When James K. Polk was elected president in 1844, the United States was locked in a bitter diplomatic struggle with Britain over the rich lands of the Oregon Territory, which included what is now Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Texas, not yet part of the Union, was threatened by a more powerful Mexico. And the territories north and west of Texas-what would become California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and part of Colorado-belonged to Mexico....

"As a boy, Robert Kaplan recalls his father driving trucks across the country to earn a living for his family, a man who witnessed and understood America from a ground-level perspective. In Earning the Rockies, Kaplan undertakes his own cross-country journey to recapture an appreciation and understanding of American geography that is often lost in the jet age. Along the way, he witnesses both prosperity and decline--increasingly cosmopolitan cities...

It is the mid-eighteenth century, and in the 13 colonies founded by Great Britain, anxious colonists desperate to conquer and settle North America's "First Frontier" beyond the Appalachian Mountains commence a series of bloody battles. These violent conflicts are waged against the Native American tribes whose lands they covet, the French, and finally against the mother country itself in an American Revolution destined to reverberate around the world.This...

"The bloody Battle of Tippecanoe was only the beginning. It's 1811 and President James Madison has ordered the destruction of Shawnee warrior chief Tecumseh's alliance of tribes in the Great Lakes region. But while General William Henry Harrison would win this fight, the armed conflict between Native Americans and the newly formed United States would rage on for decades. Bestselling authors Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard venture through the fraught...