Noted historian H. W. Brands offers a panoramic view of the settlement of the American West, expounding intelligently on its better-known aspects and expanding many little-known vignettes that bring it to human scale.

Thomas Jefferson was conflicted about the Louisiana Purchase, unsure that such a deal was within the purview of the remarkable governmental structure he had just helped to fashion. But when he offered 10 million dollars for New Orleans, Napoleon made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: the entire Louisiana territory, everything west of the mighty Mississippi River, for 15 million. Jefferson immediately mandated an exploration of the newly bought region, sending Lewis, Clark and three dozen hardy souls to forge a path to the Pacific. Once they arrived in the Oregon region, the party had to acknowledge it was a lot farther than they’d thought, and the travel, across the Rockies and through many native enclaves, was arduous and full of danger.

"H. W. Brands offers a panoramic view of the settlement of the American West, expounding intelligently on its better-known aspects and expanding many little-known vignettes that bring it to human scale."

But it was a beginning. By the mid-1800s, Easterners keen for more elbow room were willing to go 2,000 miles overland in wooden wagons to get it. The discovery of gold in California provoked further migrations. The promise of 4,000-acre farms, when a typical plot back home would generally be 160, attracted a mass influx of “illegal immigrants” --- American citizens --- to Stephen Austin’s land scheme in Texas, at that time a part of Mexico.

Brands offers an in-depth portrait of the Oregon settler/evangelist couple, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman: their trek from New York to the Pacific Northwest, their struggles with fatal diseases that included measles, and their mainly futile attempts to convert the distrustful Cayuse Indians, who ultimately massacred them and all of their cohorts. He focuses on colorful mountain man Joseph Meek, who came West as a beaver trapper, skirmished with Indians, gradually acquired status among Easterners as a full-blown “character,” and used his tale-telling eloquence in the successful petition to the US Congress for the annexation of the Oregon territory. Fighters at the Alamo and subsequent battles for Texan independence are given their full due. And the position of Western Indian groups is starkly advocated in the words of Yosemite chief Teneiya: “Yes, sir, American, my spirit will make trouble for you and your people, as you have caused trouble to me and my people.”

Once the Great Plains had been settled, railroads crisscrossed the country, violence had been quelled and cowboys had become the stuff of Hollywood hyperbole, the West began to lose its mystique, no longer the mysterious land of adventure and main chance. But it was and remains, Brands believes, a microcosm of the American dream --- “that ordinary people could govern themselves.”