Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West

by Dee Brown, Dee Alexander Brown

Now a special 30th-anniversary edition in both hardcover and paperback, the classic bestselling history The New York Times called "Original, remarkable, and finally heartbreaking...Impossible to put down" Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent, fully documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller... (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 Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West

The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West

by Patricia Nelson Limerick

"Limerick is one of the most engaging historians writing today." --Richard White The "settling" of the American West has been perceived throughout the world as a series of quaint, violent, and romantic adventures. But in fact, Patricia Nelson Limerick argues, the West has a history grounded primarily in economic reality; in hardheaded questions of profit, loss, competition, and consolidation. Here she... (more)

Anything for Billy : A Novel

by Larry McMurtry

The first time I saw Billy he came walking out of a cloud....Welcome to the wild, hot-blooded adventures of Billy the Kid, the American West's most legendary outlaw. Larry McMurtry takes us on a hell-for-leather journey with Billy and his friends as they ride, drink, love, fight, shoot, and escape their way into the shining memories of Western myth. Surrounded by a splendid cast of characters that only Larry... (more)

Close Range : Wyoming Stories

by Annie Proulx

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling author of The Shipping News and Accordion Crimes comes one of the most celebrated short-story collections of our time. Annie Proulx's masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in these breathtaking tales of loneliness, quick violence, and the wrong kinds of love. Each of the stunning portraits in Close Range reveals characters fiercely wrought... (more)

Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis

Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis

by William C. Davis

Three Roads to the Alamo is the definitive book about the lives of David Crockett, James Bowie and William Barret Travis--the legendary frontiersmen and fighters who met their destiny at the Alamo in one of the most famous and tragic battles in American history--and about what really happened in that battle.

Lewis and Clark Among the Indians (Lewis & Clark Expedition)

Lewis and Clark Among the Indians (Lewis & Clark Expedition)

by James P. Ronda

'James P. Ronda in Lewis and Clark among the Indians has drawn from the journals and other documents a compelling narrative of the expedition's encounters with the Indians. It is a story of discovery and suspense, and it is told with a modern concern to understand the Indian side as well as the white in the meeting of the two cultures' - Francis Paul Prucha, "William and Mary Quarterly". 'The Lewis and Clark... (more)

Nothing Like It in the World

by Stephen Ambrose

Nothing Like It in the World gives the account of an unprecedented feat of engineering, vision, and courage. It is the story of the men who built the transcontinental railroad -- the investors who risked their businesses and money; the enlightened politicians who understood its importance; the engineers and surveyors who risked, and sometimes lost, their lives; and the Irish and Chinese immigrants, the defeated... (more)

Decline of the West: Form and Actuality, Part 1

Decline of the West: Form and Actuality, Part 1

by Oswald Spengler

Since its first publication more than eighty years ago, The Decline of the West has ranked as one of the most widely read and talked about books of our time. A sweeping account of Western culture by a historian of legendary intellect, it is an astonishingly informed, forcefully eloquent, thrillingly controversial work that advances a world view based on the cyclical rise and fall of civilizations. This... (more)

Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West

Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West

by Cotter Smith, Stephen Ambrose

In this sweeping adventure story, Stephen E. Ambrose, the bestselling author od D-Day, presents the definitive account of one of the most momentous journeys in American history. Ambrose follows the Lewis and Clark Expedition from Thomas Jefferson's hope of finding a waterway to the Pacific, through the heart-stopping moments of the actual trip, to Lewis's lonely demise on the Natchez Trace. Along the way,... (more)

Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings (Perennial Classics)

Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings (Perennial Classics)

by Mark Twain, Bernard Augustine De Voto, Bernard Devoto

"I have told you nothing about man that is not true." You must pardon me if I repeat that remark now and then in these letters; I want you to take seriously the things I am telling you, and I feel that if I were in your place and you in mine, I should need that reminder from time to time, to keep my credulity from flagging. In Letters from the Earth, Twain presents himself as the Father of History -- reviewing... (more)

Lonesome Dove

by Larry McMurtry

Bestselling winner of the 1986 Pulitzer Prize, Lonesome Dove is an American classic. First published in 1985, Larry McMurtry's epic novel combined flawless writing with a storyline and setting that gripped the popular imagination, and ultimately resulted in a series of four novels and an Emmy-winning television miniseries. Now, with an introduction by the author, Lonesome Dove is reprinted in an S&S... (more)

Comanche Moon (Lonesome Dove)

by Larry McMurtry

THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER The second book of Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove tetralogy, Comache Moon takes us once again into the world of the American West. Texas Rangers August McCrae and Woodrow Call, now in their middle years, continue to deal with the ever-increasing tensions of adult life -- Gus with his great love, Clara Forsythe, and Call with Maggie Tilton, the young whore who loves him. Two proud... (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 Red Pony

by John Steinbeck

Tells a story of a young boy and life on his father's California ranch, raising a sorrel colt.

A Little History of the World

by E. H. Gombrich

In 1935, with a doctorate in art history and no prospect of a job, the 26-year-old Ernst Gombrich was invited by a publishing acquaintance to attempt a history of the world for younger readers. Amazingly, he completed the task in an intense six weeks, and Eine kurze Weltgeschichte für junge Leser was published in Vienna to immediate success, and is now available in seventeen languages across the world. ... (more)

Oh What a Slaughter: Massacres in the American West: 1846--1890

Oh What a Slaughter: Massacres in the American West: 1846--1890

by Larry McMurtry

In Oh What a Slaughter, Larry McMurtry has written a unique, brilliant, and searing history of the bloody massacres that marked -- and marred -- the settling of the American West in the nineteenth century, and which still provoke immense controversy today. Here are the true stories of the West's most terrible massacres -- Sacramento River, Mountain Meadows, Sand Creek, Marias River, Camp Grant, and Wounded... (more)

Ordeal by Hunger

by George Rippey Stewart

The tragedy of the Donner party constitutes one of the most amazing stories of the American West. In 1846 eighty-seven people -- men, women, and children -- set out for California, persuaded to attempt a new overland route. After struggling across the desert, losing many oxen, and nearly dying of thirst, they reached the very summit of the Sierras, only to be trapped by blinding snow and bitter storms. Many... (more)

The 60 Greatest Conspiracies of All TimeJonathan Vankin & John Whalen

The 60 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time

by Jonathan Vankin & John Whalen

Boots And Saddles: Or Life In Dakota With General Custer

Boots And Saddles: Or Life In Dakota With General Custer

by Elizabeth Bacon Custer

1885. An insightful description of garrison and camp life by the wife of Geroge Armstrong Custer. Due to the isolation of the Calvary posts she says they often felt as separate from the rest of the world as if they had been living on a desert island. She also answers questions that were often posed to her concerning their occupations, amusements and housekeeping. Contents: Change of Station; A Blizzard; Western... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: western history

by Dee Brown, Dee Alexander Brown

by Michael Blake

by Patricia Nelson Limerick

by Larry McMurtry

by Annie Proulx

by William C. Davis

by James P. Ronda

by Stephen Ambrose

by Oswald Spengler

by Cotter Smith, Stephen Ambrose

by Mark Twain, Bernard Augustine De Voto, Bernard Devoto

by Larry McMurtry

by Larry McMurtry

by Larry McMurtry

by John Steinbeck

by E. H. Gombrich

by Larry McMurtry

by George Rippey Stewart

by Jonathan Vankin & John Whalen

by Elizabeth Bacon Custer