Across the Wide Missouri Bernard DeVoto, 1947 Houghton Mifflin - $19.95 ISBN 0-395-08374-5 Winner of the prestigious Bancroft Prize, this history of the Rocky Mountain fur trade during the years of its climax and decline is a fascinating, well-researched chronicle of the fur trade both as a business enterprise and a way of life for the trappers and mountain men who criss-crossed the mountains and valleys of the American West.
	Juggernaut The Whitman Massacre Trial Ronald B. Lansing, 1993 Ninth Judicial Circuit Historical Society - $15.95 ISBN 0-9635086-0-1 Ronald Lansing is a professor of law at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and he brought both his scholar's eye and his legal training to bear on a contentious and painful episode of Oregon's early history: the trial of five Cayuse warriors for the infamous murders at the Whitman Mission. As the title implies, Lansing concludes that the "Cayuse Five" were railroaded: their trial was a sham, and the verdict preordained.
	A Life Wild and Perilous: Mountain Men and the Paths to the Pacific Robert M. Utley, 1997 Owl Books - $17.95 ISBN 0-8050-5989-X A small, distinct, and often eccentric population of fur trappers, wanderers, and explorers emerged in the American West during the early 1800s. These mountain men circulated throughout the Rocky Mountains and the Great Basin from Canada to Mexico, and it was their knowledge of the landscape that opened the West to settlers, missionaries, prospectors, and entrepreneurs of every stripe. A Life Wild and Perilous chronicles the life and times of famed mountain men such as Kit Carson and Jed Smith, as well as a few who should've been better known, such as Ewing Young and Tom Fitzpatrick.
	Men With Sand John Moring, 1998 Falcon Publishing - $10.95 ISBN 156044-620-X To "have sand" in the mid-1800s meant that one had the right combination of bull-headed bravado, gritty determination, and insatiable wanderlust to leave the known world behind and travel beyond the edge of the map in search of fame and fortune -- or maybe just to see what's over the next ridge. Men With Sand tells the stories of thirteen explorers and mountain men, including both well-known individuals, such as Jed Smith and John Colter, and those who have largely been forgotten since their deaths, like Charles Wilkes and the father-and-son team of James and Sylvester Pattie.
	The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-60 John D. Unruh, Jr., 1979 University of Illinois Press - $24.95 ISBN 0-252-06360-0 The Plains Across was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history the year it was published, and it is perhaps the gold standard for both amateur and professional historians with an interest in the Oregon Trail.
	That Balance So Rare The Story of Oregon Terrence O'Donnell, 1988 Oregon Historical Society Press - $14.95 ISBN 0-87595-202-X The history of Oregon through the 1930s is presented here in a relatively compact, accessible form. Extensively illustrated with period photos, That Balance So Rare is an effort to explain how we became who we are.

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