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Which Way to the Wild West?: Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About America's Westward Expansion
New York Times bestselling author and Newbery Honor recipient Steve Sheinkin welcomes young readers to the thrilling, tragic, and downright wild historic adventure of America’s westward expansion in Which Way to the Wild West? Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn’t Tell You About America’s Westward Expansion , featuring illustrations by Tim Robinson.
1805: Explorer William Clark reaches the Pacific Ocean and pens the badly spelled line “Ocian in view! O! the joy!” (Hey, he was an explorer, not a spelling bee champion!)
1836: Mexican general Santa Anna surrounds the Alamo, trapping 180 Texans inside and prompting Texan William Travis to declare, “I shall never surrender or retreat.”
1861: Two railroad companies, one starting in the West and one in the East, start a race to lay the most track and create a transcontinental railroad.
With a storyteller's voice and attention to the details that make history real and interesting, Steve Sheinkin delivers the wild facts about America's greatest adventure. From the Louisiana Purchase ( if you're negotiating a treaty for your country, play it cool.) to the gold rush (there were only three ways to get to California--all of them bad) to the life of the cowboy, the Indian wars, and the everyday happenings that defined living on the frontier.
“An engaging...medley of anecdotes about the Wild West in nine lively chapters starting with the Louisiana Purchase and ending with the Lakota massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. Casual vignettes of famous figures and ordinary people come to life.” ― School Library Journal
“Sheinkin builds his conversational narrative around stories of the men and women who peopled the west, with particular attention given to African Americans, Chinese workers, and everyday farmers and cowboys. There's plenty of humor here, but Sheinkin's strength is his ability to transition between events.”― The Horn Book
Also by Steve
The Race to Build―and Steal―the World's Most Dangerous Weapon
The Notorious Benedict A True Story of Adventure, Heroism & Treachery
The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights
Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team
Most Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War
King What Was His Problem?: Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About the American Revolution
Two Miserable Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About the Civil War
Born to The First Women's Air Race Across America
1805: Explorer William Clark reaches the Pacific Ocean and pens the badly spelled line “Ocian in view! O! the joy!” (Hey, he was an explorer, not a spelling bee champion!)
1836: Mexican general Santa Anna surrounds the Alamo, trapping 180 Texans inside and prompting Texan William Travis to declare, “I shall never surrender or retreat.”
1861: Two railroad companies, one starting in the West and one in the East, start a race to lay the most track and create a transcontinental railroad.
With a storyteller's voice and attention to the details that make history real and interesting, Steve Sheinkin delivers the wild facts about America's greatest adventure. From the Louisiana Purchase ( if you're negotiating a treaty for your country, play it cool.) to the gold rush (there were only three ways to get to California--all of them bad) to the life of the cowboy, the Indian wars, and the everyday happenings that defined living on the frontier.
“An engaging...medley of anecdotes about the Wild West in nine lively chapters starting with the Louisiana Purchase and ending with the Lakota massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. Casual vignettes of famous figures and ordinary people come to life.” ― School Library Journal
“Sheinkin builds his conversational narrative around stories of the men and women who peopled the west, with particular attention given to African Americans, Chinese workers, and everyday farmers and cowboys. There's plenty of humor here, but Sheinkin's strength is his ability to transition between events.”― The Horn Book
Also by Steve
The Race to Build―and Steal―the World's Most Dangerous Weapon
The Notorious Benedict A True Story of Adventure, Heroism & Treachery
The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights
Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team
Most Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War
King What Was His Problem?: Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About the American Revolution
Two Miserable Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About the Civil War
Born to The First Women's Air Race Across America
288 pages, Paperback
First published July 7, 2009
59 people are currently reading
490 people want to read
About the author
Steve Sheinkin
47 books692 followersFrom: http://stevesheinkin.com/about/
I was born in Brooklyn, NY, and my family lived in Mississippi and Colorado before moving back to New York and settling in the suburbs north of New York City. As a kid my favorite books were action stories and outdoor adventures: sea stories, searches for buried treasure, sharks eating people… that kind of thing. Probably my all-time favorite was a book called Mutiny on the Bounty, a novel based on the true story of a famous mutiny aboard a British ship in the late 1700s.
