Which Way to the Wild West? Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn't Tell You About Westward Expansion

History--with the good bits put back. Welcome to the thrilling, tragic, and downright wild adventure of America’s westward expansion.

1805: Explorer William Clark reaches the Pacific Ocean and pens the badly spelled line “Ocian in view! O! the joy!” (Hey, he was an explorer, not a librarian.)
1836: Mexican general Santa Anna surrounds the Alamo, trapping 180 Texans inside and prompting Texan William Travis to declare, “I shall never surrender or retreat.”
1861: Two railroad companies, one starting in the West and one in the East, start a race to lay the most track and create a transcontinental railroad.

With a storyteller's voice and attention to the details that make history real and interesting, Steve Sheinkin's Which Way to the Wild West? delivers America's greatest adventure. From the Louisiana Purchase (remember: if you're negotiating a treaty for your country, play it cool.) to the gold rush (there were only three ways to get to California--all of them bad) to the life of the cowboy, the Indian wars, and the everyday happenings that defined living on the frontier.

Which Way to the Wild West? Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn’t Tell You About America’s Westward Expansion by Steve Sheinkin, National Book Award Finalist Author of Bomb, a Newbery Honor Book, is a fun, funny way for young readers to learn about a chapter of American history.

“An engaging . . . medley of anecdotes about the Wild West in nine lively chapters starting with the Louisiana Purchase and ending with the Lakota massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. Casual vignettes of famous figures and ordinary people come to life. . . .” —School Library Journal

“Super illustrations, fresh stories, thoughtful insights with a light touch, this is fun for kids and parents alike.” —Travelforkids.com

“Sheinkin builds his conversational narrative around stories of the men and women who peopled the west, with particular attention given to African Americans, Chinese workers, and everyday farmers and cowboys. There's plenty of humor here, but Sheinkin's strength is his ability to transition between events.” —The Horn Book

Steve Sheinkin is the award-winning author of several fascinating books on American history, including The Notorious Benedict Arnold, which won the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults, the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award for nonfiction, and received three starred reviews; and Bomb, a National Book Award finalist and recipient of five starred reviews. He lives in Saratoga Springs, NY.

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