Download or read Blood and Thunder PDF, written by Hampton Sides and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2007-10-09 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of Ghost Soldiers comes a magnificent history of the American conquest of the West—"a story full of authority and color, truth and prophecy" (The New York Times Book Review). 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. At the center of this sweeping tale is Kit Carson, the trapper, scout, and soldier whose adventures made him a legend. Sides shows us how this illiterate mountain man understood and respected the Western tribes better than any other American, yet willingly followed orders that would ultimately devastate the Navajo nation. Rich in detail and spanning more than three decades, this is an essential addition to our understanding of how the West was really won.
Download or read Fur Fortune and Empire The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America PDF, written by Eric Jay Dolin and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-07-05 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Seattle Times selection for one of Best Non-Fiction Books of 2010 Winner of the New England Historial Association's 2010 James P. Hanlan Award Winner of the Outdoor Writers Association of America 2011 Excellence in Craft Award, Book Division, First Place "A compelling and well-annotated tale of greed, slaughter and geopolitics." —Los Angeles Times As Henry Hudson sailed up the broad river that would one day bear his name, he grew concerned that his Dutch patrons would be disappointed in his failure to find the fabled route to the Orient. What became immediately apparent, however, from the Indians clad in deer skins and "good furs" was that Hudson had discovered something just as tantalizing. The news of Hudson's 1609 voyage to America ignited a fierce competition to lay claim to this uncharted continent, teeming with untapped natural resources. The result was the creation of an American fur trade, which fostered economic rivalries and fueled wars among the European powers, and later between the United States and Great Britain, as North America became a battleground for colonization and imperial aspirations. In Fur, Fortune, and Empire, best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin chronicles the rise and fall of the fur trade of old, when the rallying cry was "get the furs while they last." Beavers, sea otters, and buffalos were slaughtered, used for their precious pelts that were tailored into extravagant hats, coats, and sleigh blankets. To read Fur, Fortune, and Empire then is to understand how North America was explored, exploited, and settled, while its native Indians were alternately enriched and exploited by the trade. As Dolin demonstrates, fur, both an economic elixir and an agent of destruction, became inextricably linked to many key events in American history, including the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812, as well as to the relentless pull of Manifest Destiny and the opening of the West. This work provides an international cast beyond the scope of any Hollywood epic, including Thomas Morton, the rabble-rouser who infuriated the Pilgrims by trading guns with the Indians; British explorer Captain James Cook, whose discovery in the Pacific Northwest helped launch America's China trade; Thomas Jefferson who dreamed of expanding the fur trade beyond the Mississippi; America's first multimillionaire John Jacob Astor, who built a fortune on a foundation of fur; and intrepid mountain men such as Kit Carson and Jedediah Smith, who sliced their way through an awe inspiring and unforgiving landscape, leaving behind a mythic legacy still resonates today. Concluding with the virtual extinction of the buffalo in the late 1800s, Fur, Fortune, and Empire is an epic history that brings to vivid life three hundred years of the American experience, conclusively demonstrating that the fur trade played a seminal role in creating the nation we are today.
Download or read Empires Nations and Families PDF, written by Anne F. Hyde and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 648 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read The American West in Bronze 1850 1925 PDF, written by Thayer Tolles and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-14 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "'The American West in Bronze, 1850-1925' is the first full-scale exhibition to explore the aesthetic and cultural impulses behind the creation of statuettes with American western themes, which have been so popular with audiences then and now. Both the exhibition and this accompanying catalogue offer a fresh look at the multifaceted roles played by these sculptors in creating three-dimensional interpretations of western life, whether based on historical fact, mythologized fiction, or most often, something in-between. Examples by such archetypal representatives of the West as Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell are complemented by the work of sculptors such as James Earle Fraser and Paul Manship, who contributed to the popularity of the American bronze statuette even though their western subjects were less frequent." -- Publisher's description.
Download or read The Story of America PDF, written by Jill Lepore and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-27 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New Yorker staff writer examines the origins of dozens of writings, speeches and other printed pieces from American history--from paper ballots and I.O.U.s to the Constitution and Thomas Paine's Common Sense to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" to Barack Obama's 2009 inaugural address.
Download or read Revolvers and Pistolas Vaqueros and Caballeros Debunking the Old West PDF, written by Danilo H. Figueredo and published by ABC-CLIO. This book was released on 2014-12-09 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This riveting exposé reveals how a distorted belief in Anglo superiority necessitated the rewriting of American western history, replacing heroic images of Mexican and Spanish cowboys with negative stereotypes. • Introduces topics unfamiliar to most readers, such as the role of Spanish-Mexican Jews, the presence of the Spanish Inquisition in the United States, and the real Yellow Rose of Texas • Reveals the duplicity of la leyenda negra to illustrate prejudices of the time • Traces the development of stereotypes such as the Black Legend, banditos, greasers, Zorro, the Cisco Kid, and "loose women," and how these characterizations came to depict Latinos in the Old West in the popular imagination • Documents Latinos' participation in the conquest of the territory west of the Mississippi
Download or read The Age of Dimes and Pulps PDF, written by Jeremy Agnew and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the dime novels of the Civil War era to the pulp magazines of the early 20th century to modern paperbacks, lurid fiction has provided thrilling escapism for the masses. Cranking out formulaic stories of melodrama, crime and mild erotica--often by uncredited authors focused more on volume than quality--publishers realized high profits playing to low tastes. Estimates put pulp magazine circulation in the 1930s at 30 million monthly. This vast body of "disposable literature" has received little critical attention, in large part because much of it has been lost--the cheaply made books were either discarded after reading or soon disintegrated. Covering the history of pulp literature from 1850 through 1960, the author describes how sensational tales filled a public need and flowered during the evolving social conditions of the Industrial Revolution.
