Finding the West

One of the foremost historians of Lewis and Clark, Ronda grounds 'Finding the West' in the insights and reflections he has gleaned from some twenty years of research and writing about this pivotal era. But above all else, Ronda's book is centred on stories and storytellers. The beginning of the nineteenth century represents a time when America passed into a headlong rush for empire and when 'the West' loomed large as a dream for some and a nightmare for others, an era that irrevocably shaped the new American nation in the two hundred years that followed. Whoever the storyteller in the aftermath of that encounter -- native or newcomer -- the stories all soon revolved around a common theme: the coming of the winds of change. Ronda's masterful interpretation of the young Republic's fascination with the West is written with grace, narrative sweep, and a conviction that history should, above all else, engage and inform us.

James P. Ronda is H. G. Barnard Professor of Western American History at the University of Tulsa and past president of the Western History Association