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Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West
Wallace Stegner · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River
Richard White · 130 pages
In The Organic Machine, Richard White, a distinguished historian and leading scholar of the American West, explores the intimate relationship between nature and mankind along the Columbia River. Working on the cutting edge of environmental and social history, White demonstrates how, over the centuries, both native peoples and settlers have continually remade the river, treating it as a machine des
The Boys in the Boat: The True Story of an American Team's Epic Journey to Win Gold at the 1936 Olympics
Daniel James Brown · 227 pages
Undaunted Courage: The Pioneering First Mission to Explore America's Wild Frontier
Stephen E. Ambrose · 521 pages
In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead a voyage up the Missouri River to the Rockies, over the mountains, down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean, and back. Lewis was the perfect choice. He endured incredible hardships and saw incredible sights, including vast herds of buffalo and Indian tribes that had had no previous contact wit
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
David Grann · 339 pages
A grand mystery reaching back centuries. A sensational disappearance that made headlines around the world. A quest for truth that leads to death, madness or disappearance for those who seek to solve it. The Lost City of Z is a blockbuster adventure narrative about what lies beneath the impenetrable jungle canopy of the Amazon. After stumbling upon a hidden trove of diaries, acclaimed New Yorker wr
The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon
Kevin Fedarko · 432 pages
In the winter of 1983, the largest El Niño event on record, a series of "superstorms," battered the West. That spring, a massive snowmelt sent runoff racing down the Colorado River toward the Glen Canyon Dam. As the water filled the dam, worried federal officials desperately scrambled to avoid a dramatic dam failure. In the midst of this crisis, a trio of river guides secretly launched a small, ha
The Journals of Lewis and Clark
Meriwether Lewis, William Clark
At the dawn of the 19th century, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark embarked on an unprecedented journey from St. Louis, Missouri to the Pacific Ocean and back again. Their assignment was to explore the newly acquired Louisiana Territory and record the geography, flora, fauna, and people they encountered along the way. The tale of their incredible journey, meticulously recorded in their journals,
Down the River
Edward Abbey · 242 pages
This sparkling book, which takes us up and down rivers and across mountains and deserts, is the perfect antidote to despair.
Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail
Ben Montgomery · 282 pages
"Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than two hundred dollars. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, having survived a rattlesnake strike, two hurricanes, and a run-in with gangst
The Founding Fish
John McPhee · 368 pages
"The Founding Fish, John McPhee's twenty-sixth book, is a braid of personal history, natural history, and American history, in descending order of volume. McPhee is a shad fisherman. He waits all year for the short spring season when delicious American shad - Alosa sapidissima - leave the ocean in hundreds of thousands and run up rivers heroic distances to spawn. He approaches them with a catch-an
Finding Everett Ruess: The Life and Unsolved Disappearance of a Legendary Wilderness Explorer
David Roberts · 394 pages
Finding Everett Ruess by David Roberts, with a foreword by Jon Krakauer, is the definitive biography of the artist, writer, and eloquent celebrator of the wilderness whose bold solo explorations of the American West and mysterious disappearance in the Utah desert at age 20 have earned him a large and devoted cult following. More than 75 years after his vanishing, Ruess stirs the kinds of passion a
The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America
Douglas Brinkley · 940 pages
In this groundbreaking epic biography, Douglas Brinkley draws on never-before-published materials to examine the life and achievements of our "naturalist president." By setting aside more than 230 million acres of wild America for posterity between 1901 and 1909, Theodore Roosevelt made conservation a universal endeavor. This crusade for the American wilderness was perhaps the greatest U.S. presid
Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography
Chester Brown · 286 pages
"This award-winning Canadian bestseller tells the story of the charismatic, and perhaps mad, nineteenth century Métis leader, whose struggle to win rights for his people led to violent rebellion on the nation's western frontier"--P. [4] of cover.
The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and People
Tim Flannery · 392 pages
Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America
T.J. Stiles · 592 pages
From the Preface... I am telling [George Armstrong Custer's] story in a particular light, with a particular sense of context. The result, I hope, is not simply an addition to a familiar story--he was famous for this as well as for that--but something larger and more comprehensive. I want to explain why his celebrity, and notoriety, spanned both the Civil War and his years on the frontier, resti
Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas
Mari Sandoz · 428 pages
Presents a biography of Crazy Horse, one of the last Indian leaders to wage war against the wave of immigrants invading their lands.
The Secret Knowledge of Water
Craig Childs · 288 pages
Deserts are environments that can be inhospitable even to seasoned explorers. Craig Childs has spent years in the deserts of the American West, and his treks through arid lands in search of water reveal the natural world at its most extreme.
Boone: A Biography
Robert Morgan · 538 pages
The story of Daniel Boone is the story of America—its ideals, its promise, its romance, and its destiny. Bestselling, critically acclaimed author Robert Morgan reveals the complex character of a frontiersman whose heroic life was far stranger and more fascinating than the myths that surround him.This rich, authoritative biography offers a wholly new perspective on a man who has been an American ic
American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House
Jon Meacham · 694 pages
Andrew Jackson, his intimate circle of friends, and his tumultuous times are at the heart of this remarkable book about the man who rose from nothing to create the modern presidency. Beloved and hated, venerated and reviled, Andrew Jackson was an orphan who fought his way to the pinnacle of power, bending the nation to his will in the cause of democracy. Jackson's election in 1828 ushered in a new
The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed
John Vaillant · 272 pages
Roman de société. Roman témoignage Cette histoire vraie captivante donne à voir les beauté de l'Alaska. Le bûcheron Hadwin abbat un épicéa de 300 ans : arbre sacré pour les indiens Haïdas. L'homme disparaît sans laisser de mystérieusement.
Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England
William Cronon · 249 pages
In this landmark work of environmental history, William Cronon offers an original and profound explanation of the effects European colonists' sense of property and their pursuit of capitalism had upon the ecosystems of New England. Reissued here with an updated afterword by the author and a new preface by the distinguished colonialist John Demos, Changes in the Land, provides a brilliant inter-dis