Here is Custer as seen by himself, his contemporaries, and leading scholars. Combining first-person narratives, essays, and photographs, this book provides a complete introduction to Custer's controversial personality and career and the evolution of the Custer myth.

"On the other side of the giant landslide, most of the campers were awakened by the heaving and twisting ground....The night was punctuated with cries from people who could not find their family members. One young man was pinned in a sitting position between the family car and trailer, and his father and fellow camper tried frantically to free him as the water rose. Just as the water reached the boy's chin, the trailer shifted enough so that he could be pulled free"--From Chapter One, "The Night the Earth Moved" "Montana Disasters" is a real-life thriller. It will leave you with the breathless sense of how it feels to be caught in mining catastrophes, flash floods, train wrecks, and more. It will expose you to the sorrow and elation of victims' friends and families. Taut with the fury of calamities and the courageous efforts of men and women to save lives, "Montana Disasters" takes you to the scenes where the forces of nature and humans wreaked havoc.

"George Black rediscovers the history and lore of one of the planet's most magnificent landscapes. Read Empire of Shadows, and you'll never think of our first—in many ways our greatest—national park in the same way again." —Hampton Sides, author of Blood and Thunder Empire of Shadows is the epic story of the conquest of Yellowstone, a landscape uninhabited, inaccessible and shrouded in myth in the aftermath of the Civil War. In a radical reinterpretation of the nineteenth century West, George Black casts Yellowstone's creation as the culmination of three interwoven strands of history - the passion for exploration, the violence of the Indian Wars and the "civilizing" of the frontier - and charts its course through the lives of those who sought to lay bare its mysteries: Lt. Gustavus Cheyney Doane, a gifted but tormented cavalryman known as "the man who invented Wonderland"; the ambitious former vigilante leader Nathaniel Langford; scientist Ferdinand Hayden, who brought photographer William Henry Jackson and painter Thomas Moran to Yellowstone; and Gen. Phil Sheridan, Civil War hero and architect of the Indian Wars, who finally succeeded in having the new National Park placed under the protection of the US Cavalry. George Black1s Empire of Shadows is a groundbreaking historical account of the origins of America1s majestic national landmark.

Through his incredibly varied fifty-year career, John J. Healy left an indelible mark on the Canadian and American west. At different points in his storied life, Healy was a soldier, a trapper, a prospector, a free trader, an explorer, a horse dealer, a scout, a lawman, a newspaper editor, a speculator, a merchant, a capitalist, a historian, and a politician. He defied classification while defining the lifestyle of a frontier adventurer and buccaneer capitalist in the late nineteenth century. In Healy's West, Gordon E. Tolton cuts through the mythology and controversy of this larger-than-life character, giving us the most complete and truly balanced account of Healy's life ever published. From Irish famine to army saddle; from scouting on the Oregon Trail to digging for mountain gold in Idaho; from taking on powerful monopolies to trading with the Blackfoot; from political manoeuvring to hunting down rustlers behind a sheriff's badge, Healy challenged life, nature, enemies and, governments head on-in print, in business, and in physical combat. An entertaining and critical portrayal of the west's most charismatic figure, Healy's West is a must-read for any history buff .

Describes the lives of women of various backgrounds as they traveled west, established homes, worked inside and outside the home, and helped to develop settled society

An accessible and authoritative overview of the scholarship that has shaped our understanding of one of the most iconic battles in the history of the American West Combines contributions from an array of respected scholars, historians, and battlefield scientists Outlines the political and cultural conditions that laid the foundation for the Centennial Campaign and examines how George Armstrong Custer became its figurehead Provides a detailed analysis of the battle maneuverings at Little Bighorn, paying special attention to Indian testimony from the battlefield Concludes with a section examining how the Battle of Little Bighorn has been mythologized and its pervading influence on American culture