A richly researched, evocative account of the individuals and institutions involved in the settling of the non-Indian West—and of the impact of the developmen

The West, especially the Intermountain states, ranks among the whitest places in America, but this fact obscures the more complicated history of racial diversit

"[A] fascinating and indispensable book."—Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times Best Books of 2018—The Guardian Gold Medal for Contribution to Publishing, 2

To many Americans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the West was simultaneously the greatest symbol of American opportunity, the greatest story of its

A groundbreaking history of how the US Post made the nineteenth-century American West. There were five times as many post offices in the United States in 1899 t