Other editions of book Men to Match My Mountains: The Monumental Saga of the Winning of America's Far West

Acclaimed author of biographical and historical fiction Irving Stone turns his magnificent talent to telling America’s most colorful and exciting story—the opening of the Far West.Men to Match My Mountains is a true historical masterpiece, an unforgettable pageant of giants—men like John Sutter, whose dream of paradise was shattered by the California Gold Rush; Brigham Young and the Mormons, who tamed the desert with Bible texts; and the silver kings and the miners, who developed Nevada’s Comstock Lode and settled the Rockies.America called for greatness—and got it. There is nothing in history to match the stories of these men who braved wilderness to bring new nation to the shores of the Pacific.

The opening of the Far West 1840-1900 this is the sweeping effect of his saga of the opening of the Far West, specifically California, Nevada, Utah and Colorado. Indians and trappers and hunters and a handful of settlers on the Coast made little impress on the empire belonging to Mexico, in 1840. And the man who opened the sluicegates was a man who had failed at everything else, "Captain" John Augustus Sutter. Ambition and imagination and determination launched the beginnings of his small empire in the valley of the Sacramento. Gold rounded out the story, as it was to round out other approaches to the opening of the West. Irving Stone tells all of the history in terms of the men -- sometimes the women- who opened the land and built that civilization. It is almost overwhelming in the mass of material he has used, sometimes with a lack of selectivity that makes balance difficult for the reader, but always with the gift of the storyteller, the sense of drama, the appreciation of shifting values. Gold -- silver -- railroads- these proved the spurs; floods of immigrants followed various trails; communities mushroomed; violence and lawlessness gave way before self-constituted law of vigilantes; government took shape slowly; Washington granted statehood in desperation -- or withheld it (as in the case of Utah) in order to win a dispute. Polygamy was the moot question, and for a generation and more harried the Mormons and brought virtual civil war. (online review)