History West United States

On January 18, 1803, President Jefferson secretly sent a message to Congress that asked for $2,500 to explore the Missouri River, find the Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean, make contact with the natives, and expand the fur trade. They would be called the Corps of Discovery. What will they find?

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.

An expansive and revelatory historical exploration of the multicultural, water-seeking, land-destroying settlers of the most arid corner of North America, arguing that in order to know where the United States is going in the era of mass migration and climate crisis we must understand where the Southwest has already been.

In July 1776 a pair of Franciscan friars, Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante, were charged by the governor of New Mexico with discovering a route across the unknown Southwest to the new Spanish colony in California. They had other goals as well, some of them secret: converting the indigenous natives along the way to the true faith, discovering a semi-mythical paradise known as Teguayo, hunting for sources of gold and silver, and paving the way for Spanish settlements from Santa Fe to Monterey. In strict terms, the expedition failed.

During his life and even after his death, Captain William Kidd’s name was known around England and the American colonies. He was infamous for the very crime for which he was hanged, piracy. This book by Rebecca Simon dives into the details of the two-year manhunt for Captain Kidd and the events that ensued afterward. Captain Kidd was hanged in 1701, and from that sprung a massive hunt for all pirates led by the British during a period known as the Golden Age of Piracy. Ironically, public executions only led to pirates’ growth in popularity and interest.

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 book tells their stories. At first, female pioneers were indeed rare - when the town of Denver was founded in 1859, there were only five women among a population of almost a thousand. But the adventurers arrived, slowly but surely.

Published in 2000 to critical acclaim, The American West: A New Interpretive History quickly became the standard in college history courses. Now Robert V. Hine and John Mack Faragher offer a concise edition of their classic, freshly updated. Lauded for their lively and elegant writing, the authors provide a grand survey of the colorful history of the American West, from the first contacts between Native Americans and Europeans to the beginning of the 21st century.

Benjamin Bonneville spent the years 1832 to 1835 on the adventure of a lifetime, leading an expedition of trapping, trading, and exploring in the wilds of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Utah, Nevada and California.

The United States Camel Corps was a military experiment in the 1850s that brought camels from Egypt and Turkey to Texas and California. The cast of characters in this story is larger than life and includes U.S. Army and Navy officers, explorers, writers, politicians, and diplomats...How long the name of “Camel Corps” has been in existence is unknown, but it has been used in literature for close to a century. What the troopers themselves called the unit remains unknown. The United States Camel Corps looks at the unique unit, from its origins to its record.

Jeff Shaara, America's premier Civil War novelist, gives a remarkable guided tour of the 10 Civil War battlefields every American should visit: Shiloh, Antietam, Fredericksburg/Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, New Market, Chickamauga, the Wilderness/Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg/Appomattox. Shaara explores the history, the people, and the places that capture the true meaning and magnitude of the conflict.

The Wild West has made legends out of many men, but it also forged a lasting legacy for a few of the West's most legendary towns, and alongside the city of Tombstone, Arizona, perhaps the most famous of them was Deadwood in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Deadwood owes its notoriety to some of the colorful people who called it home, and a recent critically acclaimed television series about the town that brought it to life for millions of modern viewers.

In the summer of 1846, the Army of the West marched through Santa Fe, en route to invade and occupy the Western territories claimed by Mexico. Fueled by the new ideology of “Manifest Destiny,” this land grab would lead to a decades-long battle between the United States and the Navajos, the fiercely resistant rulers of a huge swath of mountainous desert wilderness.

Between 1800 and 1920, an extraordinary cast of bold innovators and entrepreneurs - individuals such as Cyrus McCormick, Brigham Young, Henry Wells and James Fargo, Fred Harvey, Levi Strauss, Adolph Coors, J. P. Morgan, and Buffalo Bill Cody - helped lay the groundwork for what we now call the American West. They were people of imagination and courage, adept at maneuvering the rapids of change, alert to opportunity, persistent in their missions.

Riding with Cochise brings the violent drama of the American Southwest to life through the eyes of the legendary Apache chieftain Cochise and three other tribal leaders. Relying largely on the oral histories told by relatives of these great warriors as well as personal diaries of others who were involved, veteran author Steve Price takes listeners deep into the Cochise Stronghold, through Massacre Canyon, and across Apache Pass.

From the early 1800s to the end of his life in 1917, Buffalo Bill Cody was as famous as anyone could be. Annie Oakley was his most celebrated protegee, the "slip of a girl" from Ohio who could (and did) outshoot anybody to become the most celebrated star of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

In a sweeping account, Atlantic Wars explores how warfare shaped the experiences of the peoples living in the watershed of the Atlantic Ocean between the late Middle Ages and the Age of Revolution.

Jesse James and many other Old West outlaws were much more than just wild cowboys. As author Daniel Duke—the great-great-grandson of Jesse James—reveals, James and other infamous outlaws were part of a larger organization, centuries old, that has affected U.S. history from the small, rural streets of early America to the highest levels of the nation’s government, with continuing influence to this day.

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.”

Joseph Laroche was an anomaly among the passengers of the Titanic. He was exceptionally well-educated in a time when few Black men had access to an education - and when even fewer were able to travel on a luxurious ship in first or second class. When his family arrived in the United States without him after the Titanic's tragic crash, they were received well along with the other survivors and even sponsored by a wealthy New York heiress. Who was Joseph Laroche? Where was he going, and what was his story? This biography recounts the life of Joseph Laroche.

With a bit of insight into the Native American culture, paired with a larger understanding of how the settlers of the west actually lived, you'll be able to decipher what happened to the Oatman family of your own accord, empowering an honest understanding of this history. In The Captivity of the Oatman Girls, you’ll discover powerful insight into the truth of the relations between the settlers and the Plains Indians of North America, why the actions of the colonists in the late 18th century bordered genocide - and how this shifted the landscape forever, and more.