Dreams of El Dorado

Excellent history of the American West, written in a breezy but engaging style.

An excellent introduction to the vastness that is the American West, a region that holds perhaps the most turbulent portions of the Union's relatively brief history.

Having been born in Texas and spending significant portions of my life resident in Kansas and New Mexico, I have long held a fascination with all things Western. I grew up on the novels of Louis L'Amour and Tony Hillerman and tend to pick up fictional works by other authors solely based on their settings within the region.

However, aside from devouring Hampton Sides' excellent Blood and Thunder more than a decade ago, I had never read an historical account of the West. Until now....

Dreams of El Dorado by H. W. Brands covers the entire scope of that vast area beyond the Mississippi starting with the Corps of Discovery in the early nineteenth century and ending with our most “Western” of U. S. Presidents – Theodore Roosevelt – entering that office early in the twentieth century. Along the way, very few trails leading towards the Pacific are left untrod.

Numerous topics in Western history are introduced and detailed within a few short chapters each. These serve to whet the appetite to learn more. This volume has added more items to my TBR list than any single book has in recent memory. Indeed, some of those were written by H. W. Brands himself while I am intrigued enough to start reading the original Journals of Lewis and Clark and the account of John Wesley Harding's exploration of the Grand Canyon to name but two. The best history books lead to further exploration and this one is particularly rich in that regard.

There are some notable exclusions, however. I would like to have seen the Pony Express, Wells Fargo and the Butterfield Overland stage routes included not to mention more on the Western theatres of the Civil War (such as the Battle of Glorieta Pass) and New Mexican exploits by the likes of Kit Carson, Stephen Kearny and Narbona but those are minor knitpicks.

What was included was often written in a style akin to the best page-turners by the fiction writers mentioned above. I highly recommend Dreams of El Dorado as an excellent one-volume introduction to the history of the West.

Historian H. W. Brands tells the story of the American West, including tales of the early fur trappers, the Lewis and Clark expedition, the mountain men, the beginnings of Texas, the Oregon Trail, the Gold Rush, the Native Americans, and the first cowboy in the White House. Brands zooms out for each chapter and then zooms in on a story that isn't particularly well known, but is especially emblematic of the founding of the west. There are moments of comedy as well as moments of drama. It's a fascinating story.

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