I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone interested in American history and life on the frontier.

I'm a big history buff but being from Europe American history is a bit too modern for my usual tastes. I was however pleasantly surprised by this book.

A great overview of life in the pioneering west.

Thank you to netgalley for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book in return for a fair and honest review.

In his introduction to this anthology, Paul Andrew Hutton sets the scene:

‘The history of America is, at its core, the story of the American West. In 1893, America’s greatest historian, Frederick Jackson Turner, postulated that the origins of American exceptionalism were to be found in the movement of successive frontiers across the North American continent.’

While I am fascinated by stories of explorers and exploration, I am saddened by the impact of both on indigenous peoples especially in Australia, where I live, and in America. I picked up this book with mixed feelings but was soon drawn into the history exemplified by the various accounts included in this anthology. I learned, for example, about the Second Declaration of Independence, about the Texas Rangers, and about the trails followed by more than forty-five thousand Utah-bound Mormon emigrants between 1847 and 1869. I learned more about John Wesley Hardin, as well as about some of the intrepid women amongst the Forty-Niners.

As I read, I reflected on the fact that many of the settlements in the American West are comparatively recent given that European settlement of the American east coast go back to (at least) the early 17th century.
If you are interested in the settlement of the American West, in some of the drivers of settlement, in some of the people and events, I can recommend this book.

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Sapere Books for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

I read this after speculation nation, and this feels like it could be an unofficial sequel. The first tells the history of the first years of expansionism. This book tells the history of the formation of the Wild West. Similar themes of greed, loss, and uncertainty abound.