I went to Syracuse University and studied communications and international relations. The highlight of those years was a summer I spent in Central America, where I worked on a documentary on the streets of Nicaragua.
After college I moved to Washington, D.C., and worked for an environmental group called the National Audubon Society. Then, when my brother Ari graduated from college a few years later, we decided to move to Austin, Texas, and make movies together. We lived like paupers in a house with a hole in the floor where bugs crawled in. We wrote some screenplays, and in 1995 made our own feature film, a comedy called A More Perfect Union (filing pictured below), about four young guys who decide to secede from the Union and declare their rented house to be an independent nation. We were sure it was going to be a huge hit; actually we ended up deep in debt.
After that I moved to Brooklyn and decided to find some way to make a living as a writer. I wrote short stories, screenplays, and worked on a comic called The Adventures of Rabbi Harvey. In 2006, after literally hundreds of rejections, my first Rabbi Harvey graphic novel was finally published.
Meanwhile, I started working for an educational publishing company, just for the money. We’d hire people to write history textbooks, and they’d send in their writing, and it was my job to check facts and make little edits to clarify the text. Once in a while I was given the chance to write little pieces of textbooks, like one-page biographies or skills lessons. “Understanding Bar Graphs” was one of my early works. The editors noticed that my writing was pretty good. They started giving me less editing to do, and more writing. Gradually, I began writing chapters for textbooks, and that turned into my full-time job. All the while, I kept working on my own writing projects.
In 2008 I wrote my last textbook. I walked away, and shall never return. My first non-textbook history book was King George: What Was His Problem? – full of all the stories about the American Revolution that I was never allowed to put into textbooks. But looking back, I actually feel pretty lucky to have spent all those years writing textbooks. It forced me to write every day, which is great practice. And I collected hundreds of stories that I can’t wait to tell.
These days, I live with my wife, Rachel, and our two young kids in Saratoga Springs, New York. We’re right down the road from the Saratoga National Historical Park, the site of Benedict Arnold’s greatest – and last – victory in an American uniform. But that’s not why I moved here. Honestly.
I was born in Brooklyn, NY, and my family lived in Mississippi and Colorado before moving back to New York and settling in the suburbs north of New York City. As a kid my favorite books were action stories and outdoor adventures: sea stories, searches for buried treasure, sharks eating people… that kind of thing. Probably my all-time favorite was a book called Mutiny on the Bounty, a novel based on the true story of a famous mutiny aboard a British ship in the late 1700s.
I went to Syracuse University and studied communications and international relations. The highlight of those years was a summer I spent in Central America, where I worked on a documentary on the streets of Nicaragua.
After college I moved to Washington, D.C., and worked for an environmental group called the National Audubon Society. Then, when my brother Ari graduated from college a few years later, we decided to move to Austin, Texas, and make movies together. We lived like paupers in a house with a hole in the floor where bugs crawled in. We wrote some screenplays, and in 1995 made our own feature film, a comedy called A More Perfect Union (filing pictured below), about four young guys who decide to secede from the Union and declare their rented house to be an independent nation. We were sure it was going to be a huge hit; actually we ended up deep in debt.
After that I moved to Brooklyn and decided to find some way to make a living as a writer. I wrote short stories, screenplays, and worked on a comic called The Adventures of Rabbi Harvey. In 2006, after literally hundreds of rejections, my first Rabbi Harvey graphic novel was finally published.
Meanwhile, I started working for an educational publishing company, just for the money. We’d hire people to write history textbooks, and they’d send in their writing, and it was my job to check facts and make little edits to clarify the text. Once in a while I was given the chance to write little pieces of textbooks, like one-page biographies or skills lessons. “Understanding Bar Graphs” was one of my early works. The editors noticed that my writing was pretty good. They started giving me less editing to do, and more writing. Gradually, I began writing chapters for textbooks, and that turned into my full-time job. All the while, I kept working on my own writing projects.
