The American West

50 Great Books

'The 50 Greatest Books on the American West' as compiled by the editors of True West magazine - presented as listed, alpha by title - sans editor's comments. If you want to read the editor's comments, you'll need to get a copy of the October, 2003 issue.

 

The List

 

♠Across the Wide Missouri

 by Bernard DeVoto

 

♠The American Fur Trade of the Far West

 by Hiram Martin Chittenden

 

♠An Authentic Life of Billy the Kid

 by Pat Garrett

 

♠And Die in the West

 by Paula Mitchell Marks

 

♠Angle of Repose

 by Wallace Stegner

 

♠Astoria, or Anecdotes of an Enterprise Beyond the Rocky Mountains

 by Washington Irving

 

♠Bat Masterson

 by Robert K. DeArment

 

♠Bent's Fort

 by David Lavender

 

♠Beyond the Hundredth Meridian

 by Wallace Stegner

 

♠The Big Sky

 by A.B. Guthrie, Jr.

 

♠Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

 by Dee Brown

 

♠The Butterfield Overland Mail, 1857 - 1869

 by Roscoe P. and Margaret B. Conkling

 

♠The California and Oregon Trail:

Being Sketches of Prairie and Rocky Mountain Life

 by Francis Parkman

 

♠Charles Goodnight : Cowman and Plainsman

 by J. Evetts Haley

 

♠The Conquest of Apacheria

 by Dan L. Thrapp

 

♠Commerce of the Prairies

 by Josiah Gregg

 

♠John Wesley Hardin: Dark Angel of Texas

 by Leon C. Metz

 

♠Death Comes for the Archbishop

 by Willa Cather

 

♠The Devil Knows How to Ride

 by Edward E. Leslie

 

♠Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography

 by Dan L. Thrapp

 

♠Forty Years on the Frontier

 by Granville Stuart

 

♠The Great Plains

 by Walter Prescott Webb

 

♠Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade of the West and Southwest

 by Joseph G. McCoy

 

♠'I Will Fight No More Forever':

Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce War

 by Merrill D. Beal

 

♠Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West

 by Dale Morgan

 

♠Jeff Milton: A Good Man with a Gun

 by J. Evetts Haley

 

♠The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition

 by Edited by Gary L. Moulton

 

♠A Journey Through Texas

 by Frederick Law Olmsted

 

♠Lazy B

 by Sandra Day O'Connor and H. Alan Day

 

♠The Lincoln County War

 by Frederick W. Nolan

 

♠The Log of a Cowboy

 by Andy Adams

 

♠Lonesome Dove

 by Larry McMurtry

 

♠The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West

 by Edited by LeRoy R. Hafen

 

♠My Antonia

 by Willa Cather

 

♠On the Border with Crook

 by John G. Bourke

 

♠Pat Garrett: The Story of a Western Lawman

 by Leon C. Metz

 

♠The Plains Across

 by John D. Unruh, Jr.

 

♠Roughing It

 by Mark Twain

 

♠The Saga of Billy the Kid

 by Walter Noble Burns

 

♠Sam Bass and Gang

 by Rick Miller

 

♠Son of the Morning Star

 by Evan Connell

 

♠The Texas Rangers

 by Walter Prescott Webb

 

♠Tombstone: An Iliad of the Southwest

 by Walter Noble Burns

 

♠The Trail Drivers of Texas

 by J. Marvin Hunter

 

♠Vanished Arizona

 by Martha Summerhayes

 

♠The Vigilantes of Montana

 by Thomas Dimsdale

 

♠The Virginian

 by Owen Wister

 

♠Wah-to-Yah and the Taos Trail

 by Lewis H. Garrard

 

♠Wyatt Earp : Frontier Marshal

 by Stuart Lake

 

♠The XIT Ranch of Texas and the Early Days of the Llano Estacado

 by J. Evetts Haley