Robert Morgan, the bestselling historian and biographer of BOONE, which was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, now turns his storytelling genius to the lives of ten American legends in LIONS OF THE WEST: Heroes and Villains of the Westwards Expansion (Oct. 18th, 2011) who helped achieve America’s Manifest Destiny. From Thomas Jefferson’s birth in 1743 to the California Gold Rush in 1849, America’s Manifest Destiny comes to life in the skilled hands of a writer fascinated by the way individual lives collectively impact history. Thomas Jefferson first envisioned a United States that stretched across the continent from ocean to ocean. The account of how that dream became reality unfolds in the stories of Jefferson and nine other Americans whose adventurous spirits pushed the westward boundaries. Their stories – and the stories of the nameless thousands who risked their lives to settle the frontier – form an extraordinary chapter in American history that led directly to the cataclysm of the Civil War. Without them, the United States might well have ended at the Arkansas border. It is filled with illustrations, portraits, maps, battle plans, and timelines throughout.
