Empires, Nations, and Families: A New History of the North American West, 1800-1860

This volume documents the broad family associations that crossed national and ethnic lines and that, along with the river systems of the trans-Mississippi West, formed the basis for a global trade in furs that had operated for hundreds of years before the land became part of the United States.

"Ingenious. A magnificent scholarly achievement. A sweeping new narrative account of [western] history. A book to ponder and plunder."
--Virginia Scharff, Western Quarterly Review

"Not only well researched and presented but instantly absorbing."
--Adrienne Caughfield, Journal of American History

Pulitzer Prize nominee and winner of the Bancroft Prize--historical writing's most prestigious award--Empires, Nations, and Families is an epic work of American History that fills in the blanks on the map of the American West between 1800 and 1860. Historian Anne F. Hyde--author of An American Vision: Far Western Landscape and National Culture and co-author (with William Deverell) of The West in the History of the Nation--tells a riveting true story of Native Americans, entrepreneurs, fur trappers and fur traders in a vibrant "wilderness" to which Daniel Boone himself was a Johnny-come-lately.