Draws from personal accounts to describe the fictional experiences of a fifteen-year-old cowhand who travels along the Chisholm Trail on a cattle drive.

Draws from personal accounts to describe the fictional experiences of a fifteen-year-old cowhand who travels along the Chisholm Trail on a cattle drive.

Tells the stories of sixteen women who drove cattle up the trail from Texas during the last half of the nineteenth century.

How did cattle drives come about—and why did the cowboy become an iconic American hero? Cattle drives were the largest, longest, and ultimately the last of the great forced animal migrations in human history. Spilling out of Texas, they spread longhorns, cowboys, and the culture that roped the two together throughout the American West. In cities like Abilene, Dodge City, and Wichita, buyers paid off ranchers, ranchers paid off wranglers, and railroad lines took the cattle east to the packing plants of St. Louis and Chicago. The cattle drives of our imagination are filled with colorful cowboys prodding and coaxing a line of bellowing animals along a dusty path through the wilderness. These sturdy cowhands always triumph over stampedes, swollen rivers, and bloodthirsty Indians to deliver their mighty-horned companions to market—but Tim Lehman’s Up the Trail reveals that the gritty reality was vastly different. Far from being rugged individualists, the actual cow herders were itinerant laborers—a proletariat on horseback who connected cattle from the remote prairies of Texas with the nation’s industrial slaughterhouses. Lehman demystifies the cowboy life by describing the origins of the cattle drive and the extensive planning, complicated logistics, great skill, and good luck essential to getting the cows to market. He reveals how drives figured into the larger story of postwar economic development and traces the complex effects the cattle business had on the environment. He also explores how the premodern cowboy became a national hero who personified the manly virtues of rugged individualism and personal independence. Grounded in primary sources, this absorbing book takes advantage of recent scholarship on labor, race, gender, and the environment. The lively narrative will appeal to students of Texas and western history as well as anyone interested in cowboy culture.

A nail-biting tale of survival and brotherhood atop one of the world's most dangerous mountains. This fast-paced, three-part narrative takes readers on three expeditions over 15 years to K2, one of the deadliest mountains on Earth. Roped together, these teams of men face perilously high altitudes and battering storms in hopes of reaching the summit. As each expedition sets out, they carve new paths along icy slopes and unforgiving rock, creating camps on ledges so narrow they fear turning over in their sleep. But disaster strikes -- in 1939, four men never make it down the mountain. Fourteen years later, a man develops blood clots in his legs at 25,000 feet, leaving his team with no safe path off the mountain. Filled with displays of incredible strength and heart-stopping danger, Into the Clouds tells the incredible stories of the men whose quest to conquer a mountain became a battle to survive the descent.

The eighth edition continues to be an invaluable resource for creative strategies and proven techniques to teach social studies. Pamela Farris's popular, reasonably priced book aids classroom teachers in inspiring students to be engaged learners and to build on their prior knowledge. The book is comprehensive and easy to understand—providing instruction sensitive to the needs of all elementary and middle school learners. • Creative concepts for teaching diverse learners • Strategies for incorporating the C3 Framework to enrich K–8 curriculum • Integration of inquiry skills with literacy and language arts skills • Multifaceted, meaningful activities emphasize problem-solving, decision making, and critical thinking • Myriad ideas for incorporating primary sources as well as technology • Annotated lists of children’s literature at the end of each chapter • Multicultural focus throughout the broad coverage of history, geography, civics, and economics • NCSS Standards-Linked Lesson Plans; C3 Framework Plans, and Interdisciplinary/Thematic Units Social studies explores the variety and complexity of human experience. The book emphasizes the value of social studies in preparing students to become valuable community members and to participate respectfully in a diverse society.