Across the Wide Missouri

Trilogy of the West #1

by Bernard DeVoto

Like many U.S. historians, cultural critic Bernard DeVoto believed that the American character was rooted in the experience of westward expansion. Unlike those who championed the civilizing graces of the agrarian frontier, however, DeVoto drew inspiration from the mercenary, imperial designs of the fur trade. Originally published in 1947, Across the Wide Missouriis arguably the best known of his studies in American history, examining the rise and fall of the U.S. fur dynasties in the 1830s. The book chronicles the competition between John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company and the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, an "opposition" group of trappers (including Jim Bridger and Kit Carson) descended from the earlier entrepreneurial activities of General William H. Ashley. Devoto specifically narrates the major expeditions and the daily experiences of the Western divisions of these companies, which scoured the northernmost regions of the Rocky Mountains for beaver. He contends that, by exploring the recently charted Northern plateau, fighting off interlopers, and setting up trade networks, the loose confederation of trappers, traders, and Native Americans shaped the materialism that typifies modern American society. In his densely detailed description of the company "rendezvous," DeVoto shows how the activities of trading, partying, and resource pooling created a shared experience for competing cultural and economic parties on the frontier. While the centrality of the fur trade in the development of the American character may strike some readers as overemphasized, DeVoto's thesis still carries much relevance for modern American studies. --John M. Anderson

Genres: History, American History, Nonfiction, Westerns, American, Travel, 19th Century

481 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1947

About the author

Bernard Augustine DeVoto was an American historian and author who specialized in the history of the American West.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fur Trappers are one of the romances of American history. They embody so many traits that we perceive as authentically and specifically American. They are hardy, self-reliant, independent, and free. They straddle the line between what we dream (a life without constraint) and what we have (civilization).

When I was a kid, I felt the allure of the mountain man. One year, my mom made me a Davy Crockett costume for Halloween. (Not technically a mountain man, but close enough). For the better part of a year (or two or three) I would put on those buckskins, slip my feet into a pair of moccasins, heft a Kentucky (cap) rifle onto my shoulder, and walk around my neighborhood pretending to hunt things. As you can imagine, I looked totally dope. Of course, my suburban non-hunts did not quite capture the harsh reality of mountain men: the unforgiving weather, frigid streams, unfriendly Indians, remorseless wildlife. I never got chased by a bear, or a mountain lion, or even a dog (I did get barked at). None of us would choose the life of a mountain man, but the mythology is so potent that we sometimes wish we could.

Bernard DeVoto’s Across the Wide Missouri captures the fur trade at twilight, the point in time when the streams had been tapped and the fashions had changed and the wide empty expanses of the west were starting to get populated. He tells this story with a tinge of nostalgia and melancholy, but also with an eye toward the hard realities of the mountain man’s life.

Any review of a DeVoto book has to begin with the man himself. DeVoto was a public intellectual, a vanishing species in our time. He was a historian, writer, conservationist, and cultural critic. He did interesting things, said interesting things, and hung out with interesting people. When he wrote, he did it with a certain panache.

In Across the Wide Missouri, DeVoto’s tact is to follow the last hurrahs of the fur trappers from the ground. He tells the story of a long list of people from several different entities: the men of the American Fur Company; the men of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company; the outfitting firm of Sublette & Campbell;the men of the Hudson’s Bay Company; a United States Army officer named Benjamin Bonneville; a Massachusetts speculator named Nathaniel Jarvis; and the missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman.

There are a lot of story threads there, and DeVoto is not in the least interested in putting them into a larger context. At a macro level, this can be a hard book to follow. There are too many people, too many locations, and too much jumping around. He is keen to tell good stories, rather than presenting a scholarly overview. To make things even more difficult, DeVoto has a glib tendency of referring to the American Fur Company as “the Company,” and the Rocky Mountain Fur Company as “the Opposition.” You wouldn’t think this is a big deal, but I had to keep going back to the front of the book to remember which was which.

DeVoto assumes you have a lot of foreknowledge of this subject, because he jumps right into the deep end. If this book was written to day, I can guarantee there’d be an introductory chapter explaining the rise of the fur trade in the west, before getting to its fall. Not here. In Across the Wide Missouri, we start in media res.

