This brisk narrative of the discovery and settling of the American West is based on the script for the 12-hour PBS series by Stephen Ives and Ken Burns. As with Burns's earlier acclaimed series on the Civil War, this text, tracing the successive waves of explorers, trappers, settlers, missionaries, soldiers, wanderers, and hustlers who rolled across the vast western landscape, depends heavily on quotes from letters, diaries, and memoirs. Ward (who wrote the book based on Burns's Civil War series) weaves these materials into a clear, precise text, stressing the varied, often bitter or violent, experiences of individuals attempting to make a home in a hard land, and paying particular angry attention to the destruction of Native American societies. The work is illustrated by several hundred period photographs, many of them uncommon, drawn from the series. ($60.00; Sept. 16, 1996; 464 pages.; ISBN 0-316- 92236-6)
