"By the final chapter of Continental Reckoning, the reader should pause and realize they have read one of the most important contributions to the American historiography published in the past half-century. Historians of America and the West will recognize that Elliott West, one of the most respected scholars in his field the past 40 years, has accomplished a great deal in his career, but will remember Continental Reckoning as his master work, truly a magnum opus of his highly lauded scholarly career."-Stuart Rosebrook, True West
"Elliott West has written an engaging and innovative synthesis that will be of interest to all readers of history. It is a gift to anyone who writes lectures; teachers will find illuminating examples, useful metaphors, and an extraordinary amount of data to wield in the service of helping students make sense of the middle decades of the nineteenth century."-Amy Kohout, Missouri Historical Review
"With its scope, sophistication, and engaging prose, this marvelous book deserves wide readership."-Sherry L. Smith, South Dakota History
"Elliott West's Continental Reckoning vividly shows the importance of looking at the American West when studying the Civil War era. West makes sweeping arguments crucial to advancing Civil War West historiography, and his accessible writing style also makes the read enjoyable for the general public interested in the American West or nineteenth-century U.S. history more broadly. Rather than seeing the West as a "safety valve" for the East, Continental Reckoning demonstrates how the region became inextricably linked to the rise of the modern and robust U.S. nation state."-John R. Legg, Civil War Monitor
"The West is a big canvas. West uses brush strokes small and large to depict his engaging and thought-provoking perspective."-Tom Carpenter, RoundUp Magazine
"A comprehensive, lucid, and often surprising history of western settlement in America."-Kirkus Reviews, starred
"Readers who appreciate history and are privileged by having been born and lived in the Western United States should plan to allocate an appropriate portion of their remaining time to perusal of Continental Reckoning. They will be amazed by the impact which our region has exerted upon the development of both our own country and the rest of today's global community."-J. Kemper Campbell, Lincoln Journal Star
"Continental Reckoning is massive and brilliantly constructed, scholarly and literary, meant to be read beyond academic conferences by a public that-in these contentious times-needs to understand America's past."-David Luhrssen, Shepherd Express
"Westerners will do well to have this new anthology handy as a standard reference work of the expansionist period."-John Monnett, Denver Posse of Westerners
"Encyclopedic in its coverage, wonderfully written, full of revealing details, shrewd and funny in its analysis, Continental Reckoning will become the standard work on the creation of the American West. Elliott West remains astute and fair in covering a place and period often reduced to ideology and polemic. No one knows the nineteenth-century American West better than he does."-Richard White, author of The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896