The big picture is hard to frame, even with what I consider to be a decent working knowledge of this period. The details, though, make this an excellent read. Early on, DeVoto gives a sharp description of the mountain men as independent contractors crushed by capital. He explains, for instance, the impossibility of getting rich in a very dangerous business:

When it sent goods to its upriver posts, the American Fur Company marked them up one hundred percent as a first charge before the field partners were to begin figuring a profit. Sublette & Company would charge the RMF Company a considerably higher mark-up than that, and were counting on it being increased by the differential (sometimes fifty percent) between mountains and St. Louis prices for the beaver in which it would be paid. In turn, the RMF Company would either double and redouble prices when it distributed the goods to either mountain men or Indians. When the mountain man was the ultimate consumer, he would pay, in beaver, prices which were seldom less than a thousand percent above St. Louis costs for only the most expensive items and which for many items ran up to two thousand percent. Only the best trappers, and they only when advantageously placed for bargaining, could clear their annual indebtedness for outfits and have something left. Few…ever got out of debt, fewer still took a stake back east with them, none ever made a competence.

A little later on, he gives a stirring description of the trip out west from St. Louis:

[F]rom now on everything about the countryside was new and strange…They headed westward into Kansas, then turned northwest, crossing innumerable creeks and such rivers as the Kansas and the Big Blue. Beyond the Little Blue, which brought them to Nebraska, and on to the Coasts of the Nebraska, the valley of the Platte. This was prairie country, lush with grass that would be belly-high on your horse, or higher, by June. In May it was spongy from violent rains, in long stretches little better than a bog. The rains struck suddenly and disastrously, drowning you out of your blankets, interspersed with snow flurries or showers of hailstones as big as a fist, driven by gales that blew your possessions over the prairie and froze your bones. Continuous deafening thunder might last for hours at a time. It stampeded the stock, by day scattering packs for five miles perhaps, by night scattering horses and mules even farther…Every creek was a river, every river a sound, and every brook a morass – and across these a hundred and fifty horses and mules, with sheep and the cows, had to be cursed, beaten, and sometimes pulled by rope…The prairies were beautiful with flowers, waving grasses, and the song of birds…but not during the spring rains. You took it.

There are a lot of passages like this. Rivers crossed. Battles fought. The grandeur of the mountains. The excitement of a rendezvous. Excellent, novelistic scenes that provide a vivid, tactile sense of the topography, weather, and challenges faced by the mountain men. DeVoto can be a florid writer, and also digressionary, but I prefer that to the lifeless, just-the-facts prose of academic histories. He also has a wry sense of humor, a bone dry wit, which he utilizes in his description of the missionary William Gray, who went to lengths to procure a wife before setting out for the far west:

William Gray worked faster [than fellow missionary Elkanah Walker]. He had come east to enlarge the mission and procure necessities for it, among which an helpmeet was high on the list. (He was satisfying an envy by taking a three-months course of medical lectures during the winter and called himself “Doctor” till he got to [the mission at] Waiilatpu, where Marcus Whitman excised the title). But either he had some small selectivity or, as seems likely, it was hard to find a woman who could tolerate the prospect of Mr. Gray even for the love of God. But on February 19 he met Mary Augusta Dix and on February 26 he married her, thus completing his personal outfit…

Across the Wide Missouri is what I look for in great history books. It captures the feel of a period of time by asking the reader to experience it along with the people whose stories he is telling. And it is written with style. This is a book written with confidence, by a guy who knew his way around a sentence.

[Kavan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading this book was like climbing a mountain on bum knee. At times the views are nice, and when you get to the top you know you should feel a sense of accomplishment. Instead you feel sore and wonder if it was even worth the trip.

The fur trade is to me one of the more fascinating eras in American history. As such I was excited to read what many consider the definitive text on that era the Pulitzer Prize winning Across the Wide Missouri. That excitement slowly lessened as the narrative lagged, and by the end I had to force myself to read the last one hundred or so pages. The book is chock full of interesting stories and characters but author Bernard DeVoto’s presentation is inconsistent and meandering.

Ostensibly the history of the climax and decline of the fur trade, but DeVoto fails to provide a coherent sense of how these companies operated. My sense is he wanted to focus on the fur traders but the lack of a larger perspective made it difficult to link the traders with the trade.

