Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Insightful, rarely told history of Indian courage in the face of White expansionism in the 19th century. Truth-telling tale of the ruthless brutality that forced the Native American population into resettlement camps and reservations, with a look at the few white Americans who fought to help them.

Buffalo Girls

by Larry McMurtry

In a letter to her daughter back East, Martha Jane is not shy about her own importance: "Martha Jane -- better known as Calamity -- is just one of the handful of aging legends who travel to London as part of Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show in Buffalo Girls. As he describes the insatiable curiosity of Calamity's Indian friend No Ears, Annie Oakley's shooting match with Lord Windhouveren, and other highlights of... (more)

By Sorrow's River: A Novel (The Berrybender Narratives)

By Sorrow's River: A Novel (The Berrybender Narratives)

by Larry McMurtry

In this tale of high-spirited and terrifying adventure, set against the background of the West that Larry McMurtry has made his own, By Sorrow's River is an epic in its own right, with an extraordinary young woman as its leading figure. At the heart of this third volume of his Western saga remains the beautiful and determined Tasmin Berrybender, now married to the "Sin Killer" and mother to their young son,... (more)

Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography

by Justin Kaplan

Justin Kaplan is the author of Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain, which was awarded a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, and of Walt Whitman: A Life, which won the American Book Award. He is a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife, novelist Anne Bernays.

Folly and Glory: A Novel (Berrybender Narratives)

Folly and Glory: A Novel (Berrybender Narratives)

by Larry McMurtry

As this final volume of The Berrybender Narratives opens, Tasmin and her family are under irksome, though comfortable, arrest in Mexican Santa Fe. Her father, the eccentric Lord Berrybender, is planning to head for Texas with his whole family and his retainers. Tasmin, who would once have followed her husband, Jim Snow, anywhere, is no longer even sure she likes him, or knows where to go to next. In the... (more)

Sin Killer: A Novel (Berrybender Narratives)

Sin Killer: A Novel (Berrybender Narratives)

by Larry McMurtry

It is 1830, and the Berrybender family -- rich, aristocratic, English, and fiercely out of place -- is on its way up the Missouri River to see the American West as it begins to open up. Lord and Lady Berrybender have abandoned their palatial home in England to explore the frontier and to broaden the horizons of their children, who include Tasmin, a budding young woman of grit, beauty, and determination, her... (more)

The Wandering Hill: A Novel (Beryybender Narratives)

The Wandering Hill: A Novel (Beryybender Narratives)

by Larry McMurtry

In The Wandering Hill, Larry McMurtry continues the story of Tasmin Berrybender and her eccentric family in the still unexplored Wild West of the 1830s. Their journey is one of exploration, beset by difficulties, tragedies, the desertion of trusted servants, and the increasing hardships of day-to-day survival in a land where nothing can be taken for granted. By now, Tasmin is married to the elusive young... (more)

Streets of Laredo: Sequel to Lonesome Dove

Streets of Laredo: Sequel to Lonesome Dove

by Larry McMurtry

The final book of Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove tetralogy is an exhilarating tale of legend and heroism. Captain Woodrow Call, August McCrae's old partner, is now a bounty hunter hired to track down a brutal young Mexican bandit. Riding with Call are an Eastern city slicker, a witless deputy, and one of the last members of the Hat Creek outfit, Pea Eye Parker, now married to Lorena -- once Gus McCrae's... (more)

The Wailing Wind

by Tony Hillerman

Officer Bernadette Manuelito found the dead man slumped over in the cab of a blue pickup abandoned in a dry gulch off a dirt road -- with a rich ex-con's phone number in his pocket ... and a tobacco tin nearly filled with tracer gold. It's her initial mishandling of the scene that spell trouble for her supervisor, Sgt. Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police -- but it's the echoes of a long ago crime that call the... (more)

The American West

by Dee Alexander Brown

The American West centers on three subjects: Native Americans, settlers, and ranchers. Dee Brown re-creates these groups struggles for their place in this new landscape and illuminates the history of the old West in a single volume, filled with maps and vintage photographs. In his spirited telling of this national saga, Brown demonstrates once again his abilities as a master storyteller and as an entertaining... (more)

To the Far Blue Mountains: The Sacketts

by Louis L'Amour

Barney Sackett carved a place for himself in the wilderness by battling Indians and elements but suddenly he found himself desperately alone.

