So Rugged and Mountainous: Blazing the Trails to Oregon and California, 1812-1848 (Overland West Series)
. . .  beautifully written prose . .  blends the latest scholarly interpretations with an endless array of primary sources . .  . comprehensive, factually reliable, and supremely analytical. --Michael L. Tate, Choice Magazine, December 2010No one tells the history of the early western trails better than  Will Bagley. . . . an epic story . . . an absorbing narrative. . . "So Rugged and Mountainous" is as good as history gets. --Sandra Dallas, Denver Post, June 5, 2010A monumental work, vast in scope, precise in detail, generous in vision. Bagley, a historian not connected to any academic institution, has drawn on a vast reservoir of primary sources -- personal letters, journals, newspaper reports, government documents and folk accounts -- to produce a new and lasting contribution. -- Gaylord Dold, Wichita EagleThe first in what will ultimately be a 4-volume epic reinterpreting the nineteenth-century American West. . . .  Bagley's carefully researched and well-written history is, in a word, magisterial. . . . tells this complex story masterfully. . . some of the finest western geopolitical history ever written. -- Richard Francaviglia, Pacific Hist. Rev.“Using a wealth of primary sources, Will Bagley's carefully researched and well-written history is, in a word, magisterial. . . . He notes that the year 1846 was a watershed, and his chapter devoted to it represents some of the finest western geopolitical history ever written.”—Richard Francaviglia,Pacific Historical Review