The Undiscovered Country

<b><i>New York Times</i> Bestseller<br>A <i>Wall Street Journal </i>Top Ten Book of the Year<br>A <i>True West Magazine</i> Best Historical Non-Fiction Book and Best Author of the Year<br>Western Heritage Award for "Outstanding Nonfiction Book"<br>Winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award for Historical Nonfiction<br>Winner of the Will Rogers Medallion Award<br><br>From the author of <i>The Apache Wars</i>, the true story of the American West, revealing how American ambition clashed with the realities of violence and exploitation</b><br><br>The epic of the American West became a tale of progress, redemption, and glorious conquest that came to shape the identity of a new nation. Over time a darker story emerged—one of ghastly violence and environmental spoliation that stained this identity.<br><br><i>The Undiscovered Country</i> strips away the layers of myth to reveal the true story of this first epoch of American history. From the forests of Pennsylvania and Kentucky to the snow-crested California Sierras, and from the harsh deserts of the Southwest to the buffalo range of the Great Plains, Paul Andrew Hutton masterfully chronicles a story that defined America and its people. From Braddock’s 1755 defeat to the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre, he unfolds a grand narrative steeped in romantic impulses and tragic consequences.<br><br>Hutton uses seven main protagonists—Daniel Boone, Red Eagle, Davy Crockett, Mangas Coloradas, Kit Carson, Sitting Bull, and William “Buffalo Bill” Cody—as the biographical threads by which to weave a tapestry across seven generations, revealing a story of heroic conquest and dark tragedy, of sacrifice and greed, and of man-made wonders and environmental ruin.<br><br>The American frontier movement has proven eternally fascinating around the world—the subject of countless books, paintings, poems, television shows, and films. <i>The Undiscovered Country </i>reveals the truth behind America’s great creation myth.