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Agnes Morley Cleaveland found lasting fame after publishing her memoir, No Life for a Lady, in 1941. In Open Range, Darlis Miller expands our understanding of Cleaveland's significance, showing how a young girl who was a fearless risk-taker grew up to be a prolific author and social activist.

In a career in public office spanning five decades, Mark Odom Hatfield (1922-2011) never lost an election. This book tells Hatfield's story-as an Oregonian, a politician, and a man of practical vision, deep convictions, and far-reaching consequence in the civic life of the state and the nation.

Although Calamity Jane has probably been written about more than any other woman of the nineteenth-century American West, fiction and legend have largely obscured the facts of her life. This lively, concise, and exhaustively researched biography traces the real person.

In this biography, Robert Carriker describes De Smet's love for the great American West and the native tribes who lived there, the Potawatomis, Flatheads, Coeur d'Alenes, Kalispels, Blackfeet, Yankton Sioux, and others to whom the Jesuit father carried Christianity. Soon the man called Black Robe became known throughout the mountains and plains as a man of peace and a friend of all Indians. Yet this book looks at De Smet as more than a mere courier of Christianity to the western tribes and an establisher of missions among the Indians. De Smet was also a fund raiser extraordinary for his order on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean as well as a writer of travel books read avidly by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. With the nearly quarter of a million nineteenth-century dollars he raised in his lifetime, and with the addition of his own family's funds, De Smet kept the Jesuits' underfunded western Indian missions alive. Deeply sensitive to criticism by his fellow Jesuits, De Smet did not always enjoy community living. He felt most at home on the frontier, where he maintained his reputation as an affable companion on the trail, whether seated in a canoe or astride a mule, until his death in 1873.

More than any other pioneer of the genre, Owen Wister turned the Western into a form of social and political critique. In this biographical-literary account of Wister's life and writings, Gary Scharnhorst shows how the West shaped Wister's career and ideas, even as he lived and worked in the East.

Charles Goodnight was a pioneer of the early range cattle industry-an opinionated and profane but energetic and well-liked rancher.Goodnight's story is now re-examined by William T. Hagan in this brief, authoritative account that considers the role of ranching in general-and Goodnight in particular-in the development of the Texas Panhandle. The first major reassessment of his life in seventy years, Charles Goodnight: Father of the Texas Panhandle traces its subject's life from hardscrabble farmer to cattle baron, giving close attention to lesser-known aspects of his last thirty years.Goodnight came up in the days when much of Texas was free range and open to occupancy by any cattleman brave enough to stake a claim. Hagan shows how Goodnight learned the cattle business and became one of the most famous ranchers of the Southwest. Hagan also presents a clearer picture than ever before of Goodnight's business arrangements and investments, including the financial setbacks of his later life.As entertaining as it is informative, Hagan's account takes readers back to the Palo Duro Canyon and the Staked Plains to share insights into the cattleman's life-riding the range, fighting grass fires, driving cattle to the nearest railhead-the very stuff of cowboy legend and lore. This fascinating biography enriches our understanding of a Texas icon.

Nearly a century after John Muir's death, his works remain in print, his name is familiar and his thought is much with us. How Muir's life made him a leader and brought him insights destined to resonate for decades is the central question underlying this biography.

The son of white captive Cynthia Ann Parker, Quanah Parker rose from able warrior to tribal leader on the Comanche reservation. In this crisp and readable biography, William Hagan presents a well-balanced portrait of Quanah Parker, the chief, and Quanah, the man torn between two worlds.

With a widowed mother and six siblings, Annie Oakley first became a trapper, hunter, and sharpshooter simply to put food on the table. Yet her genius with the gun eventually led to her stardom in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show during the latter half of the nineteenth century. The archetypal western woman, Annie Oakley urged women to take up shooting to procure food, protect themselves, and enjoy healthy exercise, yet she was also the proper Victorian lady, demurely dressed and skeptical about the value of women’s suffrage. Glenda Riley presents the first interpretive biography of the complex woman who was Annie Oakley.

A steadfast champion of his people during the wars with encroaching Anglo-Americans, the Apache chief Victorio deserves as much attention as his better-known contemporaries. In presenting his story, Kathleen Chamberlain expands our understanding of Victorio's role in the Apache wars and brings him into the centre of events.

An interpretive biography of the builder of the transcontinental railroad. An entrepreneur, Hill spent 15 years building what was to become the Great Northern Railway. His story touches on transportation, agriculture, mining, and town building, as the author explores Hill's complex life.

Seeking the Northwest Passage and the fabled like to Russia, Japan, and Cathay, Alexander Mackenzie drove himself and his men relentlessly, by canoe and portage, across the uncharted rivers, valleys, and mountains of North America. Mackenzie's 1789 journey to the Arctic Ocean and his arduous journey to the Pacific in 1793 predate the Lewis and Clark expedition. By the age of thirty-one Alexander Mackenzie had become the first man to cross North America from the northwestern hub of the interior trade, Lake Athabasca in present-day northern Alberta, to the Pacific Ocean. He had opened the continent to trade and exploration.Mackenzie was a man of enormous ego and overpowering ambition. He left Scotland in search of opportunity in the North American fur trade and achieved success through a combination of bold exploits, grim determination, and business acumen. Mackenzie returned to his homeland late in life to be knighted, marry, and live a more genteel life, leaving behind a Métis family in North America. His celebrated book Voyages from Montreal remains an enduring classic of world travel literature.In his research, Barry Gough traveled from Mackenzie's birthplace to his tomb and from Montreal to the Arctic Ocean and to the Pacific. He takes the reader along with Mackenzie on his hazardous travels and voyages, using contemporary accounts to bring to life the problems and perils faced by the young explorer. First Across the Continent reveals the international impact of Sir Alexander Mackenzie's expeditions and places him among the elite of New World explorers, illuminating his vital role in the history of the fur trade and the American West.

Narcissa Whitman was a pioneer missionary who, in 1836, travelled with her husband to Oregon and there sought to convert the Cayuse Indians to Christianity. This biography makes use of Whitman's diary and letters in order to reconstruct her difficult adjustment to mission life.

The first Harte biography in nearly seventy years to be written entirely from primary sources, this book documents Harte's personal relationships and, in addition, his negotiations with various publishers, agents, and theatrical producers as he exploited popular interest in the American West.

Farm worker and labour organizer Cesar Chavez first burst into America's consciousness in 1965 and put the issue of Mexican American civil rights on the national agenda. This biography examines his work and life in the context of Chicano and American history.