Download or read How the South Won the Civil War PDF, written by Heather Cox Richardson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-12 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named one of The Washington Post's 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction While the North prevailed in the Civil War, ending slavery and giving the country a "new birth of freedom," Heather Cox Richardson argues in this provocative work that democracy's blood-soaked victory was ephemeral. The system that had sustained the defeated South moved westward and there established a foothold. It was a natural fit. Settlers from the East had for decades been pushing into the West, where the seizure of Mexican lands at the end of the Mexican-American War and treatment of Native Americans cemented racial hierarchies. The South and West equally depended on extractive industries-cotton in the former and mining, cattle, and oil in the latter-giving rise a new birth of white male oligarchy, despite the guarantees provided by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and the economic opportunities afforded by expansion. To reveal why this happened, How the South Won the Civil War traces the story of the American paradox, the competing claims of equality and subordination woven into the nation's fabric and identity. At the nation's founding, it was the Eastern "yeoman farmer" who galvanized and symbolized the American Revolution. After the Civil War, that mantle was assumed by the Western cowboy, singlehandedly defending his land against barbarians and savages as well as from a rapacious government. New states entered the Union in the late nineteenth century and western and southern leaders found yet more common ground. As resources and people streamed into the West during the New Deal and World War II, the region's influence grew. "Movement Conservatives," led by westerners Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan, claimed to embody cowboy individualism and worked with Dixiecrats to embrace the ideology of the Confederacy. Richardson's searing book seizes upon the soul of the country and its ongoing struggle to provide equal opportunity to all. Debunking the myth that the Civil War released the nation from the grip of oligarchy, expunging the sins of the Founding, it reveals how and why the Old South not only survived in the West, but thrived.
Download or read The American Past A Survey of American History PDF, written by Joseph R. Conlin and published by Cengage Learning. This book was released on 2013-01-29 with total page 960 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's past is full of politics as well as personal stories. That's why Conlin's THE AMERICAN PAST: A SURVEY OF AMERICAN HISTORY teaches history the way it happened: real people with real stories. Through short narratives from political figures' lives, you'll discover how our nation grew from a colonial project to an international superpower. Along the way, you'll find the human dimension emphasized with the stories of men and women of different regional, socioeconomic, and ethnic backgrounds described in colorful detail. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.
Download or read The American Past A Survey of American History Volume II Since 1865 PDF, written by Joseph R. Conlin and published by Cengage Learning. This book was released on 2013-01-29 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's past is full of politics as well as personal stories. That's why Conlin's THE AMERICAN PAST: A SURVEY OF AMERICAN HISTORY teaches history the way it happened: real people with real stories. Through short narratives from political figures' lives, you'll discover how our nation grew from a colonial project to an international superpower. Along the way, you'll find the human dimension emphasized with the stories of men and women of different regional, socioeconomic, and ethnic backgrounds described in colorful detail. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.
Download or read Native America and the Question of Genocide PDF, written by Alex Alvarez and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-03-14 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Did Native Americans suffer genocide? This controversial question lies at the heart of Native America and the Question of Genocide. After reviewing the various meanings of the word “genocide,” author Alex Alvarez examines a range of well-known examples, such as the Sand Creek Massacre and the Long Walk of the Navajo, to determine where genocide occurred and where it did not. The book explores the destructive beliefs of the European settlers and then looks at topics including disease, war, and education through the lens of genocide. Native America and the Question of Genocide shows the diversity of Native American experiences postcontact and illustrates how tribes relied on ever-evolving and changing strategies of confrontation and accommodation, depending on their location, the time period, and individuals involved, and how these often resulted in very different experiences. Alvarez treats this difficult subject with sensitivity and uncovers the complex realities of this troubling period in American history.
Download or read The Real Dirt on America s Frontier Outlaws PDF, written by Jim Motavalli and published by Gibbs Smith. This book was released on 2020-06-23 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn the real stories behind the infamous renegades of the West. The rebels and bandits of the American West—like Billy the Kid, Jesse James, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid—have always made for thrilling tales of gunfights, heists, and outlaws. From the beginning, penny dreadfuls, Wild West shows, dime novels, and urban legends romanticized and magnified these renegades and their wild American spirits. These tales, however, don’t capture the truth of the West’s outlaws—nor do we hear about other lawless individuals, such as Pearl Hart, Belle Starr, or the Bloody Espinosas. Jim Motavalli returns with The Real Dirt on America’s Frontier Outlaws to give a real and more inclusive look at the old West and the dangerous figures that immortalized it.
