Lissa Whitaker's comfortable life in Philadelphia changes after a fire in 1865, and she reluctantly heads to Dakota Territory with her family. Lars Oleson, who helped fight the fire, gave her father the idea of settling there, and for that Lissa can barely be civil to him. Dangers on the trail quickly force her to draw on her inner strength to face the journey’s perils and hardships. The Whitakers rescue Lars, when he is injured, and Lissa and Lars realize they care for each other more than they should because his uncle is sending brides from Norway the following spring for him and his brother. With the adversity of the trail forcing them to travel together, they struggle to reach his brother's cabin in the Dakota Territory before the deadly prairie winter sets in.

"Epic in its scale, fearless in its scope" (Hampton Sides), this masterfully told account of the American West from a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist sets a new standard as it sweeps from the California Gold Rush and beyond. In Dreams of El Dorado, H. W. Brands tells the thrilling, panoramic story of the settling of the American West. He takes us from John Jacob Astor's fur trading outpost in Oregon to the Texas Revolution, from the California gold rush to the Oklahoma land rush. He shows how the migrants' dreams drove them to feats of courage and perseverance that put their stay-at-home cousins to shame-and how those same dreams also drove them to outrageous acts of violence against indigenous peoples and one another. The West was where riches would reward the miner's persistence, the cattleman's courage, the railroad man's enterprise; but El Dorado was at least as elusive in the West as it ever was in the East. Balanced, authoritative, and masterfully told, Dreams of El Dorado sets a new standard for histories of the American West.

Trail of Dreams [Book 1] Lissa Whitaker's comfortable life in Philadelphia changes after a fire in 1865, and she reluctantly heads to Dakota Territory with her family. Lars Oleson, who helped fight the fire, gave her father the idea of settling there, and for that Lissa can barely be civil to him. Dangers on the trail quickly force her to draw on her inner strength to face the journey's perils and hardships. The Whitakers rescue Lars, when he is injured, and Lissa and Lars realize they care for each other more than they should because his uncle is sending brides from Norway the following spring for him and his brother. With the adversity of the trail forcing them to travel together, they struggle to reach his brother's cabin in the Dakota Territory before the deadly prairie winter sets in. Saving the Dream [Book 2] Trapper Ingor Oleson rescues an Indian maiden, Still Water, who was kidnapped in the Dakota Territory by two drunk whites. She is the niece of the Chief of a Sioux tribe he has traded with. Together for weeks as he nurses her, they each must face the hard fact that their dreams of a life of a white and an Indian together is impossible. The Army is relocating Indians from the Dakota Territory to make room for white pioneers. The Indians, not wanting to go, are fighting back. A brave from her tribe, who wants her as his wife, has vowed to kill whoever has taken her. Ingor can't let his actions threaten his brother Lars and his family homesteading a day's ride to the west. Avoiding the two drunks seeking revenge for their lost prize and the Army rounding up Indians, Ingor must return her safely to her uncle and face the brave. Can the couple save their dream in the midst of hardship and hate? Double the Dream [Book 3] After Ingor Oleson left Norway to claim a part of the Dakota Territory as his own, his brother Lars follows to do the same. Now another year later, their uncle keeps his promise and sends Anne and Katrin Anderssen to marry his nephews. The young women are excited and expect their husbands-to-be to have a good life already carved out for them in the unknown land of the Dakota Territory. Lieutenant Adam Johnson allows the sisters to travel with the Army families moving west to the forts there now that the War Between the States has ended. Sergeant Tavis McDougal is his right-hand man. The sisters are charmed by the officers, and wonder if they will find the Oleson brothers as charming. And what will become of them if they can't find the brothers? Will they ever have the happy lives they have come so far to find?

Tired of the same old tourist traps? Whether you’re a visitor or a local looking for something different, let The Dakotas Off the Beaten Path show you a side of North and South Dakota you never knew existed. See the house Pa built during the annual Laura Ingalls Wilder Pageant in De Smet, South Dakota. Excavate mammoth bones in the Black Hills or spelunk in some of the world’s largest caves. Dance to Norwegian fiddles at North America’s largest Scandinavian festival, or lose yourself in the brilliant splendor of a powwow. So if you’ve “been there, done that” one too many times, get off the main road and venture Off the Beaten Path.

U.S. History is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory courses. The text provides a balanced approach to U.S. history, considering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped the United States from both the top down (politics, economics, diplomacy) and bottom up (eyewitness accounts, lived experience). U.S. History covers key forces that form the American experience, with particular attention to issues of race, class, and gender.

In this original examination of America's post-9/11 culture, journalist Faludi shines a light on the country's psychological response to the attacks of that terrible day. Turning her observational powers on the media, popular culture, and political life, Faludi unearths a barely acknowledged societal drama shot through with baffling contradictions. Why, she asks, did our culture respond to an assault against American global dominance with a frenzied summons to restore "traditional" manhood, marriage, and maternity? Why did we react as if the hijackers had targeted not a commercial and military edifice but the family home and nursery? The answer, she finds, lies in a historical anomaly unique to the American experience: the nation was forged in traumatizing assaults by nonwhite "barbarians" on town and village. That humiliation lies concealed under a myth of cowboy bluster and feminine frailty, which is reanimated whenever threat and shame looms.--From publisher description.

This innovative and important volume presents the archaeological and anthropological foundations of the landscape learning process. Contributions apply the related fields of ethnography, cognitive psychology, and historical archaeology to the issues of individual exploration, development of trail systems, folk knowledge, social identity, and the role of the frontier in the growth of the modern world. A series of case studies examines the archaeological evidence for and interpretations of landscape learning from the movement of the first pre-modern humans into Europe, peoplings of the Old and New World at the end of the Ice Age, and colonization of the Pacific, to the English colonists at Jamestown. The final chapters summarize the implications of the landscape learning idea for our understanding of human history and set out a framework for future research.