The Look of the Elephant: The Westering Experience in the Words of Those Who Lived It 1841–1861, by Andrew and Joanne Hammond (Hard cover)

Collection of diary quotes is a must-have for any student of the overland experience. Keynoted by maps, overviews of the trails and jumping off places, and thumbnail biographies of the diarists, puts the reader at the side of the men and women who surrendered comforts of the known in the middle of the 19th Century for the unknown promises of a future in an untamed wilderness.