Download or read Out Where the West Begins Volume 2 PDF, written by Philip F. Anschutz and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2017-12-15 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1790, it was not a given that the young United States, bruised and healing from its struggle for independence and populated by fewer than 4 million inhabitants, would even survive, much less flourish. But the great adventure that came next—the exploration and settlement of the lands lying to the west and stretching to the Pacific Ocean—would build a nation where only a patchwork of eastern seaboard colonies had existed before. The first book in this series, Out Where the West Begins: Profiles, Visions, & Strategies of Early Western Business Leaders, profiled fifty individuals who made significant contributions to the economic development of a young nation. This second volume follows the saga of more than one hundred influential men and women—political and military leaders, religious thinkers, civil rights proponents, suffragettes, African American pioneers, writers and artists, explorers and surveyors, architects, inventors, innovators, medical professionals, and conservationists—who together wove the story of early western frontier America. The engaging account of their lives forms a unique tapestry of human experience. In the words of the author, “Understanding our distinctive past helps us better comprehend who we are now and who we wish to become.”
Download or read Blood and Thunder The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West PDF, written by Hampton Sides and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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. In Blood and Thunder, Hampton Sides gives us a magnificent history of the American conquest of the West. At the center of this sweeping tale is Kit Carson, the trapper, scout, and soldier whose adventures made him a legend. Sides shows us how this illiterate mountain man understood and respected the Western tribes better than any other American, yet willingly followed orders that would ultimately devastate the Navajo nation. Rich in detail and spanning more than three decades, this is an essential addition to our understanding of how the West was really won.
Download or read The Creation of the Cowboy Hero PDF, written by Jeremy Agnew and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-11-19 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As business interests have commercialized the American West and publishers and studios have created compelling imagery, the expectations of readers and moviegoers have influenced perceptions of the cowboy as a hero. This book describes the evolution of the cowboy hero as a mythic persona created by dime novels, television and Hollywood. Much of our concept of the cowboy comes to us from movies and the book’s main focus is his changing image in cinema. The development of the hero image and the fictional West is traced from early novels and films to the present, along with shifting audience expectations and economic pressures.
Download or read The Apache Wars PDF, written by Paul Andrew Hutton and published by Crown. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of Empire of the Summer Moon, a stunningly vivid historical account of the manhunt for Geronimo and the 25-year Apache struggle for their homeland. They called him Mickey Free. His kidnapping started the longest war in American history, and both sides--the Apaches and the white invaders—blamed him for it. A mixed-blood warrior who moved uneasily between the worlds of the Apaches and the American soldiers, he was never trusted by either but desperately needed by both. He was the only man Geronimo ever feared. He played a pivotal role in this long war for the desert Southwest from its beginning in 1861 until its end in 1890 with his pursuit of the renegade scout, Apache Kid. In this sprawling, monumental work, Paul Hutton unfolds over two decades of the last war for the West through the eyes of the men and women who lived it. This is Mickey Free's story, but also the story of his contemporaries: the great Apache leaders Mangas Coloradas, Cochise, and Victorio; the soldiers Kit Carson, O. O. Howard, George Crook, and Nelson Miles; the scouts and frontiersmen Al Sieber, Tom Horn, Tom Jeffords, and Texas John Slaughter; the great White Mountain scout Alchesay and the Apache female warrior Lozen; the fierce Apache warrior Geronimo; and the Apache Kid. These lives shaped the violent history of the deserts and mountains of the Southwestern borderlands--a bleak and unforgiving world where a people would make a final, bloody stand against an American war machine bent on their destruction.
Download or read Terror on the Santa Fe Trail PDF, written by Doug Hocking and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1840s and 50s, the Jicarilla Apache were the terror of the Santa Fe Trail and the Rio Arriba. They repeatedly clashed with the cavalry and raided wagon trains, and there was bad blood between the band and the Army after the Battle of San Pasqual, when they were on opposite sides during the Mexican American War. In 1854, as traffic was on the increase along the historic trade route, the Jicarilla soundly defeated the 1st United States Dragoons in the Battle of Cieneguilla. Cieneguilla was the worst defeat of the US Army in the West up to that time, and it was just one of the first major battles between the US Army and Apache forces during the Ute Wars. According to one version of events, the 60 dragoons, under the direction of a Lt. Davidson, had engaged in an unauthorized attack on theJicarilla while they were out on patrol. Others claimed that the Jicarilla either ambushed the Army or taunted them into attack. Kit Carson, who was agent for the Jicarilla, would defend Davidson’s actions—and after this fight, he served as a scout against the Jicarilla. Much like the Sioux defeat of Custer at Little Big Horn, the Jicarilla’s victory over the Army led to retribution and disaster. The Jicarilla were defeated and faded from memory before the Civil War. These are the events that brought them to ruin.
