The epic of the American West is America’s great creation myth—and one whose telling is now as contested as once was the land. From a widely accepted tale of progress, redemption, and glorious conquest a new, darker story emerged: one of ghastly violence, racism, and environmental exploitation. In The Undiscovered Country: Triumph, Tragedy, and the Shaping of the American West, acclaimed historian Paul Andrew Hutton gives readers a masterful narrative of both soaring triumph and terrible tragedy to reveal a new, surprising epic that defines America and its people.
Daniel Boone, Red Eagle, Davy Crockett, Mangas Coloradas, Kit Carson, Sitting Bull, and Buffalo Bill: Through the lives of these seven protagonists, Hutton crafts a grand, sweeping tale of daring explorations, of hard-fought battles, and of dreams of peace that inevitably shatter into bloody conflict. From the green forests of Pennsylvania to the snow-crested Sierras, and from the harsh Southwestern deserts to the lush buffalo grasslands of the Great Plains, these heroes of both conquest and resistance play out their conflicted parts across seven generations to shape a new nation. In the end, something grand was created that would be the envy of the world, but at a terrible price.
The author of the critically acclaimed The Apache Wars, praised by the Chicago Tribune as “an epic tale filled with Homeric scenes and unforgettable characters,” Hutton is an American cultural historian, documentary writer, and film and television historian consultant. In The Undiscovered Country, Hutton unfolds a complex tapestry steeped in romantic impulses and tragic consequences, in man-made wonders and environmental ruin, and in immense gain and devastating loss.
The American frontier movement has proved eternally fascinating to global audiences since it began. Its tales of wonderous exploration and devastating loss have inspired novelists, artists, and filmmakers alike. Now, Hutton brings it all to life in The Undiscovered Country, sure to delight readers of American history and the American West.
Paul Andrew Hutton is an American Western, military, and cultural historian, award-winning author, documentary writer, and television personality. He currently serves as the Tate Chair of Western History and interim Curator of the Buffalo Bill Museum in the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, Wyoming. He is also Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of New Mexico.
He has published widely in both scholarly and popular magazines, is a six-time winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award and six-time winner of the Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum for his print and film writing. His The Apache Wars (Crown/Penguin Random House, 2016) won the Western Writers of America Spur Award and the Spanish Hislibris Award for best nonfiction, while his Phil Sheridan and His Army (University of Nebraska Press, 1985) received the Billington Prize from the Organization of American Historians, the Evans Biography Award, and the Spur Award. He is also the editor of Western Heritage (2011), Roundup (2010), Frontier and Region (1997), The Custer Reader (1992), Soldiers West (1987), and the ten-volume Eyewitness to the Civil War series from Bantam Books (1991–1993). From 1977 to 1984 he was associate editor of the Western Historical Quarterly, from 1985 to 1991 was editor of the New Mexico Historical Review, and from 1990–2006 served as Executive Director of the Western History Association. Hutton was also President of Western Writers of America from 2002 to 2004.
He has written several short films for state and national parks as well as a dozen television documentaries and has appeared in over 300 television programs on CBS, NBC, PBS, BBC, Fox, Discovery, Netflix, the History Channel and other networks. In 2003 he was historical consultant for the Ron Howard film The Missing, for Jon Favreau’s Cowboys and Aliens in 2010, and Gavin O’Connor’s Jane Got a Gun in 2016. He worked in Hollywood for two years in the 1990s writing a script on Davy Crockett with David Zucker for Columbia Pictures, and while there appeared alongside O.J. Simpson and Leslie Nielson in the final scene of Naked Gun 33 1/3.
He has also been active as a public historian with museums, guest curating major exhibits in 1985 on the Alamo at the DeGolyer Library in Dallas, in 1996 on the Custer legend at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage in Los Angeles, in 2002 on Davy Crockett at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin, in 2007 on Billy the Kid at the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, and in 2017 on the history of New Mexico filmmaking again for the Albuquerque Museum. His latest book is a history of the American frontier, The Undiscovered Country: Triumph, Tragedy and the Shaping of the American West, published by Dutton/Penguin Random House in August 2025.
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