The Men Who Wear the Star: The Story of the Texas Rangers

The Men Who Wear the Star: The Story of the Texas Rangers

by Charles M. Robinson

In 1935, Walter Prescott Webb first told about them in his classic The Texas Rangers, but not until now do we have a modern retelling of this storied organization, based on new material and written with the encouragement of the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame. Most narratives of this colorful story, even Webb's, leave out several important eras in the history of the Rangers--the Civil War years, for instance, simply... (more)

Texas: A Novel

by James A. Michener, Charles Shaw

In this magnificent historical novel, James A. Michener masterfully combines fact and fiction to present America’s richest, most expansive and diversified state. Spanning four and a half centuries, this monumental saga charts the epic history of Texas, from its Spanish roots in the age of the conquistadors, to its modern-day American character, shaped by oil and industry. A stunning achievement by a literary... (more)

Marching to Valhalla : A Novel of Custer's Last Days (G K Hall Large Print Book Series (Cloth))

Marching to Valhalla : A Novel of Custer's Last Days (G K Hall Large Print Book Series (Cloth))

by Michael Blake

The author of Dances With Wolves turns his creativity and imagination toward America's doomed romantic hero, George Armstrong Custer--the youngest general of the Civil War, trailblazer, Indian hunter, passionate lover, obsessive husband, and tormented, guilt-ridden soul. A wonderful merger of fact and fiction, Marching to Valhalla is soon to be a major motion picture starring Brad Pitt.

The Texas Rangers : A Century of Frontier Defense

The Texas Rangers : A Century of Frontier Defense

by Walter Prescott Webb

In The Texas Rangers, published by UT Press in 1965, Walter Prescott Webb told the story of this unique law enforcement agency as no one else could. Forsaking the historian's ivory tower, Webb rode with the Rangers in the days when desperate, greedy men thought the border between Texas and Mexico was an open gate to bootleggers. He loved the harsh country through which the Rangers rode, and he loved the tempering... (more)

The West : An Illustrated History

by Geoffrey C. Ward

The creators of the landmark public television series The Civil War and Baseball present a lavishly illustrated companion book to the forthcoming series tracing the history of the West. TV tie-in. $300,000 ad/promo. BOMC, History, & QPB Main.

Son of the Morning Star Part 1 of 2

by Evan S. Connell

Part One Of Two Parts George Armstrong Custer, a hero to some, a disaster to others, cut an enigmatic and extravagant figure. One thing everyone agreed -- he was fearless. When he first saw the line of Indian camps opposing him, a line more than four miles long, he whooped, "Hurrah, boys, we've got them!" Disregarding a Cheyenne warning, Custer rode to his death -- and led to death every man of the Seventh... (more)

With Custer on the Little Bighorn : a newly discovered first-person account

With Custer on the Little Bighorn : a newly discovered first-person account

by William O. Taylor

A newly discovered account of an infamous battle by a nineteenth-century corporal from the U.S. Seventh Cavalry on burial duty at Custer's last stand reconstructs troop movements and comments on the commanders, their men, the campaign, and their enemies. 40,000 first printing. $40,000 ad/promo. Tour.

Black Elk speaks : being the life story of a holy man of the Oglala Sioux

Black Elk speaks : being the life story of a holy man of the Oglala Sioux

by John Gneisenau Neihardt, Black Elk

Black Elk Speaks is the story of the Lakota visionary and healer Nicholas Black Elk (1863-1950) and his people during the momentous twilight years of the nineteenth century. Black Elk met the distinguished poet, writer, and critic John G. Neihardt (1881-1973) in 1930 on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and chose Neihardt to tell his story. Neihardt understood and conveyed Black Elk’s experiences in this... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: american western history

by Gloria Jahoda

by Larry McMurtry

by Larry McMurtry

by Justin Kaplan

by Larry McMurtry

by Larry McMurtry

by Larry McMurtry

by Larry McMurtry

by Tony Hillerman

by Dee Alexander Brown

by Louis L'Amour

by Charles M. Robinson

by James A. Michener, Charles Shaw

by Michael Blake

by Walter Prescott Webb

by Geoffrey C. Ward

by Evan S. Connell

by William O. Taylor

by John Gneisenau Neihardt, Black Elk