a throne of grace: jedediah smith and the bloody conquest of the american west

＂It is the early 19th century, and the land recently purchased by President Thomas Jefferson stretches west for thousands of miles. Who inhabits this vast new garden of Eden? What strange beasts and natural formations can be found? Thus was the birth of Manifest Destiny and the resulting bloody battles with Indigenous tribes encountered by white explorers. Also in this volatile mix are the grizzled fur trappers and mountain men, waging war against the Native American tribes whose lands they traverse. This is the setting of [this book], and the guide to this epic narrative is arguably America’s greatest yet most unsung pathfinder, Jedediah Smith. His explorations into the forested frontiers on both sides of the Rocky Mountains and all the way to the West Coast would become the stuff of legend. Thanks to painstaking research and riveting writing, the story of the making of modern America is told through the eyes of both the ordinary and memorable men and women, settlers and Indigenous, who witnessed it＂--

BOB DRURY and TOM CLAVIN are the #1 New York Times bestselling authors of, most recently, The Last Hill, as well as Blood and Treasure;The Heart of Everything That Is; Lucky 666; Halsey’s Typhoon; Last Men Out; Valley Forge; and The Last Stand of Fox Company, which won the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation’s General Wallace M. Greene, Jr. Award. They live in Manasquan, New Jersey, and Sag Harbor, New York, respectivel