David A Lavender

David Lavender's classic novel of the rich silver strikes between Ouray (Argent) and Silverton (Baker), Colorado is back in print. Based on actual historical events and places (but with a few liberties taken) his fast-moving book details how hero Johnny Ogden builds what is now the Million Dollar Hi...

The American West of the 1930s and 1940s was still a place of prospectors, cowboys, ranchers, and mountaineers, one that demanded backbreaking, lonely, and dangerous work. Still, midcentury pioneers such as David Lavender remembered “not the cold and the cruel fatigue, but rather the multitude of ti...

Critics have called David Lavender a "master storyteller" (Library Journal), his prose "virile, disciplined, yet personal" (New York Times), and his book "a balanced, learned, and lively history of an epochal human exploit" (Choice).Lavender sets the stage with a lucid account of the imperial rivalr...

David Lavender, Pulitzer nominee and one of America's leading authors on America's West, has written a memorable history of the Colorado town where he was raised: from early days of silver mining through near ghost town to ski resort and festival mecca. His son, David G. Lavender covers the many eve...

The exploration and conquest of the Pacific Northwest is the dominant theme of Land of Giants, a book which (in the words of William O. Douglas) "gives one a sense of participation in moulding the manifest destiny of America." English and Spanish seadogs seeking a northwest passage to the Orient wer...

First published in 1980 as part of Harper & Row's Regions of America series, this lively account is now available only from the University of New Mexico Press. Focusing on New Mexico and Arizona, it also touches on neighboring states Texas, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and California, as well as northern...

An American Heritage(R) BookThe Great West is a sweeping history of the commissioned expeditions, failed settlements, and land speculation that conquered the American West. A noted historian of the region and a dramatic storyteller, Lavender portrays the moments and movements that shaped the growing...

"The country in which I grew up - the rugged areas of southwestern Colorado - was changing rapidly in the 1930s. I sensed that something unique in the nation's experience was ending, and I tried to capture a segment of the passing on paper - the breakup of the great cattle ranches and mines and the ...