New York Times bestselling author and Newbery Honor recipient Steve Sheinkin welcomes young listeners to the thrilling, tragic, and downright wild historic adventure of America’s westward expansion in Which Way to the Wild West? Everything Your Schoolbooks Didn’t Tell You About America’s Westward Expansion. 1805: Explorer William Clark reaches the Pacific Ocean and pens the badly spelled line “Ocian in view! O! the joy!” (Hey, he was an explorer, not a spelling bee champion!) 1836: Mexican general Santa Anna surrounds the Alamo, trapping 180 Texans inside and prompting Texan William Travis to declare, “I shall never surrender or retreat.” 1861: Two railroad companies, one starting in the West and one in the East, start a race to lay the most track and create a transcontinental railroad. With a storyteller's voice and attention to the details that make history real and interesting, Steve Sheinkin delivers the wild facts about America's greatest adventure. From the Louisiana Purchase (remember: if you're negotiating a treaty for your country, play it cool.) to the gold rush (there were only three ways to get to California--all of them bad) to the life of the cowboy, the Indian wars, and the everyday happenings that defined living on the frontier. “An engaging...medley of anecdotes about the Wild West in nine lively chapters starting with the Louisiana Purchase and ending with the Lakota massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. Casual vignettes of famous figures and ordinary people come to life.” ―School Library Journal “Sheinkin builds his conversational narrative around stories of the men and women who peopled the west, with particular attention given to African Americans, Chinese workers, and everyday farmers and cowboys. There's plenty of humor here, but Sheinkin's strength is his ability to transition between events.”―The Horn Book
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Steve Sheinkin is the award-winning author of fast-paced, cinematic histories for young readers. His The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights was longlisted for the National Book Award. Bomb: The Race to Build-and Steal-the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon was a Newbery Honor Book, a National Book Award finalist, and winner of the Sibert Award and YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults.
Vikas Adam is a classically trained actor with numerous credits in stage, film, commercials, and television, in addition to his over two hundred recorded audiobooks. His narrations have garnered numerous awards and nominations, including AudioFile Earphones Awards, various Best of the Year lists, and the prestigious Audie Award. He was an inaugural inductee into the Audible Narrator Hall of Fame.