Further, much of the middle of the book is wasted on narrating specific travels of even minor footnotes in history. DeVoto seems to want the reader to understand how mobile trader’s lives were, specifically how these mountaineers had to react to differing stimuli in differing ways-depending on the actions of Native Americans, other traders, weather and a dozen other factors. However, after a few of these trips I found I was losing any sense of the overall narratives. I would rather have gotten a larger sense of Jim Bridger the trader than know every trade route he traversed.

Overall I am glad I plowed through because the final chapters focusing on the Old World Diseases and the accompanying catastrophic destruction of Native American tribes made it worth it but only just. If you are not deeply fascinated by the topic I wouldn’t bother as the text is unlikely to increase your fascination with the trappers and the trade.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an enjoyable read, up to a point. I have problems with the whole "Manifest Destiny" mentality- after all I have ancestral feet in both camps, Native and European. But what I like about it most is that it deals with a period of time in which neither of the future belligerents were quite so much at odds with each other- the whites had not quite yet begun to break their promises, so mountain men could exist as a culture between the two. Intermarriages were prevalent in this time, with less of the incipient racism which was endemic to "the settler period." DeVoto focuses on a critical five to ten year period of competition between the Rocky Mountain Fur Co; the American Fur Co; and the Hudson Bay Trading Co; with some skill tracing explorations, interactions (between the mountain men and the Indians as well as the competing beaver and (first) buffalo hunters themselves.) The language and style can be a little florid, stiff, and obtuse, but I suppose that's part of the idiosyncracy of attempting to explain history to both scholar and lay reader. And probably just like a mountain man, too. It's not without its bias (toward the United States) but nevertheless has a good deal of respect for the original cultures and yet recognizes (hindsight being the historian's task) -simultaneously- "mistakes were made."

[Scott Ericksen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Though the book contain much information, I had a hard time staying interested. I have always like the stories and movies about the Mountain Man era, but I guess this seemed more of a text book, and the storyline was slow.

[John Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first of the three Devoto titles on America's westward expansion re-published by American Heritage some years back. It tells the story of the Rocky Mountain fur trade, focusing on its peak years and subsequent decline.

I found Devoto's writing style to be annoying - sometimes rambling, with numerous first-person asides intruding into the narrative. Devoto also is prone to the liberal pieties of the mid-twentieth century, including disdain for economic activity as profiteering attempting to understand what makes business run or the costs that businessmen must account for.

However, the book does an able job of weaving together some of the disparate forces affecting the West at the time, including competition among the St. Louis-based fur companies for a declining trade, the efforts of the British Columbia-based Hudson's Bay Company to control the same trade,the actions of the Indians caught between these forces, the beginning of missionary activity in the Pacific Northwest,the smallpox epidemic of the 1830s, and just over the horizon, the impending beginning of the great migration by wagon trains commencing in the 1840s.

The book also illustrates - without directly commenting upon - the rapid appearance and decline of most of the famous events of Western history. The Pony Express existed just 18 months before being supplanted by the telegraph, the post-Civil War cattle drives from Texas to Kansas lasted only a few years before the rail lines were extended south to Texas, the great Indian wars of the northern plains began around 1868 or 1869 and were over after 1876, and so on. The subject of this book - the fur trade - lasted less than 20 years before the mountains were trapped out and fashions in Europe and China moved away from beaver felt hats. That was far less than one lifetime, leaving most of the participants in the trade (or at least those who hadn't been killed in skirmishes with the Indians - to reinvent themselves or fade away into poverty and obscurity.

[Greg Strandberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really great narrative of the American fur trade in the years 1832-38. When I first picked up the book I was only going to read a few pages, but did 35. I can see why this won the Pulitzer. It's full of humor and anecdote and just plain ol' good stories.

There's a wide cast of characters, ranging from the American Fur Company, Rocky Mountain Fur Company, Hudson's Bay Company, and a lot of the smaller companies that came and went. We see company men and free trappers and we learn what they wore and carried and did out there in the wilds for years at a time.

Lots of missionaries in this book, as the jaunts to Oregon were starting about now, though the Oregon Trail as we know it was still a good 10 to 15 years off. DeVoto of course covers that stretch in his book "The Year of Decision."

