In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana territory from the French for $15,000,000. The purchase made President Jefferson's dream of extending the U.S. west of the Mississippi River come true. Now the much larger United States had difficult questions to answer: How would Louisiana be governed? How would it be divided into states? Would those states be free states or slave states? What would happen to the Native Americans? It would take...

Examines the settlement of the area that became the southwestern portion of the United States, detailing how it evolved from land settled by Native Americans, to Spanish territory, to states that were pawns between the North and South prior to the Civil War.

From the bestselling author of "The Wordy Shipmates" comes an examination of Hawaii's emblematic and exceptional history, retracing the impact of New England missionaries who began arriving in the early 1800s to remake the island paradise into a version of New England.

"In mid-1860s, two railroad companies had a huge job in front of them: building the transcontinental railroad. The railroad would run from east to west across the United States. As the grueling work began, there were many choices to make. Now the choices are yours. Would you rather blast rock to lay track in the Sierra Nevada mountain range or build bridges across raging rivers in the Great Plains? Would you rather sleep in a cold mountain tunnel...

There are all kinds of people on earth that you will meet some day... They will be looking for a certain stone. They will be people who do not get tired, but who will keep pushing forward, going, going all the time... These people do not follow the way of our great-grandfather. They follow another way. They will travel everywhere, looking for this stone which our great-grandfather put on the earth in many places. Sweet Medicine. On the morning on...

The American realizes that 'Progress is God.' The destiny of the American people is to subdue the continent -- to rush over this vast field to the Pacific Ocean... to change darkness into light and confirm the destiny of the human race... Divine task! Immortal mission! The pioneer army perpetually strikes to the front. Empire plants itself upon the trails.-William Gilpin. By 1821, no one knew who would control the West’s seemingly infinite spaces,...

Sent to protect a U.S. outpost on the frontier, Lt. John Dunbar befriends the local Sioux Indians and must make a choice about how he wants to live his life as the U.S. Army threatens to push the Sioux out.

Chronicles the exploration and settlement of lands west of the Appalachian Mountains during the late 1700s and early 1800s.