The Plains Across: Emigrants,Wagon Trains and the American West - Tapa blanda

Drawing on contemporary newspapers, diaries, journals and letters, this brilliant and enthralling book tells the story of the wagon train migrations to the American West in the middle decades of the last century. The Plains Across has won seven American Book Awards and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history.

John D. Unruh was born in 1937 on a farm in South Dakota. He was the descendant of Mennonite pioneers who had settled on nearby Turkey Creek in the spring of 1874. In 1957, after completing two years at Freeman Junior College, he transferred to Bethel College in Kansas where he took his bachelor's degree in history with highest academic distinction. He went on to the University of Kansas where he took his M.A. and subsequently taught both at the University of Kansas and at Bluffton College, Ohio. He was awarded his Ph.D. on the subject of this book in 1975. He died in 1976.