Kirjahaku

Winner of the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America, the Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, and the Oklahoma Book Award from the Oklahoma Center for the Book. Founded in Oklahoma in 1893, the 101 Ranch created one of the most exciting and influential traveling rodeo shows ever to tour the country. Featuring countless cowboys and cowgirls, including such Western legends as Buffalo Bill, Geronimo, and Bill Picket, it was only a matter of time before it caught the glittering eye of Hollywood. From the legendary cattle drives along the Chisholm Trail to the origins of the mass entertainment industry, Michael Wallis masterfully tells the enthralling history of not only the 101 ranch, but the last days of the American Frontier.

America's Main Street is celebration, Michael Wallis hit the road again, revisiting people and places that made the Mother Road on American icon, and uncovering new treasures. A love letter and a tribute, "Route 66: The Mother Road" takes us on an unforgettable journey through the secret corners and hidden towns of America's most famous and beloved highway.

The best-selling author of Route 66 and a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer present a tribute to the American transcontinental highway, evaluating its historic and cultural relevance as well as current efforts to repair its key segments.

His name was David Crockett. He never signed his name any other way, but popular culture transformed his memory into "Davy Crockett," and Hollywood gave him a raccoon hat he hardly ever wore. Best-selling historian Michael Wallis casts a fresh look at the frontiersman, storyteller, and politician behind these legendary stories. Born into a humble Tennessee family in 1786, Crockett never "killed him a b'ar" when he was only three. But he did cut a huge swath across early-nineteenth-century America—as a bear hunter, a frontier explorer, a soldier serving under Andrew Jackson, an unlikely congressman, and, finally, a martyr in his now-controversial death at the Alamo. Wallis's David Crockett is more than a riveting story. It is a revelatory, authoritative biography that separates fact from fiction, providing us with an extraordinary evocation of a true American hero and the rough-and-tumble times in which he lived.

In this revisionist biography, award-winning historian Michael Wallis re-creates the rich anecdotal saga of Billy the Kid (1859–1881), a young man who became a legend in his time and remains an enigma to this day. In an extraordinary evocation of the legendary Old West, Wallis demonstrates why the Kid has remained one of our most popular folk heroes. Filled with dozens of rare images and period photographs, Billy the Kid separates myth from reality and presents an unforgettable portrait of this brief and violent life.

From the best-selling author of Billy the Kid and Route 66, a true-life story of a notorious outlaw that magnificently re-creates the vanished, impoverished world of Dust Bowl America. Michael Wallis evokes the hard times of the era as he follows the life of Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd from his coming of age, when there were no jobs and no food, to his descent into a life of petty crime, bootlegging, murder, and prison. Before long he was one of the FBI's original "public enemies." After a series of spectacular bank robberies he was slain in an Ohio field in 1934 at the age of thirty. Pretty Boy is social history at its best, portraying, with a sweeping style, the larger story of the hardscrabble farmers whose lives were so intolerably shattered by the Depression.

Popular culture transformed his memory into “Davy Crockett,” and Hollywood gave him a raccoon hat he hardly ever wore. In this surprising New York Times bestseller, historian Michael Wallis has cast a fresh look at the flesh-and-blood man behind one of the most celebrated figures in American history. More than a riveting story, Wallis’s David Crockett is a revelatory, authoritative biography that separates fact from fiction and provides us with an extraordinary evocation of not only a true American hero but also the rough-and-tumble times in which he lived.

A deeply sympathetic, colorful evocation of life on the American prairiesIn Way Down Yonder in the Indian Nation - a title inspired by the lyrics of Woody Guthrie - best-selling author Michael Wallis creates a brilliant tableau of America's heartland.Featuring a new introduction by the author, this collection of sixteen essays reflects the finest examples of Wallis's writing and harkens back to a time before fast food and malls replaced family-owned diners along Route 66. From tales of the notorious Oklahoma panhandle, where ""the only law was the colt and the carbine,"" to the fate of Woody Guthrie's mother Nora, who, burdened by depression, set fire to her kids and spent the last years of her life in an asylum, Way Down Yonder in the Indian Nation brings to life some of Oklahoma's most memorable characters - the famous and infamous, the ordinary and down-home.""Enclosed within the covers of this book are some of my favorite spoonfuls of Oklahoma,"" says Wallis. The result is a quintessential American book - a crazy quilt of stories and a powerful portrait of Okie identity.

