Continental Reckoning

The American West in the Age of Expansion

By: Elliott West

Narrated by: Christopher Grove

Finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in History

In Continental Reckoning renowned historian Elliott West presents a sweeping narrative of the American West and its vital role in the transformation of the nation. In the 1840s, by which time the United States had expanded to the Pacific, what would become the West was home to numerous vibrant Native cultures and vague claims by other nations. Thirty years later it was organized into states and territories and bound into the nation and world by an infrastructure of rails, telegraph wires, and roads and by a racial and ethnic order, with its Indigenous peoples largely dispossessed and confined to reservations.

Unprecedented exploration uncovered the West's extraordinary resources, beginning with the discovery of gold in California within days of the United States acquiring the territory following the Mexican-American War. As those resources were developed, often by the most modern methods and through modern corporate enterprise, half of the contiguous United States was physically transformed. Continental Reckoning guides the listener through the rippling, multiplying changes wrought in the western half of the country, arguing that these changes should be given equal billing with the Civil War in this crucial transition of national life.

©2023 The Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska (P)2024 Tantor

Great detail

Very detailed book just long. Reads more like a text books through various times than a cohesive story. Overall really good for those interested in how the western US came into being.

A beast of a book

Is the most thorough discussion of the American west you’ll ever find. I highly recommend.

Fresh take on the history of the West

I’ve always wanted to learn more about the frenetic years prior to the Civil War and the incessant push westward. Our generation grew up watching western movies and we knew that something was amiss with the story of the native people. This book provides an unbiased account of the native tribes along with Mexicans and Californios who lived at that time. It’s also enlightening as to the influx of foreign immigrants and the different status that they held in the society of the day.

Very informative!

Packed with information. Entertaining enough for long periods of time. Ill have to relisten to it multiple times to take it all in

Great Historian, Worth Listening

West is a great western historian. He gives an excellent overview of western history. The narration is competent.

an interesting overlook of the gistory of the West.

i enjoyed the detail and broad look at the history of the West. The downside was it was a bit too long though i kept listening to the very end.

This will not age well, unlike the West

The West was settled by brave pioneers who at then end of the 19th century helped shaped the 20th and those this current one. The greatest advancements in human achievement can easily be interwoven into the narrative of the settling of the West. Sadly, this work was more focused on scoring accolades from a certain class of intellectual in academia. One telling example is the assertion that it was the underlying masculine mindset that caused harm during the settling of the West, and did so with the patina of being a pejorative. That, and the fact that it was Europeans (see White), that brought about this advancement. Anyone who has done a semblance of the work it took to endure the hardships of expansion would say that it was with a spirit of determination, resolve and grit, and do so with positivity rather than how this book portrays those who entered the wilds and came out the other side with the foundations of the greatest country the world has seen. We can discuss the vanquishing of the native peoples and some of the failures of absorbing a conquered people into the overall American society. Those criticisms should be exposed to societal norms, but only against their contemporaries and not the current confused paradigm. Would the author be able to find an example of a conquering culture assimilating its vanquished foes in a better fashion? Doubtful.