With a simplicity as disarming as it is frank, Left Handed tells of his birth in the spring of 1868 “when the cottonwood leaves were about the size of [his] thumbnail,” of family chores such as guardi
Over the past four decades, Bruce L. Smith has worked with most big-game species in some of the American West’s most breathtaking and challenging landscapes. In Stories from Afield, readers join Smith
David J. Wishart’s Great Plains Indians covers thirteen thousand years of fascinating, dynamic, and often tragic history. From a hunting and gathering lifestyle to first contact with Europeans to land
Jim Murray, the dean of American sportswriters, entertained readers with writing that is so good and so funny that even people who don’t like sports read him. The Jim Murray Reader gathers some
With Édouard Glissant’s The Fourth Century, the Village Voice observed, we get the full effect of his overarching project: a literary exorcism of Martinique’s scarred psyche an
It is to me that we owe our immortality, and this is the story that proves it beyond all doubt.” With this sentence René Belletto begins a novel that compresses every genre he has wo
Founded in the late 1800s as the hub of the burgeoning plains cattle trade, Ogallala serves as a microcosm of western history. The town typified western outposts of the age with cowboys—the knights-er
The fat man—a cultural icon, a social enigma, a pressing medical issue—is the subject of this remarkably rich book. The figures that Sander L. Gilman considers, from the ugly fat man with
Black ’41 opens with the arrival of the class of 1941 at the gates of West Point in the spring of 1937. It follows that class—nicknamed “Black ’41” for their misdeeds wh
“With eighty men I could ride through the entire Sioux nation.” The story of the Fetterman Fight, near Fort Phil Kearney in present-day Wyoming in 1866, is based entirely on this infamous
William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody was the entertainment industry’s first international celebrity, achieving worldwide stardom with his traveling Wild West show. For three decades he op
Shell shock, battle fatigue, posttraumatic stress disorder, lack of moral courage: different terms for the same mental condition, formal names that change with observed circumstances and whenever exp
With Final Innings Dean Sullivan concludes his four-volume documentary history of baseball, whose three earlier volumes have been called “a broad array of illuminating and often unexpected mate
Not many people in Midbury especially liked F. Y. Grimsley, a rancher with twenty thousand acres and five hundred head of cattle. Still, when Grimsley is found dead on his back doorstep with a mysteri
In this stunningly original collection of seventeen short stories, Terese Svoboda navigates a terrain of alienation and loss with searing, poetic prose.“I talk like a lady who knows what
When Francis Schmidt, a bow tie–wearing law school graduate with a bombastic personality, got started as a volunteer high school coach, football still followed Victorian tenets of caution and s
The two silent Ss of Des Moines beckon twenty-three-year-old Vivette with a sexy finger, a promise. So, in the mid-1990s, she convinces Grandpa Joe-Joe to sell his Buick for twenty dollars, leaves be
In his study of the civilian population that fell victim to the brutality of the 1860s Kansas Indian wars, Jeff Broome recounts the captivity of Susanna Alderdice, who was killed along with three of h
When Hillevi, a young, inexperienced midwife, moves from the university town of Uppsala to the wilderness of Svartvattnet (Blackwater) to be with her unofficial fiance, she is ill prepared for what aw
The first Japanese American jockey, Kokomo Joe burst like a comet on the American horse-racing scene in the summer of 1941. As war with Japan loomed, Yoshio “Kokomo Joe” Kobuki won race a
He was not much of a player and not much more of a manager, but by the time Branch Rickey (1881–1965) finished with baseball, he had revolutionized the sport—not just once but three times
On October 26, 1881, Wyatt Earp, his two brothers, and Doc Holliday shot it out with a gang of cattle rustlers near the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. It was over in half a minute, but those thirt
Lt. Charles B. Gatewood (1853–96), an educated Virginian, served in the Sixth U.S. Cavalry as the commander of Indian scouts. Gatewood was largely accepted by the Native peoples with whom he wo
How do you live in Algeria when you grow up speaking French, with a French mother? How do you live in France when you’ve spent your childhood in Algeria with an Algerian father? Tomboy is the story of
Bloomfield Academy was founded in 1852 by the Chickasaw Nation in conjunction with missionaries. It remained open for nearly a century, offering Chickasaw girls one of the finest educations in the We
For more than a century, Americans have been captivated by the legend of General George Armstrong Custer. But the various truths of Custer’s life and last stand prove elusive. Why are we so taken with
Best known for catching wolves alive with his bare hands, John R. Abernathy (1876–1941) was born to Scottish ancestors in Texas. Raised in the burgeoning railroad town of Sweetwater, Abernathy conside
Marcel Proust's literary masterpiece À la recherche du temps perdu overflows with brilliant, minutely described accounts of food and drink drawn from the author's vivid memories. After all, it w
Ever since American soldiers returned home after World War II with a passion for pate and escargots instead of pork and beans, our preferences have moved from cooked to raw, from canned to fresh, from
Dave Meggyesy had been an outside linebacker with the St. Louis Cardinals for seven years when he quit at the height of his career to tell about the dehumanizing side of the game - about the fraud an
Ira Berkow presents a unique look at America's premier sport - and its fans - through interviews with a remarkable cross section of widely known and extraordinarily accomplished individuals in a vari
In these pages you will come to fall in love with a ruggedly diverse and strikingly beautiful state, a land that takes hold and won’t let go. Montana: High, Wide, and Handsome is widely recognized as
“I became what the Crows call káalisbaapite—a ‘grandmother’s grandchild.’ That means that I was always with my Grandma, and I learned from her. I learned how to do
The Robber, Robert Walser’s last novel, tells the story of a dreamer on a journey of self-discovery. It is a hybrid of love story, tragedy, and farce, with a protagonist who sweet-talks teaspoo
From the same corral that produced the widely loved Horse Tradin’, Ben K. Green has rounded up fifteen new yarns filled with the ornery yet irresistible style that has earned his books a place
In 1910 young Loren Eiseley watched the passage of Halley’s Comet with his father. The boy who became a famous naturalist was never again to see the spectacle except in his imagination. That childhood
Ella Deloria could speak intimately about Indian ways because she belonged to a Yankton Sioux family. A distinguished scholar who studied with Franz Boas at Columbia University, she had the gift of l
In this new and enlarged edition the editors have built on an already strong collection with four new accounts. Colorado pioneer Augusta Tabor gives a sense of the heady days as Leadville became a ma
Abigail Jane Scott was seventeen when she left Illinois with her family in the spring of 1852. Her record of the journey west is full of expressive detail: breakfasting in a snowstorm, walking behind
“Are you acquainted with Tolstoy’s The Gospel in Brief? At its time, this book virtually kept me alive. . . . If you are not acquainted with it, then you cannot imagine what an effect it can have upon