In 2008 I wrote my last textbook. I walked away, and shall never return. My first non-textbook history book was King George: What Was His Problem? – full of all the stories about the American Revolution that I was never allowed to put into textbooks. But looking back, I actually feel pretty lucky to have spent all those years writing textbooks. It forced me to write every day, which is great practice. And I collected hundreds of stories that I can’t wait to tell.
These days, I live with my wife, Rachel, and our two young kids in Saratoga Springs, New York. We’re right down the road from the Saratoga National Historical Park, the site of Benedict Arnold’s greatest – and last – victory in an American uniform. But that’s not why I moved here. Honestly.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews
September 10, 2021
I really enjoy the author's writing style. He has a way of making history easy to understand and engaging. With humor and lots of interesting facts about people and events, Steve Sheinkin keeps readers entertained throughout. This is definitely not a boring history textbook, it's a history adventure!
January 17, 2013
I've only just started this book, but I LOVE STEVE SHEINKIN'S BOOKS SO MUCH I already want to give it 5 stars. These books make me wish I taught middle school history, instead of 4th grade everything. He makes history so much fun and in a way that makes sense. It so clearly explains which forefathers did what, why the governments did the things they did, and how our country came to be the way it is. I'm currently reading about making the Louisiana purchase from the French; why the Americans wanted the land, why the French wanted to sell the land, and how it all happened. Yay for Sheinkin!
Update, finished reading: I so love reading history books. Something about being able to see things that happened over long periods of time unfold in a few hundred pages... Anyway, HOLY MOLY! I knew that the treatment of Native Americans in the mid-1800s was atrocious, but I didn't realize just how horrible it was until reading these descriptions. It was saddening to read how over time, the Indians were killed off, in massacres and wars, and cheated out of land. There are lots of other aspects of American history in the book too, of course. The gold rush, the building of the transcontinental railroad, stories of immigrants flooding into the country. With that said, it most definitely is geared toward young adults. If you're looking for a very in-depth, mature, non-fiction book about American history, this is not the book for you. Sheinkin writes with humor and lightness (as "light" as you can get with some very grizzly stories anyway). It was perfect for me. I read the whole book in two sittings. It's that great!
Update, finished reading: I so love reading history books. Something about being able to see things that happened over long periods of time unfold in a few hundred pages... Anyway, HOLY MOLY! I knew that the treatment of Native Americans in the mid-1800s was atrocious, but I didn't realize just how horrible it was until reading these descriptions. It was saddening to read how over time, the Indians were killed off, in massacres and wars, and cheated out of land. There are lots of other aspects of American history in the book too, of course. The gold rush, the building of the transcontinental railroad, stories of immigrants flooding into the country. With that said, it most definitely is geared toward young adults. If you're looking for a very in-depth, mature, non-fiction book about American history, this is not the book for you. Sheinkin writes with humor and lightness (as "light" as you can get with some very grizzly stories anyway). It was perfect for me. I read the whole book in two sittings. It's that great!
February 8, 2022
After reading this book I want to watch a John Wayne movie!
October 27, 2022
Sheinkin's passion for history and the Wild West shows in this story about westward expansion in the United States and pioneer life.
April 2, 2023
A fun, easy, and entertaining way to learn about the westward expansion.
April 4, 2024
Love it. One of my favorites for kids...and for myself.
July 10, 2020
I don’t usually read nonfiction, but when I do, I always like to read Steve Sheinkin books. Which Way To The Wild West was very interesting and I learned a lot of new things about the Westward Expansion that I didn’t know already. Sheinkin writes nonfiction in such a captivating way. Five Stars!
September 23, 2014
So good; so interesting; so sad. The history of the US west for about a century is so concisely summed up here with so many interesting anecdotes. As with his Civil War and Revolutionary War books, most adults would enjoy and benefit from these books as a good way to get the big picture in our heads.
The story of the gold rush was incredibly interesting. The constant background of how bad America killed the native tribes, stole their land, and confined them to reservations is heart breaking. A Red Cloud quote at the end was very accurate I thought:
"The white man broke all of their promises but one. They promised they would take our land. And they did."