"WESTWARD HO! FOR OREGON AND CALIFORNIA!" In the eerily warm spring of 1846, George Donner placed this advertisement in a local newspaper as he and a restless caravan prepared for what they hoped would be the most rewarding journey of a lifetime. But in eagerly pursuing what would a century later become known as the "American dream," this optimistic-yet-motley crew of emigrants was met with a chilling nightmare; in the following months, their jingoistic excitement would be replaced by desperate cries for help that would fall silent in the deadly snow-covered mountains of the Sierra Nevada. We know these early pioneers as the Donner Party, a name that has elicited horror since the late 1840s. Now, celebrated historian Michael Wallis—beloved for his myth-busting portraits of legendary American figures—continues his life’s work of parsing fact from fiction to tell the true story of one of the most embroidered sagas in Western history. Wallis begins the story in 1846, a momentous "year of decision" for the nation, when incredible territorial strides were being made in Texas, New Mexico, and California. Against this dramatic backdrop, an unlikely band of travelers appeared, stratified in age, wealth, education and ethnicity. At the forefront were the Donners: brothers George and Jacob, true sons of the soil determined to tame the wild land of California; and the Reeds, headed by adventurous, business-savvy patriarch James. In total, the Donner-Reed group would reach eighty-seven men, women, and children, and though personal motives varied—bachelors thirsting for adventure, parents wanting greater futures for their children—everyone was linked by the same unwavering belief that California was theirs for the taking. Skeptical of previous accounts of how the group ended up in peril, Wallis has spent years retracing its ill-fated journey, uncovering hundreds of new documents that illuminate how a combination of greed, backbiting, and recklessness led the group to become hopelessly snowbound at the infamous Donner Pass in present-day California. Climaxing with the grim stories of how the party’s paltry rations soon gave way to unimaginable hunger, Wallis not only details the cannibalism that has in perpetuity haunted their legacy but also the heroic rescue parties that managed to reach the stranded, only to discover that just forty-eight had survived the ordeal. An unflinching and historically invaluable account of the darkest side of Manifest Destiny, The Best Land Under Heaven offers a brilliant, revisionist examination of one of America's most calamitous and sensationalized catastrophes.

The beloved, definitive book on Route 66--updated with a new chapter to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the most famous road in American culture From its conception in 1926 to its decommissioning in 1985, Route 66 was the way to see the heartland of America. Winding through eight states and three time zones, The Mother Road was for travelers: those who appreciated the romance of the open highway. It led them from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California, acting as a guide to the towns, attractions, businesses, families, and sights of the nation's Midwest, Southwest, and West. In Route 66: The Mother Road, Michael Wallis takes readers on an adventure from the conception of highways, through major moments in America's history, to the establishment of the national interstate highway system that signaled the decline of the fabled highway, before finally leading us down the 2,400 miles of Route 66 itself. With hundreds of photographs and text, he shows us that this road is still the enduring artery of the country, linking our past, present, and future. First published in 1990, the bestselling Route 66: The Mother Road sparked an unprecedented revival of the forgotten towns, diners, and motels along Route 66, transforming the road from a distant memory into a vibrant, internationally recognized destination in its own right. For this 100th anniversary edition, Wallis revisits the people and places that make Route 66 what it is: an American icon.

