Which Way to the Wild West?

Which Way to the Wild West? Everything your schoolbooks didn't tell you about america's westward expansion.

1805: Explorer William Clark reaches the Pacific Ocean and pens the badly spelled line “Ocian in view! O! the joy!” (Hey, he was an explorer, not a spelling bee champion!)
1836: Mexican general Santa Anna surrounds the Alamo, trapping 180 Texans inside and prompting Texan William Travis to declare, “I shall never surrender or retreat.”
1861: Two railroad companies, one starting in the West and one in the East, start a race to lay the most track and create a transcontinental railroad.

With a storyteller's voice and attention to the details that make history real and interesting, Steve Sheinkin delivers the wild facts about America's greatest adventure. From the Louisiana Purchase (remember: if you're negotiating a treaty for your country, play it cool.) to the gold rush (there were only three ways to get to California--all of them bad) to the life of the cowboy, the Indian wars, and the everyday happenings that defined living on the frontier.