Highly, highly recommended for all ages!
The story of the gold rush was incredibly interesting. The constant background of how bad America killed the native tribes, stole their land, and confined them to reservations is heart breaking. A Red Cloud quote at the end was very accurate I thought:
"The white man broke all of their promises but one. They promised they would take our land. And they did."
Highly, highly recommended for all ages!
October 27, 2009
Recommended Ages: grades 5 and up
Learn about the drama, discoveries, dirty deeds, and derring-do that helped win the American West. With a storyteller's voice and attention to the details that make history real and interesting, Sheinken delivers America's greatest adventure.
I am a huge history buff and really enjoyed reading this book. There were a lot of facts about the West that I never knew. The books was broken up into small sections, which helped keep it flowing. The author had a very humorous writing style which would appeal to students bored with the stiff text of their school books.
Learn about the drama, discoveries, dirty deeds, and derring-do that helped win the American West. With a storyteller's voice and attention to the details that make history real and interesting, Sheinken delivers America's greatest adventure.
I am a huge history buff and really enjoyed reading this book. There were a lot of facts about the West that I never knew. The books was broken up into small sections, which helped keep it flowing. The author had a very humorous writing style which would appeal to students bored with the stiff text of their school books.
March 16, 2015
Sheinkin opens this book with a sheepish confession that he was a textbook writer, but that his bosses ruined his work by replacing all his really interesting material with boring charts and graphs. He then goes on to assure his readers that this book is loaded with all the "funny, amazing, inspiring, surprising, and disgusting stories" that history books should have. He is telling the truth... it was all those things. Really fun. Great supplemental teaching material for late Elementary and Middle School History.
February 11, 2018
It was an interesting quick read, this is Steven's strength. It was a fact-packed, interesting adventure and made nonfiction seem like a fantasy. I think I enjoyed it more than its prequel because we didn't learn about it in social studies yet. This is a reread.
May 29, 2017
It's so fun to go back and read about the things I didn't appreciate in school in the way Sheinkin approaches the material.
January 10, 2018
History that was informative & exciting, with just the right amount of humor.
December 23, 2024
Read this aloud to an 11yo boy (5th grade). He loved it, even with me asking him fairly regularly to recall dates-ish. It was humorous when it could be, told quickly, and acknowledged several embarrassing aspects of American history (especially bald-faced greed), which school generally downplays. Great read after your kid has already studied Westward Expansion, because it provides a different view, which is essential for raising critical thinkers.
Eleven is the youngest age for which I think this could be appropriate. The more empathetic the child, the older he/she should be before getting this, and having a trusted adult read aloud will be helpful to process some of the history.
I recommend it, honestly I think many adults who are not history buffs would enjoy it too. It was a great stage on which to share my values through facial expressions and a little discussion. I don't know if my son's more considerate behavior lately is tied to our reading together, reading this in particular, or something else entirely, but it has coincided with this book. :)
Eleven is the youngest age for which I think this could be appropriate. The more empathetic the child, the older he/she should be before getting this, and having a trusted adult read aloud will be helpful to process some of the history.
I recommend it, honestly I think many adults who are not history buffs would enjoy it too. It was a great stage on which to share my values through facial expressions and a little discussion. I don't know if my son's more considerate behavior lately is tied to our reading together, reading this in particular, or something else entirely, but it has coincided with this book. :)
October 24, 2022
WHOA!
Could this book be any better? Nope. It's amazing.
I'm reading along with my 5th grader, because when I found out this was the class lesson, I wanted in! I had posted many years ago on Facebook asking friends from elementary, middle or high school if we ever learned about Lewis & Clark, and no one could remember it. I really feel like there was a whole part of history I missed somehow, by not having chronological history classes through school. Like - we definitely learned about the Civil War, but we did not learn what ELSE was happening in the country at the same time period. A huge flaw of the education I received.
Thank you Steve Sheinkin for this awesome book on a topic I felt wasn't served well by my own education and a topic I'm supremely interested in. Bravo.
Could this book be any better? Nope. It's amazing.
