

Philippe Girard shows how Toussaint Louverture transformed himself from lowly freedman into revolutionary hero as the mastermind of the bloody slave revolt of 1791. By 1801, Louverture was governor of the colony where he had once been a slave. But his lifelong quest to be accepted as a member of the colonial elite ended in despair: he spent the last year of his life in a French prison cell. His example nevertheless inspired anticolonial and Black nationalist movements well into the 20th century.

In July 1865, "Wild Bill" Hickok shot and killed Davis Tutt in Springfield, Mo., - the first quick-draw duel on the frontier. Thus began the reputation that made him a marked man to every gunslinger the Wild West. The legend of Wild Bill has only grown since his death in 1876, when cowardly Jack McCall famously put a bullet through the back of his head during a card game. Best-selling author Tom Clavin has sifted through years of Western lore to bring Hickock fully to life in this rip-roaring, spellbinding true story.

Our American West, Volume 3 is filled with western frontier stories you’ll find entertaining. "The Roadrunner – Our Sagebrush Clowns" reflects on the speedy and often comical bird of our southwestern deserts. Wild and wicked Calamity Jane lived up to her reputation as the West’s most infamous outlaw woman. “The Donner Party – Frozen Horror” describes the horror that led to cannibalism. The 49er Gold Rush ruined the lives of two ambitious and well-intentioned men, John Augustus Sutter and John Marshal...

After an attempted horse theft goes tragically wrong, 16-year-old Caleb Bentley is on the run with his mean-spirited older brother across the American Southwest at the turn of the 20th century. Caleb’s moral compass and inner courage will be tested as they travel the harsh terrain and encounter those who have carved out a life there, for good or ill.

Famous Heroes of the American West is a lively account of the "Wild West" and its renowned figures, narrated with vigor by Adam Sims. The lives of Davy Crockett, Christopher Kit" Carson, Calamity Jane, and Sitting Bull, among others, are explored in detail. Their exploits, adventures, and alliances make for fascinating listening.

In Our American West, Volume 1, discover humor, tragedy, and courage in every one of these delightful stories. Gary McCarthy has been writing about the American West for 30 years and these are some of his favorite topics written - not for the expert or scholar - but for all the armchair admirers of thing historically written.

The dark-eyed woman in the long, black gown was first seen in the 1970s, standing near a fireplace. She was sad and translucent, present and absent at once. Strange things began to happen in the Santa Fe hotel where she was seen. Gas fireplaces turned off and on without anyone touching a switch. Glasses flew off shelves. And in one second-floor suite with a canopy bed and arched windows looking out to the mountains, guests reported alarming events.