Best Nonfiction Books Western US History
1. 
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West
by:
Dee Brown
4.26 avg rating — 99,689 ratings 2. 
Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water
by:
Marc Reisner
4.28 avg rating — 11,662 ratings 3. 
The Last Outlaws: The Lives and Legends of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
by:
Thom Hatch
3.81 avg rating — 624 ratings 4. 
Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America
by:
Eric Jay Dolin
3.86 avg rating — 960 ratings 5. 
Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets off a Struggle for the Soul of America
by:
J. Anthony Lukas
4.17 avg rating — 484 ratings 6. 
8. 
How to Read the American West: A Field Guide (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books)
by:
William Wyckoff
4.19 avg rating — 36 ratings 9. 
Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West
by:
Wallace Stegner
4.05 avg rating — 4,163 ratings 
11. 
Imperfect Union: How Jessie and John Frémont Mapped the West, Invented Celebrity, and Helped Cause the Civil War
by:
Steve Inskeep
3.88 avg rating — 1,535 ratings 12. 
Undaunted Courage: The Pioneering First Mission to Explore America's Wild Frontier 4.23 avg rating — 66,342 ratings
13. 
The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West
by:
David McCullough
3.82 avg rating — 26,721 ratings 14. 
West Like Lightning: The Brief, Legendary Ride of the Pony Express
by:
Jim DeFelice
3.41 avg rating — 614 ratings 15. 
The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America
by:
Thomas King
4.24 avg rating — 17,336 ratings 16. 
A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek
by:
Ari Kelman
4.18 avg rating — 429 ratings 16. 
Frank Little and the IWW: The Blood That Stained an American Family 4.50 avg rating — 30 ratings
16. 
The Death of an Heir: Adolph Coors III and the Murder That Rocked an American Brewing Dynasty
by:
Philip Jett
3.73 avg rating — 451 ratings 16. 
Oak Flat: A Fight for Sacred Land in the American West
by:
Lauren Redniss
4.17 avg rating — 1,926 ratings 16. 
Six Hundred Generations: An Archaeological History of Montana
by:
Carl M Davis
4.52 avg rating — 27 ratings 
16. 
A Sometimes Paradise: Reflections on Life in a Wyoming Ranch Family
by:
Mark E. Miller
4.48 avg rating — 321 ratings 16. 
The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream
by:
H.W. Brands
4.05 avg rating — 1,630 ratings 26. 
How the Vote Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868-1914
by:
Rebecca J. Mead
3.52 avg rating — 27 ratings 26. 
The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West 4.03 avg rating — 1,002 ratings
26. 
When the Meadowlark Sings: A Montana Memoir
by:
Nedra Sterry
really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 162 ratings 26. 
Last Stand: George Bird Grinnell, the Battle to Save the Buffalo, and the Birth of the New West
by:
Michael Punke
4.25 avg rating — 964 ratings 30. 
Killing Custer: The Battle of Little Big Horn and the Fate of the Plains Indians
by:
James Welch
3.90 avg rating — 633 ratings 30. 
Helen Ring Robinson: Colorado Senator and Suffragist
by:
Pat Pascoe
really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 3 ratings 30. 
A Story That Stands Like a Dam: Glen Canyon and the Struggle for the Soul of the West
by:
Russell Martin
4.21 avg rating — 58 ratings 
36. 
Three Ringlings in Montana: Circus Trains to Cattle Ranches
by:
Lee Rostad
3.15 avg rating — 13 ratings 
36. 
The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles
by:
Gary Krist
4.14 avg rating — 2,028 ratings 41. 
Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats
by:
Kristen Iversen
4.06 avg rating — 4,497 ratings 41. 
Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth
by:
Henry Nash Smith
3.72 avg rating — 300 ratings 
41. 
Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West 3.44 avg rating — 6,881 ratings
46. 
The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer
by:
Robert D. Keppel
3.92 avg rating — 3,652 ratings 
46. 
Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
by:
Jon Krakauer
4.01 avg rating — 220,463 ratings 51. 
The Stranger Beside Me: Ted Bundy: The Shocking Inside Story
by:
Ann Rule
4.14 avg rating — 109,023 ratings 
51. 
Dream Chasers of the West: A Homestead Family of Glacier National Park
by:
B.L. Wettstein
4.01 avg rating — 98 ratings 51. 
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
by:
David Grann
4.14 avg rating — 426,119 ratings 51. 
51. 
No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith
by:
Fawn M. Brodie
4.16 avg rating — 3,298 ratings 
57. 
Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Misery: Prostitutes in the American West, 1865-90
by:
Anne M. Butler
3.75 avg rating — 102 ratings 60. 
On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family
by:
Lisa See
3.95 avg rating — 11,027 ratings 
60. 
Gendered Justice in the American West: Women Prisoners in Men's Penitentiaries
by:
Anne M. Butler
3.77 avg rating — 22 ratings 
64. 
Men To Match My Mountains: The Opening of the Far West 1840-1900
by:
Irving Stone
4.11 avg rating — 1,278 ratings 64. 
The Biography of F. Augustus Heinze: Copper King at War
by:
Sarah McNelis
liked it 3.00 avg rating — 1 rating 64. 
Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival
by:
Peter Stark
4.09 avg rating — 12,329 ratings 68. 
Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archaeology, and the Battle for Native American Identity 4.15 avg rating — 564 ratings
69. 
69. 
The Associates: Four Capitalists Who Created California
by:
Richard Rayner
3.80 avg rating — 263 ratings 72. 
Blood Brothers: The Story of the Strange Friendship between Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill
by:
Deanne Stillman
3.58 avg rating — 354 ratings 
72. 
The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn 4.04 avg rating — 11,913 ratings
75. 
The Boy Who Became Buffalo Bill: Growing Up Billy Cody in Bleeding Kansas
by:
Andrea Warren
4.23 avg rating — 151 ratings 
75. 
A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent
by:
Robert W. Merry
3.83 avg rating — 7,581 ratings 78. 
Wild Bill Hickok & Calamity Jane: Deadwood Legends (South Dakota Biography Series)
by:
James D. McLaird
3.33 avg rating — 49 ratings 78. 
Hell on the Range: A Story of Honor, Conscience, and the American West (The Lamar Series in Western History) really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating
78. 
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West 4.23 avg rating — 66,342 ratings
81. 
The Man Who Once Was Whizzer White: A Portrait Of Justice Byron R White 3.85 avg rating — 52 ratings
81. 
Glorious Misadventures: Nikolai Rezanov and the Dream of a Russian America
by:
Owen Matthews
3.90 avg rating — 237 ratings 83. 
The Principled Politician: Governor Ralph Carr and the Fight against Japanese American Internment
by:
Adam Schrager
4.75 avg rating — 8 ratings 
83. 
88. 
Heroine of the Titanic: The Real Unsinkable Molly Brown
by:
Elaine Landau
3.68 avg rating — 113 ratings 88. 
Lady Was a Gambler: True Stories of Notorious Women of the Old West
by:
Chris Enss
3.74 avg rating — 35 ratings 
94. 
Horace Tabor: His Life and the Legend
by:
Duane A. Smith
really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 6 ratings 94. 
Unreal City: Las Vegas, Black Mesa, and the Fate of the West
by:
Judith Nies
3.51 avg rating — 181 ratings 96. 
98. 
The Spaghetti Gang: Memories of a Crested Butte, Colorado Coal Miner's Son really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating
99. 
Once a Coal Miner: The Story of Colorado's Northern Coal Field
by:
Phyllis Smith
really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 5 ratings 