In his first work of non-fiction for over a decade, the author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee draws on more than 50 years of research to offer an anecdotal portrait of the joys, wonders, war and hardships of the frontier American West. He sets out to place the famous tales in their true perspective, revealing that often the unknown truths are even more remarkable than the celebrated fictions. Using frontier newspapers, journals and diaries, as well as the observations of such travellers as Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde and Robert Louis Stevenson, he evokes the experience of the diverse characters who made their way west via wagon, steamboat and horseback, and on their own two feet.