Dreams of El Dorado: A History of the American West

by H. W. Brands

Overview

"Epic in its scale, fearless in its scope" (Hampton Sides), this masterfully told account of the American West from a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist sets a new standard as it sweeps from the California Gold Rush and beyond.


In Dreams of El Dorado, H. W. Brands tells the thrilling, panoramic story of the settling of the American West. He takes us from John Jacob Astor's fur trading outpost in Oregon to the Texas Revolution, from the California gold rush to the Oklahoma land rush. He shows how the migrants' dreams drove them to feats of courage and perseverance that put their stay-at-home cousins to shame-and how those same dreams also drove them to outrageous acts of violence against indigenous peoples and one another. The West was where riches would reward the miner's persistence, the cattleman's courage, the railroad man's enterprise; but El Dorado was at least as elusive in the West as it ever was in the East.

Balanced, authoritative, and masterfully told, Dreams of El Dorado sets a new standard for histories of the American West.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541672543
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	10/20/2020
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	544
Sales rank:	174,986
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

H. W. Brands holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. chair in history at the University of Texas at Austin. A New York Times-bestselling author, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography for The First American and Traitor to His Class. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Table of Contents

Prologue xi

Part I Napoleon's Gift

1 The River at the Heart of America 3

2 The Corps of Discovery 9

3 West by Northwest 20

4 To the Pacific 25

Part II A Skin for a Skin

5 Astoria 39

6 Comcomly's Dismay 51

7 The White-Headed Eagle 55

8 Mountain Man 63

9 Colter's Run 70

10 Ursus Horribilis 76

Part III Gone To Texas

11 Moses Austin's Dying Wish 87

12 Texas Will Be Lost 94

13 Ruin and Redemption 101

14 Victory or Death 108

15 Bloody Palm Sunday 115

16 Laying There Yet 119

Part IV The Great Migration

17 The Four Wise Men 129

18 Females Wanted 140

19 Trapped Out 151

20 Waiilatpu 158

21 For God and Country 163

22 The Way West 168

23 The Business of the Trail 184

24 Desperate Fury 198

25 Ambassador from Oregon 208

Part V The World in a Nugget of Gold

26 The Secret of the Sierra Nevada 219

27 Gold Mountain 229

28 Crime and Punishment 242

29 The Spirit of'87 253

30 To Be Decently Poor 258

31 Where Can We Go? 265

Part VI Steel Rails and Sharps Rifles

32 Stephen Douglas's Brainstorm 277

33 North, South, West 283

34 Free Soil 287

35 Hell on Wheels 291

36 Saints and Sinners 303

37 Once We Were Happy 317

38 There Would Be No Soldiers Left 329

39 Adobe Walls 341

40 Lost River 353

41 The Pride of Young Joseph 362

Part VII The Middle Border

42 Abilene 373

43 Hard Lesson 387

44 Into the Great Unknown 393

45 The Arid Region 411

46 More Like Us 421

47 It Grew Very Cold 433

48 Less Corn and More Hell 440

49 Bonanza 448

Part VIII The Cowboy in the White House

50 Rough Riding 455

51 West Takes East 464

52 Cashing In 468

53 John Muir's Last Stand 472

54 The Long, Long Trail 478

Acknowledgments 483

Notes 485

Index 507

Editorial Reviews

"Lively...[Brands] knows how to write in a popular style that draws us in and holds our interest...[He] also pauses to make some thought-provoking insights, which round out the narrative and present his subject in a fresh light...An engaging, eminently readable introduction."—Wall Street Journal

"An exciting new history of the American West and how it was settled, from the California gold rush to the Oklahoma land rush and more."—New York Post

"[Brands] has a deft narrative touch and a talent for highlighting the human drama undergirding historical events...History as adventure story."—Los Angeles Reviewof Books

"[A] fine new history."—Houston Chronicle

"Brands surveys the past three centuries of the West, chronicling all-too-human tales of hope, greed, triumph, tragedy, and irony. His history is propelled by the stories of amazing characters, some famous, others obscure...A marvelous short history of the West, rewarding both expert and neophyte readers."—Booklist (starredreview)

"Brands is a master storyteller...[Dreams of El Dorado] will enthrall aficionados of 19th-century American history."—Library Journal

"A lively, well-written survey full of novel observations on a region shrouded in legend."—Kirkus

"Brands argues convincingly that the reality of the American West was very different than the way it was mythologized...Lucid prose and short, tightly focused chapters...This broad but clearly structured study, with its many well-chosen illustrations, is likely to have wide appeal."—Publishers Weekly

"The expansion of the United States across what would become the American West is the sort of sprawling, tumultuous epic that is best told by a calm and concentrated mind. Fortunately the author of this book is H.W. Brands, who has the vision and supreme narrative skill to braid the chaotic tendrils that make up the past into a story that is almost as exciting for its coherence as it is for the heroic and heartbreaking events it so vividly renders. Dreams of El Dorado is the latest reason to think of Brands as America's go-to historian."—Stephen Harrigan, author of Big Wonderful Thing and The Gates of the Alamo