This book has really good numbers on the disastrous 1837 smallpox outbreak among the Mandan, Arikara, Sioux, Blackfeet, and other Upper Missouri tribes. We read how thousands died, but no true numbers exist. About half of most tribes were wiped out.

Sometimes this book wanders and you'll get to sections where you can easily skim paragraphs or just skip a few pages. I began to do that a lot more toward the end of the book.

DeVoto has that old-school style that was taught in colleges during the Depression and earlier, and this can strike the modern reader as a bit strange, off-putting at times. Then there are the occasional terms like "niggardly" and such - definitely a 1950s book here.

I highly recommend this one for those interested in the history of America during this time. It's a bit dry and slow at times but most of the book is quite compelling.

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm embarking on a long-term project of reading my way through the books that have won Bancroft or Pulitzer Prizes in history; my intention is to try and figure out both how reputable history responds to social/political pressures of its moment, and to investigate the standards, explicit and implicit, of evidence. Given DeVoto's status as a major figure in American history and the fact that this won both prizes, it seemed like a good place to start.

It was. Focusing on the history of the "mountain men" during the 1830s, the end of the era preceding the large scale immigration of "Americans" to the far west, DeVoto subscribes to the idea that "History" and/or the "time-spirit," both terms he uses, was directing the destiny referred to as "Manifest Destiny"--the inevitable conquering of the continent, which entailed the displacement and destruction of the Indian tribes. No surprise given that he was writing in the aftermath of World War II when ideals of American exceptionalism were very much in the air. But he's by no means uncritical. He sketches a clear picture of predatory capitalism, the underhanded tactics used by the major companies positioning for dominance of the trade in beaver pelts. It's a nasty story that resonates with later abuses of the capitalist system (or maybe just reflects the true nature of capitalist competition) and he doesn't back away from it. He's also very clear that the Christian missionaries who opened the path to the Oregon territory can only be understood as agents of empire.

His treatment of the Indians is complicated. At times he reverts to primitivistic stereotypes of the "neolithic mind." But at others, he recognizes the depth of the ceremonial traditions and the internal coherence of the cultures the whites encounters. His primary sources are journals and letters written by those involved in the trade (and in a couple of cases that strike me as more than a bit dubious, romantic novels written by participants). So the images of particular Native nations reflect the experiences, prejudices, and alliances of his sources. He tends to ascribe to notions of tribal essence--some tribes honorable, some tribes vicious, that wouldn't stand up to later scholarship that takes Native sources seriously.

DeVoto's popularity rested largely on his narrative touch and he certainly tells some good stories, though you can take this as trustworthy history, as opposed to a source of insight into the development of historical writing, only with large grains of salt.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Across the Wide Missouri - Bernard DeVoto

The style of non-fiction writing has certainly evolved in the past seventy-five years. And for the better.

The obvious difference between now and then is that the long winded narrative is not very popular any more. This book was written in 1948 and won the Pulitzer Prize for History and DeVoto was considered an eminent historian. So this was no hack job. As such there is a lot of color to DeVoto’s writing. That used to be the style and I don’t view it as so troublesome today if it occurs only a few times. The real focus of contemporary non-fiction books today is not on color but on organization and research.

On to specifics.

One area that I disliked is there is a superficiality to the historical characters. I would rather learn something more substantial about fewer characters than learning less about more characters.

Another - perhaps minor complaint - is that I didn’t get the sense that DeVoto had been to many of the places he described. I have been to some of them and the geology in my mind quite a bit. Take the Whitman mission in Walla Walla. I can assure you there are no mountains and cliffs as described by DeVoto.

Despite these negatives, at times this read was briefly and intensely interesting. This occurred when I already knew the basic biography of the subjects - like the Whitmans, Kit Carson or Jim Bridger and so there was more context.

The last point I will make is that DeVoto is sympathetic to the plight of the Native Americans, which is both refreshing and uncommon for a historian born in the 19th century. However I think he could have spent more time differentiating the tribes of which there are dozens that he references in the book. We learn the Nez Perce were the good Indians and the Cayuse were the bad ones and so on. Just not a lot of nuance.

3.5 stars.

