"A comprehensive, lucid, and often surprising history of western settlement in America."—Kirkus Reviews, starred
"Continental Reckoning is massive and brilliantly constructed, scholarly and literary, meant to be read beyond academic conferences by a public that—in these contentious times—needs to understand America's past."—David Luhrssen, Shepherd Express
“Encyclopedic in its coverage, wonderfully written, full of revealing details, shrewd and funny in its analysis, Continental Reckoning will become the standard work on the creation of the American West. Elliott West remains astute and fair in covering a place and period often reduced to ideology and polemic. No one knows the nineteenth-century American West better than he does.”—Richard White, author of The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865–1896
“Vivid and compelling, Continental Reckoning is a sweeping history of how a dynamic region was made and remade in the mid-nineteenth century. . . . Writing with great insight and wit, Elliott West proves once again why he is one of the preeminent historians of a region that has so often been the focus of national aspirations and anxieties. Continental Reckoning is an authoritative volume and a must-read for anyone interested in western and American history.”—Megan Kate Nelson, author of Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America
“With style, clarity, and exquisite examples, Elliott West has obliterated our national just-so story in which the West just naturally appeared. Using newly confident governments and powerful technologies, Americans mowed down some people and built up others to create a very particular nineteenth-century West. It’s quite a story.”—Anne F. Hyde, author of Born of Lakes and Plains: Mixed-Descent Peoples and the Making of the American West
“A truly extraordinary piece of work, by any measure and in every respect. Continental Reckoning is also, like all of Elliott West’s productions, beautifully written. Of the major Western historians of his generation, he wields—by far—the most felicitous pen. And in this book, as ever, he’s got a talent for the well-turned phrase. Likewise, West lards the narrative with telling details. This book will be pored over by scholars and savored by specialists and lay readers alike. It will surely be the go-to study of this epoch for years to come.”—Andrew R. Graybill, author of The Red and the White: A Family Saga of the American West
