Region by region, through the eyes of the great class of the overlooked, Ted Morgan transforms the bloodless way we have been taught history into gritty human drama. Explorers and fur traders moving beyond the frontier into the Louisiana Purchase territory; Seminoles and runaway slaves in an unlikely coalition to battle the U.S.

Army in Florida; mountaineers fighting the British for trapping rights; fortune seekers on the mad California gold rush; Chinese immigrants filling the need for manual labor; men digging mines in the Rockies and laying tracks and telegraph wires across the prairie; prostitutes and outlaws converging on the silver-mine towns of Nevada; cowboys and rustlers driving cattle; the forced removal of the Indians to reservations in Oklahoma; and homesteaders and their sled dogs making their way across Alaska.

In A Shovel of Stars, Morgan has captured all the rugged everydayness - the humanity, passion, violence, and unsung heroism - that is the real-life making of America.