FINALIST FOR THE GEORGE WASHINGTON BOOK PRIZE A new, brash, and unexpected view of the president we thought we knew, from the bestselling author of Astoria Two decades before he led America to independence, George Washington was a flailing young soldier serving the British Empire in the vast wilderness of the Ohio Valley. Naïve and self-absorbed, the twenty-two-year-old officer accidentally ignited the French and Indian War-a conflict that opened...

In the wake of the growing interest in some of the world's most dangerous places, the author takes a close-up look at the physiological, psychological, and emotional stages that the human body and mind endures at the brink of death.

"The conquest of indigenous land in the American East through corrupt treaties and genocidal violence laid the groundwork for the conquest of the American West. Acclaimed author Peter Stark exposes the fundamental conflicts at play through the little-known but consequential struggle between two extraordinary leaders. William Henry Harrison was born to a prominent Virginia family, son of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He journeyed...

Documents the 1810 to 1813 expedition, financed by millionaire John Jacob Astor and encouraged by Thomas Jefferson, to establish Fort Astoria, a trading post on the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest.