The vast, semi-arid grasslands of the southern Great Plains could be dominated by hunters and warriors on horseback. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Comanches, often referred to as “lords of the Plains,” were the single most powerful military force in the region, to the frustration of both the Mexican and U.S. governments. In this engrossing chronicle, award-winning journalist Gwynne traces the rise of the Comanche people from...

“The best all-around study of the American cowboy ever written. Every page crackles with keen analysis and vivid prose about the Old West. A must-read!” — Douglas Brinkley, author of The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America
The open-range cattle era lasted barely a quarter century, but it left America irrevocably changed. Cattle Kingdom reveals how the West rose...

"Luke Jensen has seen some sorry looking bounties in his time, but this one takes the cake. A wanted poster is offering a reward of one dollar and forty-two cents-plus one busted harmonica-to capture Three-Fingered Jack McKinney. Turns out, McKinney's twelve-year-old son Aaron wants revenge on his daddy for abandoning him and his mom. The reward is all the money Aaron can scrape together. Luke can't say no to the poor boy-or his beautiful mother-so...

Men and women of uncommon cultures are bound ever more tightly in the fiery forge of the spirit and history of America. Old scores are violently settled, a Mormon family homesteads in the Utah Territories, and an outlaw vaquero with royal but bitter blood finds a new sense of place. The Sioux tribal coucil seeks answers to the dark shadows of change in the lands of the enemy Utes. The Ute chief, yearning for a son, makes a promise that spans generations...

A collection of Frederic Remington's writings, complemented by more than one hundred of his famous drawings, provides an exciting record of the Old West as it once was, with tales of cowboys, Indians, and soldiers.

"The year is 1876. Warring Indian tribes still populate America’s western territories even as lawless gold-rush towns begin to mark the landscape. In much of the country it is still illegal to espouse evolution. Against this backdrop two monomaniacal paleontologists pillage the Wild West, hunting for dinosaur fossils, while surveilling, deceiving and sabotaging each other in a rivalry that will come to be known as the Bone Wars. Into this treacherous...

"The West's most prominent lawmen and criminals tell their stories of fight, death, and survival. In the romantic narrative of the Old West, two larger-than-life characters emerged as the perfect foils for each other--the rampant outlaw and the heroic peace officer. Without the villain, sheriffs would not have needed to uphold the law; and without the sheriff, villains would have had no law to break. Together, both personalities fought, lost, and...