Cutting through 160 years of mythmaking, best-selling historian Michael Wallis presents the ultimate cautionary tale of America's westward expansion. "Westward ho For Oregon and California " In the eerily warm spring of 1846, George Donner placed this advertisement in a local newspaper as he and a restless caravan prepared for what they hoped would be the most rewarding journey of a lifetime. But in eagerly pursuing what would a century later become known as the "American dream", this optimistic yet motley crew of emigrants was met with a chilling nightmare; in the following months, their jingoistic excitement would be replaced by desperate cries for help that would fall silent in the deadly snow-covered mountains of the Sierra Nevada. We know these early pioneers as the Donner Party, a name that has elicited horror since the late 1840s. Now, celebrated historian Michael Wallis - beloved for his myth-busting portraits of legendary American figures - continues his life's work of parsing fact from fiction to tell the true story of one of the most embroidered sagas in Western history. Wallis begins the story in 1846, a momentous "year of decision" for the nation, when incredible territorial strides were being made in Texas, New Mexico, and California. Against this dramatic backdrop, an unlikely band of travelers appeared, stratified in age, wealth, education, and ethnicity. At the forefront were the Donners: brothers George and Jacob, true sons of the soil determined to tame the wild land of California; and the Reeds, headed by adventurous, business-savvy patriarch James. In total the Donner-Reed group would reach 87 men, women, and children, and though personal motives varied - bachelors thirsting for adventure, parents wanting greater futures for their children - everyone was linked by the same unwavering belief that California was theirs for the taking. Skeptical of previous accounts of how the group ended up in peril, Wallis has spent years retracing its ill-fated journey, uncovering hundreds of new documents that illuminate how a combination of greed, backbiting, and recklessness led the group to become hopelessly snowbound at the infamous Donner Pass in present-day California. Climaxing with the grim stories of how the party's paltry rations soon gave way to unimaginable hunger, Wallis not only details the cannibalism that has in perpetuity haunted their legacy but also the heroic rescue parties that managed to reach the stranded, only to discover that just 48 had survived the ordeal.An unflinching and historically invaluable account of the darkest side of Manifest Destiny, The Best Land Under Heaven offers a brilliant, revisionist examination of one of America's most calamitous and sensationalized catastrophes.

"WESTWARD HO! FOR OREGON AND CALIFORNIA!" In the eerily warm spring of 1846, George Donner placed this advertisement in a local newspaper as he and a restless caravan prepared for what they hoped would be the most rewarding journey of a lifetime. But in eagerly pursuing what would a century later become known as the "American dream," this optimistic-yet-motley crew of emigrants was met with a chilling nightmare; in the following months, their jingoistic excitement would be replaced by desperate cries for help that would fall silent in the deadly snow-covered mountains of the Sierra Nevada. We know these early pioneers as the Donner Party, a name that has elicited horror since the late 1840s. With The Best Land Under Heaven, Wallis has penned what critics agree is “destined to become the standard account” (Washington Post) of the notorious saga. Cutting through 160 years of myth-making, the “expert storyteller” (True West) compellingly recounts how the unlikely band of early pioneers met their fate. Interweaving information from hundreds of newly uncovered documents, Wallis illuminates how a combination of greed and recklessness led to one of America’s most calamitous and sensationalized catastrophes. The result is a “fascinating, horrifying, and inspiring” (Oklahoman) examination of the darkest side of Manifest Destiny.

In the annals of Wild West desperadoes, Belle Starr is remembered as the Bandit Queen. Now Michael Wallis parses over a century of mythmaking to reveal the woman behind the renegade legend. Starr was born Myra Maibelle Shirley in 1848 and was educated to be a Southern belle. Her early years were characterised by the chaotic violence of the American Civil War—she was traumatised by the death of her brother while riding with a guerilla group supporting the Confederate Army and she swore revenge against all Yankees, becoming a “friend to any brave and gallant outlaw”. Turning a redemptive eye to Belle Starr’s legacy, Wallis crafts portrait of a woman demonised for refusing to accept genteel Victorian ideals, who chose to live her life outside the law, riding with a pearl-handled Colt .45 strapped to her hip.

As the highway that opened up the West to millions of travelers since its construction in the 1930s, Rte. 66 is an iconic road that has been celebrated in story, song, films, and more. Justly known as "The Mother Road," this highway became the vital path for travelers, tourists, and fortune-seekers. However, after the advent of the superhighway and the Interstate system of the 1950s, Rte. 66 gradually fell out of use, leaving behind fascinating relics of a bygone era--roadside attractions, marvelous kitsch, storefronts, and the great neon artifacts that still light up the night along the highway. Terrence Moore has traveled and photographed this road since he first drove it with his parents in the 1960s. Though he has covered this subject for more than 40 years as a professional photographer, never before has his work been collected in book form. This volume highlights 66 of his finest 35mm color film images--a stunning chronicle of this storied road in states from Missouri to California.