The ferocity and magnitude of the American Civil War eclipses that of all other nineteenth-century conflicts, but the hard fighting and tactics that played out between the North and South were first developed during the Mexican-American War of the late 1840s. It was during this struggle between two regional powers that the United States showed that it could muster soldiers representing far-flung states of the Union-Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Mississippi-and officers fresh from West Point, testing the military preparedness of the young nation. In Climax at Buena Vista, David Lavender tells the complete story of the turning point in the Mexican-American War. In an effort to secure Texas firmly as a state, the United States declared war on Mexico and launched an invasion, including an effort to capture Mexico City from the north and from the coast. The American plans fell short, however, and attempts were made to achieve a decisive victory through shifting troops to various points of attack. This strategy depleted the forces led by General Zachary Taylor, and in February 1847, near the small outpost of Buena Vista, he and his roughly 4,500 regulars found themselves facing an army of more than 20,000 Mexican soldiers led by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. What should have been a rout ended up in a draw, with the American troops maneuvering quickly and regrouping in order to keep the surrounding Mexican troops from completely overrunning their position. Santa Anna was forced to withdraw and, with the Mexican forces demoralized, the Americans were able to reignite the offensive and ultimately force Mexico to sue for peace. David Lavender's acclaimed account of this battle allows the reader to understand the complex and confusing movements of the opposing forces, and it places the war in the greater American political context, where huge territories were acquired and future presidents groomed.

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 the era of the great cattle ranches and drives came to an end, Lavender felt compelled to document his experiences in rugged southwest Colorado to preserve this rapidly disappearing way of life. "One Man's West" is Lavender's ode to his days on the Continental Divide and the story of his experiences making a living in the not so wild but not yet tamed West. Like stories told around a campfire, "One Man's West" is captivating yet conversational, incredible yet realistic, and introduces some of the most charming characters in western literature. This new Bison Books edition features an introduction and afterword by the author's son that discuss other phases and facets of his father's remarkable life, as well as a tribute to the author by his grandson. It also includes nine new photographs from the Lavender family archives.

John Colter was a crack hunter with the Lewis and Clark expedition before striking out on his own as a mountain man and fur trader. A solitary journey in the winter of 1807-8 took him into present-day Wyoming. To unbelieving trappers he later reported sights that inspired the name of Colter's Hell. It was a sulfurous place of hidden fires, smoking pits, and shooting water. And it was real. John Colter is known to history as probably the first white man to discover the region that now includes Yellowstone National Park. In a classic book, first published in 1952, Burton Harris weighs the facts and legends about a man who was dogged by misfortune and "robbed of the just rewards he had earned."

This Bison Book edition includes a 1977 addendum by the author and a new introduction by David Lavender, who considers Colter's remarkable winter journey in the light of current scholarship.

In Let Me Be Free, David Lavender tells the tragic story of the Nez Perce struggle against annihilation. Encroaching settlers and violent disputes resulted in the Nez Perce War of 1877, a desperate attempt by Chief Joseph and his small band of Nez Perce Indians from the Wallowa Mountains of Oregon to elude strong forces of U.S. Cavalry and civilian volunteers and escape to Canada.

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 clarity and grace, the story of a beautiful state's rise to giganticism. In an afterword to this Bison Book edition, he looks at California today.

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 young country's claims to lands it had purchased but never seen. Lavender then takes us through the steps that led to the selection of Meriwether Lewis and the Corps of Discovery's leader with William Clark as coleader. From there, the great adventure story unfolds and we follow Lewis and Clark and their company on their journey through vast, uncharted territory as they seek a transcontinental route to the Pacific. From its inception to its conclusion-a triumph made bittersweet by Lewis's suicide only a few years later-we witness the trials, the surprises, the natural wonders, and the successes large and small that the expedition met with day by day over the course of two years and thousands of miles. The result is a true classic of adventure writing and a marvel of historical storytelling.

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 Lakes region and the upper Missouri River country.

Within this framework of contest and competition, Lavender shows how the American Fur Company learned to exploit the needs and wants of Indian tribes to gain a superior economic position over the British. The brutal and bloody rivalry helped Ramsay Crooks develop the techniques for transporting furs, supplying trappers, and selling pelts that made fur trapping such an integral economic activity in early U.S. history.

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 clarity and grace, the story of a beautiful state's rise to giganticism. In an afterword to this Bison Book edition, he looks at California today.

"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 sense of a manifest American destiny. Lavender describes the efforts of emigration societies, of missionaries like Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, and of early pioneer settlers like Hall Jackson Kelley, Jason Lee, and Thomas Jefferson Farnham, as well as the routes they took to the "Promised Land." He concludes by recounting the first large-scale emigrations of 1843-45, which steeled the U. S. government for war with Mexico and agreements with Britain over the Oregon boundary.

The exploration and conquest of the Pacific Northwest is the dominant theme of "Land of Giants," a book which (in the words of William O. Douglas) "gives one a sense of participation in moulding the manifest destiny of America." English and Spanish seadogs seeking a northwest passage to the Orient were the first comers; then, following Bering's explorations, Russian fur traders descended on the Aleutians. In turn, the Lewis and Clark expedition, the activities of the great fur companies, and "Oregon fever" spurred on overland traffic westward; and as gold silver, and copper drew thousands more into the new land, railroads and steamship lines grew up to serve the mushrooming settlements. "Land of Giants" tells also of the tragic squeeze play on the Indians, the rise of the fishing and lumber industries, the development of modern power and reclamation projects, and the struggles of the conservationists to preserve natural resources and wild life.

"Reading "Land of Giants," we can believe that history trod here, that issues existed, that men schemed and dreamed and struggled, and so the present came to be."--A. B. Guthrie Jr., "Saturday Review of Literature,"

A well-known Western historian, David Lavender is the author of more than twenty books, among them "Bent's Fort, "One Man's West," and most recently "California: A Bicentennial History" and "Winner Take All: The Trans-Canada Canoe Trail,""

"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.