I'm reading along with my 5th grader, because when I found out this was the class lesson, I wanted in! I had posted many years ago on Facebook asking friends from elementary, middle or high school if we ever learned about Lewis & Clark, and no one could remember it. I really feel like there was a whole part of history I missed somehow, by not having chronological history classes through school. Like - we definitely learned about the Civil War, but we did not learn what ELSE was happening in the country at the same time period. A huge flaw of the education I received.
Thank you Steve Sheinkin for this awesome book on a topic I felt wasn't served well by my own education and a topic I'm supremely interested in. Bravo.
December 1, 2025
I feel like it did a good job trying to balance the traditionally told history of the United States (white, male-centric) with more diverse perspectives, especially considering it was written 16 years ago (2009). The author very clearly did his research for this book and included primary source notes from Chinese workers on the railroad, Black cowboys and miners, women homesteaders, and - crucially - first person accounts from several Native American tribes about how the American westward expansion impacted their lives and peoples. Although it was geared toward a younger audience I had fun reading this book.
December 28, 2021
These are not just for young adults - these are for all ages!
I learned more about my country from the revolution to the civil war and finally the expansion to the west in just 3 of the author’s books than I did in 18 years of schooling.
Throw out every school’s history books and replace them with these / our children will not just learn names and dates and forget them the minute the test is over but will remember through the voices and anecdotes of the people actually there what it was like and how certain events change the course of history.
Note: I’m 62 - is that a young adult?
I learned more about my country from the revolution to the civil war and finally the expansion to the west in just 3 of the author’s books than I did in 18 years of schooling.
Throw out every school’s history books and replace them with these / our children will not just learn names and dates and forget them the minute the test is over but will remember through the voices and anecdotes of the people actually there what it was like and how certain events change the course of history.
Note: I’m 62 - is that a young adult?
Read
July 10, 2025This book tells the true story of how people moved west across America in the 1800s. It’s not boring like a textbook’sit is funny, easy to read, and full of cool facts! You’ll learn about people looking for land, gold, and adventure. There are maps to help you see where everything happened. The book also shows how Native Americans were treated unfairly during this time. It has fun pictures and real stories that your schoolbook might leave out. It’s a great book if you like history that feels like an adventure!
December 11, 2020
I did like Two miserable Presidents better but this one was still good. Steve Sheinkin writes great historical books. I love how he makes the books funny so its more enjoyable to read. I would recommend this book to anyone of all ages. I learned a lot of stuff about the westward expansion that i didnt know about.
May 23, 2022
It was written well and I liked the authors writing style. I think the author did a good job of making it interesting and I enjoyed some of the stories in the book. It was not hard to understand unlike some history textbooks. I’m not so clueless about American history now. The doodles in the book were cute and related well to the stuff going on. Would maybe read again if i’m not forced to.
October 3, 2019
I really liked this book. It helped me understand and learn things about the wild west. It really gives you a backround of famous people back then. I would recommend this book to people who want to learn more things about history.
April 22, 2022
This series from Steve Sheinkin is the best for reading about American history to kids. So many details and quotes and side stories that are so interesting and engaging. I’ve learned SO much reading them to my kids.
December 13, 2024
This is a fun little book weaving together a broad narrative with interesting historical tidbits that help anchor the slippy parts of history within their larger context. I thoroughly enjoyed this little gem that is far outside of my regular literary tastes.
September 25, 2017
i liked it
November 17, 2019
Sheinkin writes a view of history that isn't sugarcoated. It's very brutal, but also presented in a funny way.
April 8, 2020
Well researched nonfiction about the Wild West. Source and quotation notes, thorough index. Engaging style with maps and drawings.
Grades 6-9.
Grades 6-9.
October 24, 2020
Yet another history shortcut for me. I'm not big on non-fiction reading, but Steve Sheinkin's young adult books help me learn a little history without trying too hard!
December 10, 2020
Bella history book.
February 5, 2021
Really solid history of westward expansion that doesn’t shy away from the repeated horrors perpetrated on Native American tribes.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews