From the first account of "Colter's Run," published in 1810, fascination with John Colter, one of America's most famous and yet least known frontiersmen and discoverer of Yellowstone Park, has never waned. Unlike other legends of the era like Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and Kit Carson, Colter has remained elusive because he left not a single letter, diary, or reminiscence. Gathering the available evidence and guiding readers through a labyrinth of hearsay, rumor, and myth, two Colter experts for the first time tell the whole story of Colter and his legend.

A Documentary History of the Book of Mormon presents the first extensive study of the primary sources chronicling the origin of the long-ridiculed narrative that has now been reprinted more than one hundred and eighty million times in one hundred and ten languages. The scores of documents transcribed and annotated in A Documentary History include family histories, journal entries, letters, affidavits, reminiscences, interviews, newspaper articles, and book extracts, as well as revelations dictated in the name of God. These texts tell the captivating story of what happened (and what was believed or rumored to have happened) between September 1823 - when the seventeen-year-old farm boy Joseph Smith announced that an angel of God had directed him to an ancient book inscribed on gold plates - and March 1830, when the Book of Mormon was first published. From the late 1820s to the present, the controversy - as well as the curiosity - has never ceased. By bringing together for the first time a substantial compilation of both first- and secondhand accounts relevant to the inception of the divine revelation - or clever fraud - that launched a new world religion, A Documentary History makes a highly significant contribution to the rapidly growing field of Mormon Studies.

In this book, Larry E. Morris complements the compelling story he began with The Fate of Corps, named a History Book Club selection and a Choice magazine Outstanding Academic Title. Illustrating how Thomas Jefferson's vision of a sea-to-sea empire gave rise to the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Morris in turn shows how the expedition impacted a host of fascinating individuals: John Colter, the first European to see Yellowstone, who helped William Clark create his master map of the West; John Jacob Astor, the prominent fur-trade entrepreneur who launched the second American trek to the Pacific; Ramsay Crooks, an "Astorian" adventurer present for the discovery of the Tetons, Hells Canyon, and South Pass who later became one of the most important merchants in the history of the fur trade; Thomas Hart Benton, a North Carolina native who went west after nearly killing Andrew Jackson in a gunfight and became the US Senate's most powerful voice for Western expansion-and the father-in-law of "the Pathfinder," John C. Fremont; and General Stephen Watts Kearny, whose conquest of California during the Mexican War fulfilled Jefferson's vision of a nation that spanned the continent.

Although a host of adventurers stormed west in 1806 after Lewis and Clark's safe return, seven of them left unique legacies because of their monumental journeys, their lionhearted spirit in the face of hardship, and the way their paths intertwined time and again. The Perilous West tells this riveting story in depth for the first time, focusing on each of the seven explorers in turn - Ramsay Crooks, Robert McClellan, John Hoback, Jacob Reznor, Edward Robinson, Pierre Dorion, and Marie Dorion. These seven counted the Tetons, Hells Canyon, and South Pass among their discoveries. More importantly, they forged the Oregon Trail-a path destined to link the Atlantic coast with the Pacific, spurring national expansion as it carried trappers, soldiers, pioneers, missionaries, and gold-seekers westward. The Perilous West begins in 1806, when Crooks and McClellan meet Lewis and Clark, and the vast expanse from the Dakotas to the Pacific coast appears a commercial paradise. The story ends in 1814, when a band of French Canadian trappers rescue Marie Dorion, and even John Jacob Astor's well-financed enterprise has ended in violence and chaos, placing the protagonists squarely in the context of Thomas Jefferson's monumental opening of the West, which stalled with the War of 1812.