On 14 May 1804, one Captain Meriwether Lewis and his companion William Clark led a thirty-three-man expedition to the new lands of Louisiana. 8,000 miles and two years later, after rafting up the Missouri and crossing the Rocky Mountains, they reached the far side of the world, the Pacific Ocean. Fredrick Nolan explores the first US settlers of the American West, including the remarkable stories of unsung heroes and heroines, the bloody battles between settlers and the native American inhabitants, the crimes committed by corrupt Sheriffs, and the occasions when citizens had to take the law into their own hands. This is the story of the men and women who answered the call of the West.

Explore the Wild West! 25 Great Projects, Activities, Experiments invites young readers ages 6–9 to experience the spirit of the Wild West. Kids learn about explorers who mapped the American West, Native Americans, gold miners, cowboy culture, cattle drives, Wild West legends, frontier towns, peacekeepers, lawbreakers, and much more. Through projects ranging from making a settler’s soddie to mining for gold, kids develop a better understanding of the rich history of the Wild West in the 1800s.

What was life like for the pioneers who braved the journey across a wilderness and the Native Americans who were confronted by the newcomers? Meet the cowboys who lived their hard, lonely life driving cattle across vast distances, and the outlaws who found it easier to live by their guns than by more honest means. The atmosphere of the Wild West comes alive, with real-life accounts, photographs from the times, and images from the movies. Find out what kind of people went to the West, how they travelled, where they lived and how they survived. There are 10 practical projects to make and do, including cooking a cowboy meal and making Native American-style jewellery, to give you first-hand experience of this time of excitement and upheaval. -- 10 step-by-step projects inspired by the Wild West -- Over 200 colour illustrations bring the past vividly alive -- See right inside a settler's wagon as it rolls across the prairie

From boudoirs to brothels, historian Michael Rutter takes you into the intimate world of the Wild West's women of the night. Eighteen richly researched biographies reveal the tricks and torments of the trade, with fascinating sidebars on venereal diseases (and dire "cures"), children of prostitutes, a floating brothel, and hog ranches.

Will Wright explores the continuing popularity of the myth of the Wild West, demonstrating how, as a cultural icon, it speaks deeply to a desire for individualism and liberty. The author discusses the myth through market and social theory.

Cooperation, not conflict, is emphasized in a study that casts America's frontier history as a place in which local people helped develop the legal framework that tamed the West.