It started as a search for heroes. It became a hunt for the most elusive equestrian charlatan of all time. If Frank Hopkins is to be believed, he led one of the most exciting, challenging and colorful (albeit unrecorded) lives in the late nineteenth century. No one rode more miles, eluded more danger, or befriended more famous people than he did. During the 1930s and 40s the self-proclaimed legend told a naive American public that he had won nearly five hundred endurance races, including an imaginary race across Arabia on a mythical mustang named "Hidalgo." Hopkins' remarkable career...

In this intriguing narrative, David Dary charts how American medicine has evolved since 1492, when New World settlers first began combining European remedies with the traditional practices of the native populations. It's a story filled with colorful characters, from quacks and con artists to heroic healers and ingenious medicine men, and Dary tells it with an engaging style and an eye for the telling detail. Dary also charts the evolution of American medicine from these trial-and-error roots to its contemporary high-tech, high-cost pharmaceutical and medical industry.
Packed with...

Drawing from letters, diaries, reports, and first-hand reminiscences, one of the foremost historians of the Old West flushes out the story of the men and women who opened commerce with Spanish America along the Santa Fe Trail between Missouri and New Mexico. 110 photos, maps, & drawings.

Do you know how Oklahoma came to have a panhandle? Did you know that Washington Irving once visited what is now Oklahoma? Can you name the official state rock, or list the courses in the official state meal? The answers to these questions, and others you may not have thought to ask, can be found in this engaging collection of tales by renowned journalist-historian David Dary.

Most of the stories gathered here first appeared as newspaper articles during the state centennial in 2007. For this volume Dary has revised and expanded them--and added new ones. He begins with an overview of...

In this earliest known day-by-day journal of a cattle drive from Texas to Kansas, Jack Bailey, a North Texas farmer, describes what it was like to live and work as a cowboy in the southern plains just after the Civil War. We follow Bailey as the drive moves northward into Kansas and then as his party returns to Texas through eastern Kansas, southwestern Missouri, northwestern Arkansas, and Indian Territory.

For readers steeped in romantic cowboy legend, the journal contains surprises. Bailey's time on the trail was hardly lonely. We travel with him as he encounters Indians, U.S....

Driving across the country in the early twentieth century was high adventure. In 1925 Willie Chester Clark and his family piled into a modified Chevrolet touring car, affectionately named Leaping Lena, and took off for the West. Clark's account of the journey will acquaint readers with cross-country travel at a time when Americans were just inventing the road trip.

Editor David Dary discovered a copy of Clark's account among his grandfather's personal papers. Dary introduces the tale of how Leaping Lena clocked some 12,000 miles in five months, starting from West Virginia and...