Reading List

The following is a reading list of texts I recommend for those interested in the frontier.

(* Indicates a primary source)

  • 101 Yesterday’s by Tim Nolting

  • *A Texas Cowboy by Charles Siringo

  • Back to Basics by Reader’s Digest

  • Betty Zane by Zane Grey

  • Black Elk Speaks by John Neihardt

  • Book of Buckskinning Volumes 1-8 by William Scurlock

  • Boone; A Biography by Robert Morgan

  • Crazy Horse by Mike Sajna

  • Charles Goodnight; Cowman and Plainsman by J. Evetts Haley

  • Firearms, Traps, and Tools of the Mountain Men by Carl P. Russell

  • Grass Beyond the Mountain by Richmond Hobson

  • Give Your Heart to the Hawks by Win Blevins

  • Jedediah Smith by Dale Morgan

  • Jim Bridger by Stanley Vestal

  • Joe Meek; The Merry Mountain Man by Stanley Vestal

  • *Journal of a Trapper by Osborne Russell

  • *Kit Carson’s Autobiography

  • *Life in the Far West by George Fredrick Ruxton

  • *Life in the Rocky Mountains by Warren A. Ferris

  • Lige Mounts by Frank Linderman

  • Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder

  • Mountain Men and the Fur Traders of the Far West edited by LeRoy R. Hafen

  • *My Sixty Years on the Plains by William Thomas Hamilton

  • *Narrative of the Adventures of Zenas Leonard by Zenas Leonard

  • Old Bill Williams by Alpheus Favour

  • Old Jules by Mari Sandoz

  • Rocky Mountain Redezvous by Fred Gowans

  • *Rocky Mountain Life by Rufus Sage

  • Shadow of the Tetons by John C. Jackson

  • Sitting Bull; Champion of the Sioux Stanley Vestal

  • *Six Years With the Texas Rangers by James B. Gillett

  • Tales of the Mountain Men edited by Lamar Underwood

  • The American Fur Trade of the Far West; Volumes 1&2 by Hiram Chittenden

  • The Beaver Men by Mari Sandoz

  • The Big Sky by A.B. Guthrie J.R.

  • The Cattlemen by Mari Sandoz

  • *The Cowboy by Philip Ashton Rollins

  • *The Last Plainsmen by Zane Grey

  • *The Log of a Cowboy by Andy Adams

  • *The Oregon Trail by Francis Parkman

  • The Oregon Trail; Yesterday and Today by William E. Hill

  • The Way West by A.B. Guthrie J.R.

  • To Kill an Eagle by Edward and Mabell Kadlecek

  • *Trails of Yesterday by John Bratt

  • Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose

  • *Wah-to-Yah and the Taos Trail by Lewis Garrard

  • *We Pointed the North by Teddy Blue Abbot