His dream was to build magnificent steamboats to ply the rivers of the American frontier. But when Jean Talon began his journey westward, he stumbled upon a deadly conspiracy involving a young woman’s search to find her missing brother, and a ruthless band of renegades. Led by the brazen Baron Torville, this makeshift army of opportunists is plotting a violent takeover of the Louisiana Territory. Jean swears to find a way to stop this daring plan. If he doesn’t, it will not only put an end to all his dreams; it will change the course of history—and destroy the promise of the American frontier.

A fantastic Western romp by one of America's finest writers.

This deeply personal collection of essays paints a progressive view of the American West as seen by a geologist. The author traces her twenty years of living and conducting research in the natural landscapes of the West as she investigates the conflict between environmental history and widely held romanticized views of the region.

The magic and majesty of America’s greatest western fly-fishing rivers. Flywater brings us to the iconic creeks, springs, freestone rivers, and tailwaters that make the American West the world’s premier destination for fly fishing. Grant McClintock’s first book struck a chord with fishermen, and fifteen years later he takes the reader back to these fabulous places—from the storied Henry’s Fork to the Yellowstone to the Thompson River in British Columbia. With extraordinary new photography and wisdom, McClintock revisits these home waters and discovers countless others as well. Flywater is a gallery of moments and places. From Idaho and Montana to Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, McClintock’s rich photography of trout and steelhead waters surrounded by beautiful Western landscapes creates a compelling journey that the reader, whether fisherman or non-fisherman, will thoroughly enjoy. For the serious fly fisherman, this is an album of shared experiences. For the uninitiated, it is an artfully crafted guidebook to an exotic new world that really does exist on the streams and rivers of the American West.

The American West, blessed with an abundance of earth and sky but cursed with a scarcity of life's most fundamental need, has long dreamed of harnessing all its rivers to produce unlimited wealth and power. In Rivers of Empire, award-winning historian Donald Worster tells the story of this dream and its outcome. He shows how, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Mormons were the first attempting to make that dream a reality, damming and diverting rivers to irrigate their land. He follows this intriguing history through the 1930s, when the federal government built hundreds of dams on every major western river, thereby laying the foundation for the cities and farms, money and power of today's West. Yet while these cities have become paradigms of modern American urban centers, and the farms successful high-tech enterprises, Worster reminds us that the costs have been extremely high. Along with the wealth has come massive ecological damage, a redistribution of power to bureaucratic and economic elites, and a class conflict still on the upswing. As a result, the future of this "hydraulic West" is increasingly uncertain, as water continues to be a scarce resource, inadequate to the demand, and declining in quality.

His dream was to build magnificent steamboats to ply the rivers of the American frontier. But when Jean Talon began his journey westward, he stumbled upon a deadly conspiracy involving a young woman’s search to find her missing brother, and a ruthless band of renegades. Led by the brazen Baron Torville, this makeshift army of opportunists is plotting a violent takeover of the Louisiana Territory. Jean swears to find a way to stop this daring plan. If he doesn’t, it will not only put an end to all his dreams; it will change the course of history—and destroy the promise of the American frontier.