[Rick · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Across the Wide Missouri” by Bernard DeVoto did not (for me) live up to its hype. A Pulitzer Prize winner in 1946, this tale did not translate well across the last 70 years. Very simply it is a story about the end of the western United States fur trade in the early 1830s. The narrative covers the six years from 1832 through 1838 and details the decline in the fur trade (i.e. mostly beaver and some buffalo) … details being the operant word. Part geography lesson, part travelogue, part corporate history, and part ethnology study - the chronicle just didn’t hold my interest. It gets bogged down in minutia too often.

It covers the geography of the western reaches – from St. Louis to and through the Continental Divide – in excruciating detail … this river meets this creek which with this other stream forms the so-and-so. As travelogue, it recounts numerous wagon train and river boat expeditions moving west for the fur trade, and usually does so by exact name of the leader and many of the participants of each excursion. As a business history, it details the corporate battles among the American Fur Company, the Hudson Bay Corporation, and others for dominance in the fur trade, even in the waning days of its import. It also acts as an ethnology study, eventually describing various Indian tribes and sects by their characteristics – whether they were friendly to whites, known for being thieves, cruel with other tribes, and the like.

Now if the reader is a researcher of this period in American history, this book will be a gold mine … if not, then they’ll probably soon start speed-reading. Pulitzer Prize or not, this one was just ok.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterfully-written account of the history of the fur trade in the Northwestern United States. It provided that material for a fictional screenplay made into a movie of the same name, starring Clark Gable and Ricardo Montalban.

DeVoto, perhaps better known as a Mark Twain scholar, wrote with a richness and wit that seems almost extinct today. He was a political maverick who was unafraid to take on J. Edgar Hoover at a time when the F.B.I. Director was virtually untouchable. Yet, today Devoto's humor would probably be so politically incorrect that he couldn't be in a lot of high school libraries. I have no doubt that any television production of this book would be so diluted and sanitized that it would hardly be recognizable.

[David Kessler · Rating 5 out of 5]

DeVoto put his heart into it. This book captures the true nature of the trappers as they caught beavers and grabbed what they could as the single decade brought out the best and the worst in man. This is one of the best books I have ever read. History will not repeat itself; the 1830s were the decade of the mountain men.

[Roy Fowler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dry at times, but some really amazing stories of actual mountain men in the 19th century west.

[Rays1944 · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my all-time favorite books, by one of the best writers I've encountered, at least in the nonfiction realm. It's superb.

[Lauren Hiebner · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another classic DeVoto book. Reading this you feel like you are sitting around a campfire listening to tales of the Rocky Mountain fur trade. He sees this event in western history as helping to develop an American character and individualism and the key to development of the frontier. DeVoto’s story is about the glory days of the Rocky Mountain fur trade and the passing of those times. Fur traders became guides for pioneers as the fur trade declined. The newcomers were missionaries and pioneer/emigrants. DeVoto is somewhat critical of both. Missionaries he says, “claim to bring Christ but in thinking so they were deceived. They were agents of a historical energy and what they brought was the United States. If it looked like religion it was nevertheless Manifest Destiny.” Regarding the pioneers, DeVoto saw them as often stupid, arrogant, greenhorns that made repeated mistakes in relating to nature, the Natives and fur traders. So here in the Rockies the “old West” met the “new West” and was being transformed into a different frontier.
DeVoto does a great job of describing the characteristics of each individual Native American tribe encountered by the fur traders. He also says that when the Native Americans first encountered manufactured goods it was the fatal end of a civilization. A quote from DeVoto is, “The story of civilizing the Indian is only a story of degrading him.” DeVoto feels that he has to explain the impact of smallpox on the Native Americans. He points out that there was a power vacuum due to smallpox which allowed the Sioux and other Plains tribes to move in. Also, he correctly points out that while smallpox came from whites, it was not something the fur traders or fur companies wanted as it decimated the tribes that provided furs/hides for business. Written in the 1940s, still a good read.

[Wayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book 17 of 2023: Across the Wide Missouri by Bernard DeVoto (1947, [1998] Mariner Books, 450 p.)

