Brands tells the thrilling, panoramic story of the settling of the American West. He takes readers from John Jacob Astor's fur trading outpost in Oregon to the Texas Revolution, from the California gold rush to the Oklahoma land rush.

"Years before the name Alex Murdaugh was splashed across every major media outlet in America, local South Carolina journalist Mandy Matney had an instinct that something wasn’t right in the Lowcountry. The powerful Murdaugh dynasty had dominated rural South Carolina for generations. No one dared to cross them. When Mandy and her reporting partner Liz Farrell looked closer at a fatal boat crash involving the storied family’s teenage son Paul,...

The French and Indian War was an epic struggle between France and Great Britain and her colonial allies. Both sides were fighting for control of the North American continent. The long-standing and deeply rooted animosity between France and Britain made this final decisive conflict all but inevitable. The war represented the first large-scale mobilization of the colonial militias and would prove to be a critical factor in the war for American Independence...

Follows the story of Keiko, the whale star of Free Willy, after a crusade successfully called for his release into the wild.