"A subject this monumental demands prose to match it, and I am pleased that to report that, in this sprawling epic, H. W. Brands is at his sparkling best. He is of the American West and grew up in its myths, which may explain why he writes about it with such passion and clarity."—S. C. Gwynne, New York Times bestselling author of Empire of the Summer Moon and Rebel Yell

"The 'winning' of the American West is that biggest and most daunting of subjects, so big that most historians have found it necessary to bite off small corners of this grand and sordid tale of empire-building. But here H.W. Brands endeavors to tell it all, from Texas to California, from beaver pelts to buffalo robes, from the hoofbeats of horses to the steam blasts of the first transcontinental trains. Epic in its scale, fearless in its scope, this is a bravura performance from one of our master historians."—Hampton Sides, bestselling author of Blood and Thunder

From the Publisher

08/26/2019

University of Texas historian Brands (Heirs of the Founders) argues convincingly that the reality of the American West was very different than the way it was mythologized: as the epitome of the nation’s frontier spirit, where the individual could ignore the rules of government and society and, ideally, strike it rich. Surveying the region’s history from the Louisiana Purchase through the closing of the frontier, Brands ably recounts the stories of individuals such as Thomas Jefferson, who was both thrilled and alarmed by the immensity of this newly acquired territory; the merchant John Jacob Astor, whose attempt to gain control of the Pacific Northwest’s fur trade collapsed in an orgy of violence between his agents and local Native Americans; and the missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, who ventured to Oregon to proselytize to the indigenous people but were brutally murdered by members of the Cayuse tribe, who blamed them for the lethal spread of measles. He also introduces readers to lesser-known figures, such as the quartz mine workers of post–Gold Rush California, who brought the Industrial Revolution to the Pacific frontier, and the Irish and Chinese migrants whose back-breaking labors built the Transcontinental Railroad. Brands delivers lucid prose and short, tightly focused chapters. This broad but clearly structured study, with its many well-chosen illustrations, is likely to have wide appeal. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

With his baritone voice, narrator Matt Kugler does well in delivering this engaging account of the settlement of the West. From the Lewis and Clark expedition, 1804-1806, to the Oklahoma Land Rush in 1889, we see men and women at their best, and worst. From courageous and daring deeds to acts of utmost cruelty, Brands provides a cogent overview of how our nation grew into a continental power. Kugler’s delivery can border on being dramatic, but he doesn’t overdo it. His pacing is deliberate but not pondering. He enunciates well but uses the same voice for both quotes and narrative. M.T.F. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2019 - AudioFile

With his baritone voice, narrator Matt Kugler does well in delivering this engaging account of the settlement of the West. From the Lewis and Clark expedition, 1804-1806, to the Oklahoma Land Rush in 1889, we see men and women at their best, and worst. From courageous and daring deeds to acts of utmost cruelty, Brands provides a cogent overview of how our nation grew into a continental power. Kugler’s delivery can border on being dramatic, but he doesn’t overdo it. His pacing is deliberate but not pondering. He enunciates well but uses the same voice for both quotes and narrative. M.T.F. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2019 - AudioFile

2019-08-04
The prolific American historian turns his attention to the conquest of the West.

As Brands (Chair, History/Univ. of Texas; Heirs of the Founders: The Epic Rivalry of Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel Webster, the Second Generation of American Giants, 2018, etc.) notes in opening, the American West was, in ancient times, the Asian East and the Beringian South. By the time Thomas Jefferson signed off on the Louisiana Purchase, it was definitively part of North America, contested by European powers but almost inevitably a part of the United States. The author identifies three commanding themes in Western history: the capacity of the region for "the evoking and shattering of dreams," a pattern of constant violence, and unparalleled irony "in the form of paradox, contradiction and unintended consequence." Emblematic of the first was Theodore Roosevelt's dream of ranching in the Dakota Territory, a failed enterprise that nonetheless cast New York City native Roosevelt as "that damned cowboy," as politician Mark Hanna called him. The second figures throughout the author's lucid, fluent narrative at places like the Alamo and Wounded Knee. (One of the recurrent characters is the Sioux leader Black Elk, who lived a long life after many key battles.) Brands locates irony in the fact that the West gave us the iconic figures of the lone gunfighter and stalwart settler while the conquest of the region was emphatically an exercise in collective power on the part of the federal government. Another irony, especially given current events in the region, is the fact that "by scores, then by hundreds and thousands, illegal immigrants poured into Texas" in the 1820s—illegal immigrants from, that is, the U.S., creating the conditions that led to war with Mexico. The author turns up little-known historical facts: two subsequent invasions of Texas, after the collapse of Mexican rule under Santa Anna, by Mexican armies; the admission of California as a state in which slavery was illegal—but where blacks were almost forbidden to enter; and many more, lending depth to his narrative.

A lively, well-written survey full of novel observations on a region shrouded in legend.

Kirkus Reviews