The States of America: The West: Volune Two

Hawaii, Idaho & Montana

The Histories of Hawaii, Idaho & Montana In One Collected Volume

What connects a tropical Pacific archipelago with the high plains and mountain ranges of the northern Rockies? In this compelling volume, Daniel Hardy reveals the surprising common threads linking three of America's most distinctive states. From the overthrow of Hawaiian sovereignty to the copper wars of Butte, from Idaho's silver rushes to Montana's cattle empires, these histories illuminate how the American West was truly forged.

Hardy masterfully weaves together stories of indigenous peoples fighting to preserve their worlds, extractive industries that built fortunes while scarring landscapes, and labor movements that challenged corporate power with unprecedented ferocity. He shows how geography shaped destiny, how railroads and shipping lines transformed isolated territories into integrated parts of the nation, and how the paths to statehood reflected deeper questions about American identity itself.

Neither romanticizing nor condemning, Hardy presents the West as it was: a place of breathtaking beauty and brutal violence, of democratic possibility and imperial ambition, of communities forged in the crucible of distance, hardship, and extraordinary diversity. Hawaii's plantation economy, Idaho's peculiar geography, and Montana's wide-open spaces each tell part of a larger story about how peripheral places became American, and what was lost and gained in that transformation.

Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand not just these three remarkable states, but the complex, often troubling, always fascinating process by which the American West was won, lost, and continually reimagined.