DeVoto's Pulitzer Prize winning history of the mountain man and fur trapping at its height and decline over 6 years (1832-38). The book is framed with the adventures of Scottish lord Capt. William Drummond Smith and his artist Alfred Jacob Miller. Stewart left behind rich descriptions of his interaction with the mountain men of the various fur trapping companies. Miller left behind a rich visual depictions of mountain men, life on the plains and in the mountains, Indians and their culture, and the glorious Green River rendezvous. It is unfortunate that the modern printings of the book do not include the reproductions of the original.

This is the second of DeVoto's Wester History trilogy (both in chronology and publication). It took me a bit to get into, but it is well written and well researched. It helped that I began to connect the dots between places I've visited along the Green River in Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain west. Just a few weeks ago, I was in the area of the Green River rendezvous kayaking the upper Green River. We paddled past many of the historical locations and placenames mentioned in the narrative. I even visited the Mountain Man Museum in Pinedale (Pinedale) that contained visual and artifactual versions of this history, including some reproductions of Miller's paintings.

The books ends as the sun sets on the fur trapping industry and rises on the Western emigration along the various trails as colonists migrated to Oregon and California.

I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it for folks interested in the white colonization and explorations of the American West.

The book also includes a wonderful set of maps.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

This did not start out as an easy book to get into but it was well worth the effort. Each chapter stands on its own even-though some of the same early west characters appear many times throughout 20-year period being studied. The author is a first rate writer and historian and he has drawn on both primary and secondary sources. He also includes his own interpretation of events when individual accounts differed. I found it interesting to compare the relationships between the trappers and various of the Native American tribes that were encountered. Overall this book provides an excellent perspective on period following the Lewis and Clark expedition and the opening of the west and the Indian wars.

[June · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the historical significance of the age of fur trade. I loved the beautiful artwork of the Baltimore artist the went west. I loved the explanations of the geography of mid continent in the early 1800s.

The subject of fur trading history is so big, I think I needed a step back for a look at the broader topic - geography of the entire North American continent, with a broad look at the various companies and individuals involved. I found myself repeatedly researching and looking at historical maps. I’m glad I worked with this book, but it was too detailed with a narrow perspective.

[Anthony Friscia · Rating 4 out of 5]

DeVoto’s books will always be meticulously researched and well-written. This one covers the 1830’s and the trapping culture in the northern Rockies. It provides an excellent glimpse into the life of those (mostly) men - the trapping, the Native Americans, the climate, the place. The book centers at first around the big rivalry between the to big fur trading companies of the time, and that gets a little complex and I lost track of many of the names, but it’s all worth it for the little vignettes he paints.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent read. This book was published in 1947, so a reader might notice a style not seen today. Some of the language might seem stilted or arcane. He gives a realistic account of living in mountains of the west among Indians and the other perils. I like that he is not apologetic of what was then the norm.

[Tommy Hayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the rrading is a little rough at places having been written over a century ago, it is very imformative and interesting. The artwork alone is wonderful as it is from artists who were out West in the 1830's. A lot of interesting stories from the various western tribes to the pandemic to the missionaries.

[Evan Pritchard · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a bit of a slog. I liked reading about the mountain men and the different company factions glad handing and back stabbing one another, but DeVoto is long-winded and his exhaustive history is exhausting to read. I felt like I deserved some sort of merit badge for getting through it.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fine book from a writer I very much enjoy, but as a work of History it has a somewhat dated feel. DeVoto throws around too many colloquialisms and too much purple prose for my modern taste. Still, lots of interesting tidbits among the raw ore.

[M. H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A comprehensive look at the era of the mountain men and the importance it had in the development of the West. His coverage of the American Fur Company and its northern Red River Settlement was most interesting.

[Barbara Langlois · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did not finish. Another reviewer noted that it read like a textbook. I have no problem with textbooks as long as they are interesting. This one was boring. Major disappointment as it has been on my “to read“ list for many years and I am a history buff, very much interested in western US history.

[Rita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it - so full of history

[East To · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like this book - chronicling the Rocky Mountain fur trade of the 1830s.

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unique style. Loved the book.

[Mateo Toledo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extenso ensayo, confuso pero interesante

[Mike]

Too much blather. Good subject matter wasted on

[Kasey Lawson · Rating 1 out of 5]

“The nation had had two symbols of solitude, the forest and the prairies; now it had a third, the mountains.”