Scholars and enthusiasts of western American history have praised Elliott West as a distinguished historian and an accomplished writer, and this book proves them right on both counts. Capitalizing on West's wide array of interests, this collection of his essays touches on topics ranging from viruses[...]
Although many books have been written about the Colorado gold rush, this one concentrates on assessing the cataclysmic changes that it brought to the Great Plains. In addition, rather than casting the story in the usual terms of heartless aggressors and hapless victims, it supplies a large and insig[...]
Forty years after the legendary overland travels of Oregon pioneers in the 1840s, Lucy Clark Allen wrote, "the excitement continues." Economic hard times in Minnesota sent Allen and her husband to Montana in hopes of evading the droughts, grasshoppers, and failed crops that had plagued their farm. A[...]