Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

  • Dreams of El Dorado

  • A History of the American West
  • By: H. W. Brands
  • Narrated by: Matt Kugler
  • Length: 17 hrs and 11 mins
  • 4.8 out of 5 stars (9 ratings)
Offer ends May 1st, 2024 11:59PM GMT. Terms and conditions apply.
£7.99/month after 3 months. Renews automatically.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Dreams of El Dorado cover art

Dreams of El Dorado

By: H. W. Brands
Narrated by: Matt Kugler
Get this deal Try for £0.00

Pay £99p/month. After 3 months pay £7.99/month. Renews automatically. See terms for eligibility.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £16.99

Buy Now for £16.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

The Last Campaign cover art
Jim Bridger cover art
The Age of Gold cover art
Jim Bridger cover art
The Thirty Years War cover art
A Terrible Glory cover art
The Oregon Trail cover art
Frontiers cover art
The Earth Is All That Lasts cover art
American Nations cover art
Blood and Thunder cover art
A Splendid Savage cover art
Rome: The History of the Roman Empire and Its Emperors cover art
Thunder in the Mountains cover art
Jedediah Smith cover art
The Rough Riders: AOG Annotated Edition cover art

Summary

From a New York Times best-selling author, a sweeping history of the American West

In Dreams of El Dorado, H. W. Brands tells the thrilling, panoramic story of the settling of the American West. He takes us from John Jacob Astor's fur trading outpost in Oregon to the Texas Revolution, from the California gold rush to the Oklahoma land rush. He shows how the migrants' dreams drove them to feats of courage and perseverance that put their stay-at-home cousins to shame - and how those same dreams also drove them to outrageous acts of violence against indigenous peoples and one another. The West was where riches would reward the miner's persistence, the cattleman's courage, the railroad man's enterprise; but El Dorado was at least as elusive in the West as it ever was in the East.

Balanced, authoritative, and masterfully told, Dreams of El Dorado sets a new standard for histories of the American West.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2019 H. W. Brands (P)2019 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

"A subject this monumental demands prose to match it, and I am pleased that to report that, in this sprawling epic, H. W. Brands is at his sparkling best. He is of the American West and grew up in its myths, which may explain why he writes about it with such passion and clarity." (S. C. Gwynne, New York Times best-selling author of Empire of the Summer Moon and Rebel Yell)

"The 'winning' of the American West is that biggest and most daunting of subjects, so big that most historians have found it necessary to bite off small corners of this grand and sordid tale of empire-building. But here H. W. Brands endeavors to tell it all, from Texas to California, from beaver pelts to buffalo robes, from the hoofbeats of horses to the steam blasts of the first transcontinental trains. Epic in its scale, fearless in its scope, this is a bravura performance from one of our master historians." (Hampton Sides, best-selling author of Blood and Thunder)

"The expansion of the United States across what would become the American West is the sort of sprawling, tumultuous epic that is best told by a calm and concentrated mind. Fortunately the author of this book is H. W. Brands, who has the vision and supreme narrative skill to braid the chaotic tendrils that make up the past into a story that is almost as exciting for its coherence as it is for the heroic and heartbreaking events it so vividly renders. Dreams of El Dorado is the latest reason to think of Brands as America's go-to historian." (Stephen Harrigan, author of Big Wonderful Thing and The Gates of the Alamo)

What listeners say about Dreams of El Dorado

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    7
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    4
  • 4 Stars
    3
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    5
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

The story of American expansion in the nineteenth century.

This overview of the expansion of the
USA covers all aspects from the Louisiana Purchase to Roosevelt’s ventures into the Philippines. It goes into considerable depth without getting bogged down in unnecessary detail. Generally the emphasis is on the part that particular individuals played in this story but these individuals can be usefully viewed as representatives of overall tendencies in the expansion of the United States. The book is always informative, generally well balanced, never boring and often exciting. It puts events depicted in any number of films into a proper historical perspective.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!