History West United States

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.

It was the most famous bank robbery of all time, involving the legendary James-Younger gang's final shocking holdup - the infamous Northfield Raid - and the thrilling two-week chase that followed. Mark Lee Gardner, author of the critically acclaimed To Hell on a Fast Horse, takes us inside Northfield's First National Bank and outside to the streets as Jesse James and his band of outlaws square off against the heroic citizens who risked their lives to defeat America's most daring criminals.

We all know of Theodore Roosevelt being the US president from 1901 to 1909, an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, and naturalist. But few know of him being an acclaimed historian. Roosevelt’s The Winning of the West quickly became a bestseller. The first edition of his book sold out in little more than a month and helped establish Roosevelt as a literary man and scholar, placing him on a path toward future greatness.

The history of African Americans has been complicated and controversial. While some will fight against racism, others deny the severity of it throughout the ages. Whether or not the issue is as serious as it used to be is a separate topic for debate. You will learn more about slavery, the rise of the cotton market in the Southern states, the abolitionism of slavery, segregation, and individuals like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X who have made a significant impact on the common perspective on these issues. Many things have changed over the past two centuries. Let’s find out what.

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.”

Steve Wiegand takes listeners across the post-Civil War Wild West in his 1876: The Year of the Gun. Wiegand introduces—or reintroduces—us to lawmen such as Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp and outlaws such as the Younger and James Brothers, as well as larger-than-life figures such as Buffalo Bill and George Custer. Juxtaposing their real lives with the often-outlandish accounts of their exploits, 1876 swings from lighthearted humor to cliff-hanger suspense. It also portrays how the Wild West’s initial, tantalizing promise of fame and glamour often disintegrated.

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.

From the Trail of Tears to Wounded Knee and Little Bighorn, the narrative of American history is incomplete without the inclusion of the Native Americans that lived on the continent before European settlers arrived in the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the first contact between natives and settlers, tribes like the Sioux, Cherokee, and Navajo have both fascinated and perplexed outsiders with their history, language, and culture.

Gambling on Ore examines the development of the Western mining industry from the tumultuous and violent Gold Rush to the elevation of large-scale copper mining in the early 20th century, using Montana as representative of mining developments in the broader US mining West. Employing abundant new historical evidence in key primary and secondary sources, Curtis tells the story of the inescapable relationship of mining to nature in the modern world as the United States moved from a primarily agricultural society to a mining nation in the second half of the 19th century.

The revolutionary Ohio Valley is often depicted as a chaotic Hobbesian dystopia, in which Indians and colonists slaughtered each other at every turn. In Unsettling the West, Rob Harper overturns this familiar story. Rather than flailing in a morass, the peoples of the revolutionary Ohio Valley actively and persistently sought to establish a new political order that would affirm their land claims, protect them against attack, and promote trade.

The “Wild West” gunfighter is such a stock figure in our popular culture that some dismiss it all as a corny myth, more a product of dime novels and B movies than a genuinely important American history. In fact, as Bryan Burrough shows us in his dazzling and fast-paced new book, there’s much more below the surface. For three decades at the end of the 1800s, a big swath of the American West was a crucible of change, with the highest murder rate per capita in American history. The reasons behind this boil down to one word: Texas.

In the minds of many Americans, the name of Jesse James and the Wild West are practically synonymous. Jesse James was a robber, a murderer, and a notorious outlaw, who carried as many weapons as he could. He could shoot with both hands while he held the reins of his horse in his teeth. He was an extremely popular man in his day, a phenomenon that he readily accepted because he was a person who craved attention.

Unquestionably, Spain and Great Britain would have been engaged in an unequal controversy for possession of the richest portion of North America, but for the intervention of a new claimant. The young Republic....

In old age, Charlie Siringo was called "Ulysses of the Wild West" for the long journey he took across the western frontier. Son of the Old West brings him and his legendary world vividly to life.

As the fledgling nation looked west to the land beyond the Appalachian Mountains, it turned to the Army to advance and defend its national interests. Clashing with Spain, Britain, France, Mexico, the Confederacy, and Indians in this pursuit of expansion, the army's failures and successes alternately delayed and hastened western migration.

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.

In Losing Eden award-winning historian Sara Dant debunks the myth of the American West as “Eden” and instead embraces a more realistic and complex understanding of a region that has been inhabited and altered by people for tens of thousands of years. In this lively narrative Dant discusses the key events and topics in the environmental history of the American West, from the Beringia migration, Columbian Exchange, and federal territorial acquisition to post–World War II expansion, resource exploitation, and current climate change issues.

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.

Big Timber, Montana is one of the windiest towns in one of the windiest states in the country. Arctic chinooks and slashing westerlies howl down from the Crazy Mountains like a pack of coyotes. Most locals learn to live with the wind. Rick Jarrett sought his fortune in it. Like his pioneer ancestors who staked their claims in the Treasure State, he believed in his right to make a living off the land—and a newly precious resource, its million-dollar wind. The trouble was, Jarrett’s neighbors were some of the wealthiest and most well-connected men in America.

Billy the Kid once said that he killed 22 men - one for each year that he lived. While it’s more likely that he only killed eight or nine, this young outlaw was clearly deadly. But his brief and brutal life reveals how his tragic existence led him into a life of crime. After growing up in poverty as an Irish immigrant in New York City and losing his father at a young age, Billy the Kid had to endure losing his mother when he was only 15.