California's early history was both colorful and turbulent. After Europeans first explored the region in the sixteenth century, it was conquered and colonized by successive waves of adventurers and settlers. In "Contest for California," award-winning author Stephen G. Hyslop draws on a wide array of primary sources to weave an elegant narrative of this epic struggle for control of the territory that many saw as a beautiful, sprawling land of promise.
In vivid detail, Hyslop traces the story of early California from its founding in 1769 by Spanish colonists to its annexation in 1848 by the United States. He describes the motivations and activities of colonizers and colonized alike. Using eyewitness accounts, he allows all participants--Native American, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American--to have their say. Soldiers, settlers, missionaries, and merchants testify to the heroic and commonplace, the colorful and tragic, in California's pre-American history.
Even as he acknowledges the dark side of this story, Hyslop avoids a simplistic perspective. Moving beyond the polarities that have marked late-twentieth-century California historiography, he offers nuanced portraits of such controversial figures as Junipero Serra and treats the Californios and their distinctive Hispanic culture with a respect lacking in earlier histories. Attentive to tensions within the invading groups--priests and the military during the Spanish era, merchants and settlers during the American era--he also never loses sight of their impact on the original inhabitants of the region: California's Native peoples. He also recounts the journeys of colonists from Russia, England, and other countries who influenced the development of California as it passed from the hands of Spaniards and Mexicans to Americans.
Exhaustively researched yet concise, this book offers a much-needed alternative history of early California and its evolution from Spanish colony to American territory.

By the time Abraham Lincoln asserted in 1858 that the nation could not “endure permanently half slave and half free,” the rift that would split the country in civil war was well defined. The origins and evolution of the coming conflict between North and South can in fact be traced back to the early years of the American Republic, as Stephen G. Hyslop demonstrates in Building a House Divided, an exploration of how the incipient fissure between the Union’s initial slave states and free states—or those where slaves were gradually being emancipated—lengthened and deepened as the nation advanced westward. Hyslop focuses on four prominent slaveholding expansionists who were intent on preserving the Union but nonetheless helped build what Lincoln called a house divided: Presidents Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and James K. Polk and Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, who managed a plantation in Mississippi bequeathed by his father-in-law. Hyslop examines what these men did, collectively and individually, to further what Jefferson called an “empire of liberty,” though it kept millions of Black people in bondage. Along with these major figures, in all their conflicts and contradictions, he considers other American expansionists who engaged in and helped extend slavery—among them William Clark, Stephen Austin, and President John Tyler—as well as examples of principled opposition to the extension of slavery by northerners such as John Quincy Adams and southerners like Henry Clay and Thomas Hart Benton, who held slaves but placed preserving the Union above extending slavery across the continent. The long view of the path to the Civil War, as charted through the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian eras in this book, reveals the critical fault in the nation’s foundation, exacerbated by slaveholding expansionists like Jefferson, Jackson, Polk, and Douglas, until the house they built upon it could no longer stand for two opposite ideas at once.

From the first wagon trains to the building of the railroads, the story of the American West is epic in scope, full of amazing stories of grit, tragedy, and triumph. Lavishly illustrated with photographs and maps, this is the definitive history of a time and place that forever lives in legend. Travel with fur traders and trappers through the Pacific northwest; read accounts of brave pioneers heading west along the Oregon Trail; see 19th-century technology progress as the golden spike connects the east and west coasts; and learn the stories of unforgettable characters who made the American West.

This comprehensive atlas delves into the cartographic history of WWII: naval, land, and aerial attacks from the invasion of Poland to Pearl Harbor and the Battle of the Bulge. Rare maps include a detailed Germany & Approaches map used by Allied forces in the final stages of the war, full large-scale wartime maps of the world used by President Roosevelt, and crucial Pacific theater maps used by B-17 pilots. Satellite data renders terrain as never before seen, highlighting countries and continents in stunning detail to include the towns, cities, provinces, and transportation roads for a pinpoint-accurate depiction of army movements and alliances. Gripping wartime stories from these hallowed fields of battle, along with photographs, sketches, confidential documents, and artifacts color the rest of this timeless and informative book. This definitive, lavishly illustrated book features an astonishing array of vintage and newly created maps, rare photographs, covert documents, and eyewitness accounts that illuminate the world's greatest conflict.

"Draws on eyewitness accounts to tell the story of the fabled Santa Fe Trail"

For nearly half a century, the Santa Fe Trail served as an avenue of exchange, where transactions ranged from friendly give-and-take to guarded trade to lethal attempts to settle scores. In 1846, the trail became the means for American seizure of Mexican territory--yet the economic and cultural exchanges continued even in the midst of war. "In Bound for Santa Fe," Stephen G. Hyslop draws on eyewitness accounts to retrace the journey from Missouri to New Mexico, weaving together nearly one hundred accounts by scores of people who traveled the trail.

California's early history was both colorful and turbulent. After Europeans first explored the region in the sixteenth century, it was conquered and colonized by successive waves of adventurers and settlers. In Contest for California, award-winning author Stephen G. Hyslop draws on a wide array of primary sources to weave an elegant narrative of this epic struggle for control of the territory that many saw as a beautiful, sprawling land of promise. In vivid detail, Hyslop traces the story of early California from its founding in 1769 by Spanish colonists to its annexation in 1848 by the United States. He describes the motivations and activities of colonizers and colonized alike. Using eyewitness accounts, he allows all participants - Native American, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American - to have their say. Soldiers, settlers, missionaries, and merchants testify to the heroic and commonplace, the colorful and tragic, in California's pre-American history. Even as he acknowledges the dark side of this story, Hyslop avoids a simplistic perspective. Moving beyond the polarities that have marked late-twentieth-century California historiography, he offers nuanced portraits of such controversial figures as Junipero Serra and treats the Californios and their distinctive Hispanic culture with a respect lacking in earlier histories. Attentive to tensions within the invading groups - priests and the military during the Spanish era, merchants and settlers during the American era - he also never loses sight of their impact on the original inhabitants of the region: California's Native peoples. He also recounts the journeys of colonists from Russia, England, and other countries who influenced the development of California as it passed from the hands of Spaniards and Mexicans to Americans. Exhaustively researched yet concise, this book offers a much-needed alternative history of early California and its evolution from Spanish colony to American territory.