The story of America's westward movement is at heart the story of men and women of all origins and beliefs who helped shape the character of a nation. They lived a stirring epic, the telling of which grows ever more fascinating it becomes ever more remote. It has become a romance, a drama of men and women against the forces of a stupendous land and nameless terrors. Pain and violence tormented whites and Indians alike. Here, from award-winning historian David Lavender, is their enduring st...

During the centuries-long expansion of the Hudson's Bay Company throughout Canada, its initials, emblazoned on the flags it flew, became ubiquitous. There were even jokes about the symbols. "What did HBC stand for?" asked the tenderfoot. And the old trapper took another pull at his clay pipe before replying gravely, "Here Before Christ." Here, in this short-form book by New York Times bestselling historian David Lavender, is the company's surprising and little-told story.

The story of the American fur trade has been told many times from different viewpoints, but David Lavender was the first to place it within the overall contest for empire between Britain and the United States. Rather than offering a simple hagiography of men like Jedediah Smith, Kit Carson, Jim Bridger and other legendary trappers, Lavender relates the story of men such as John Jacob Astor and Ramsay Crooks who competed with Britain’s Hudson’s Bay Company for the fur resources of the Great...

American history begins not with the English at Jamestown or the Pilgrims at Plymouth but with Spanish exploration of the border country from Florida to California in the 16th century. This handbook describes the expeditions of three intrepid explorers—De Soto, Coronado, and Cabrillo—their adventures, their encounters with native inhabitants, and the consequences, good and ill, of their journeys.

Critics have called David Lavender a "master storyteller" (Library Journal), his prose "virile, disciplined, yet personal" (New York Times), and his book "a balanced, learned, and lively history of an epochal human exploit" (Choice).Lavender sets the stage with a lucid account of the imperial rivalries between England, Spain, France, and the United States, and their role in Thomas Jefferson's decision to sponsor an expedition that might strengthen the you...

From the earliest Spanish explorations in the late 1500s through the present, California's history and growth have been both tumultuous and phenomenal. All the historical facts are here: the missions and the Indians, the struggles between the Mexicans and the Americans, the fabulous gold rushes, statehood in 1850, railroad wars, furious labor upheavals, the disastrous scandals and bankruptcies of the 1920s, and the recent gigantic tamperings with nature. David Lavender tells, with unusual ...

“In one very real sense,” David Lavender writes, “the story of the Oregon Trail begins with Columbus.” This opening suggests the panoramic sweep of his history of that famous trail. In chiseled, colorful prose, Lavender illustrates the “westward vision” that impelled the early explorers of the American interior looking for a northwest passage and send fur trappers into the region charted by Lewis and Clark. For the emigrants following the trappers’ routes, that vision gradually grew into a...

Bent's Fort was a landmark of the American frontier, a huge private fort on the upper Arkansas River in present southeastern Colorado. Established by the adventurers Charles and William Bent, it stood until 1849 as the center of the Indian trade of the central plains. David Lavender's chronicle of these men and their part in the opening of the West has been conceded a place beside the works of Parkman and Prescott.

The essential gospel-led parenting book for raising good sonsIn a world filled with countless parenting books and ever-changing advice, Christian parents often seek a single, unwavering source of guidance: God’s Word. In Raising Good Sons, readers will learn how to lean on God while raising boys who are not only resilient and morally grounded but also deeply rooted in their faith. With heartfelt encouragement and scriptural wisdom, this book will become yo...

The American West of the 1930s and 1940s was still a place of prospectors, cowboys, ranchers, and mountaineers, one that demanded backbreaking, lonely, and dangerous work. Still, midcentury pioneers such as David Lavender remembered “not the cold and the cruel fatigue, but rather the multitude of tiny things which in their sum make up the elemental poetry of rock and ice and snow.” And as the nation exhausted its gold and silver veins, as law reached the boomtowns on the frontier, and as t...

Unwrap the true meaning of Christmas with Advent bedtime stories!Christmas is more than just presents under the tree, Santa, candy canes, and mistletoe. It’s a special time for families to discover and celebrate together what Christmas really means—the promise of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Children’s Advent Stories for Bedtime delivers a joyful collection of 25 stories of what this season is truly about while counting down the days until Jesus’ birthday.

A new edition of a classic work of history, revealing the anti-homosexual purges of midcentury Washington. The basis for the acclaimed PBS documentary.In The Lavender Scare, David K. Johnson tells the frightening story of how, during the Cold War, homosexuals were considered as dangerous a threat to national security as Communists. Charges that the Roosevelt and Truman administrations were havens for homosexuals proved a potent political weapon, sparking a...