Listed books are available in the museum bookstore, through the library system, and/or bookstores.
Oct. 1, 2025
The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt & the Fire that Saved America, by Timothy Egan
Nov. 5
Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian’s Journey Home, by Chris La Tray
Dec. 3
A Decent Orderly Lynching: The Montana Vigilantes, by Frederick Allen
Jan. 7, 2026
Shelby’s Folly: Jack Dempsey, Doc Kearns, and the Shakedown of a Montana
Boomtown, by Jason Kelly
Feb. 4
The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook, by Hampton Sides
March 4
The Boxcar Librarian: A Novel, by Brianna Labuskes
April 1
Tenting Tonight, by Mary Roberts Rinehart
May 6
Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of
Edward Curtis, by Timothy Egan
June 3
The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, by Nathaniel
Philbrick
Sept. 2
Counting Coup: A True Story of Basketball and Honor on the Little Bighorn, by Larry
Colton
Oct. 7
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town, by Jon Krakauer
Historic book lists of History Book Club
2006
Pretty Shield: Medicine Woman of the Crows, by Frank B. Linderman
Plenty-Coups, Chief of the Crows: The Life Story of a Great Indian, by Frank B. Linderman
Pioneer Doctor: The Story of a Woman’s Work, by Mari Grana
My Hutterite Life, by Lisa Marie Stahl and Michael Crummett
2007
Bloody Bozeman: The Perilous Trail to Montana’s Gold, by Dorothy Johnson
Half Interest in a Silver Dollar: The Saga of Charles E. Conrad, by James E. Murphy
Grandmother's Grandchild: My Crow Indian Life, by Alma Snell and Becky Matthews
This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind, by Ivan Doig
War of the Copper Kings: Greed, Power, and Politics, by C. B. Glasscock
A Woman’s Way West: In and Around Glacier National Park, 1925-1990, by John Fraley
Jeannette Rankin, America’s Conscience, by Norma Smith
Hearts West: True Stories of Mail-Order Brides on the Frontier, by Chris Enss
Upstairs Girls: Prostitution in the American West, by Michael Rutter
Fifty Cents an Hour: The Builders and Boomtowns of the Fort Peck Dam (Volume 1), by Lois Lonnquist
Speaking Ill of the Dead: Jerks in Montana History, by Dave Walter
2008
Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas, by Mari Sandoz and Vine Deloria Jr.
Tough Trip Through Paradise 1878-1879, by Andrew Garcia
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: The Best Stories of the American West, by Dorothy Johnson
More Than Petticoats: Remarkable Montana Women, by Gayle Shirley
The Battle of the Big Hole: The Story of the Landmark Battle of the 1877 Nez Perce War, by Audrey Haines and Calvin Haines
Jim Bridger: Mountain Man, by Stanley Vestal
The Big Sky: A Novel, by A. B. Guthrie Jr.
Montana Ghost Stories: Eerie True Tales, by Debra Munn
Sometimes Only Horses to Eat: The Salesh House Period 1807-1812, by Carl W. Haywood
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, by Stephen E. Ambrose
2009
Charles M. Russell: The Life and Legend of America's Cowboy Artist, by John Taliaferro
God’s Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana, by Carol Buchanan
“I Will Be Meat for My Salish”: The Montanan Writers Project and the Buffalo of the Flathead Indian Reservation, by Bon I. Whealdon and Robert Bigart
Wild River Pioneers: Adventures in the Middle Fork of the Flathead, Great Bear Wilderness & Glacier National Park, by John Fraley and Will Harmon
Year of the Fires: The Story of the Great Fires of 1910, by Stephen J. Pyne
Father Peter John De Smet, by Robert Carriker
Breaking Clean, by Judy Blunt
Yogo, The Great American Sapphire, by Stephen M. Voynick
2010
Letters From Yellowstone: A Novel, by Diane Smith
A View Inside Glacier Park: 100 Years-100 Stories, by Kassandra Hardy
Strength of Stone: The Pioneer Journal of Electa Bryan Plumer 1862-1864, by Diane Elliott
Lige Mounts: Free Trapper, by Frank Bird Linderman
Glacial Lake Missoula and Its Humongous Floods, by David Alt
Montana Women Homesteaders: A Field of One’s Own, by Sarah Carter
All Aboard! for Glacier: The Great Northern Railway and Glacier National Park, by C.W. Guthrie
How It Looks Going Back: Growing Up in the Montana Woods, by Doris Knowles Pulis
Blackfoot Lodge Tales: The Story of a Prairie People, by George Bird Grinnell
Dancing at the Rascal Fair, by Ivan Doig
Unabomber: The Secret Life of Ted Kaczynski, by Chris Waits and Dave Shors
Christmastime in Montana, by Dave Walter
2011
How the West Was Worn: Bustles and Buckskins on the Wild Frontier, by Chris Enss
Skid Trails: Glory Days of Montana Logging, by Darris Flanagan
Lady Blackrobes: Missionaries in the Heart of Indian Country, by Irene Mahoney
When the Meadowlark Sings: The Story of a Montana Family, by Nedra Starry
Outlaw Tales of Montana, by Gary Wilson
A Bride Goes West, by Nannie T. Alderson and Helena Huntington Smith
Fool's Crow, by James Welch
Great Montana Bear Stories, by Ben Long
Sister to the Sioux: The Memoirs of Elaine Goodale Eastman, 1885-1891, by Elaine Eastman and Kay Graber
Belly River's Famous Joe Cosley, by Brian McClung
Adventures Along the Fort Steele Trail, by Darris Flanagan
One Good Horse, by Tom Groneberg
2012
Montana Moments: History on the Go, by Ellen Baumler
The Irish General: Thomas Francis Meagher, by Paul R. Wylie
Montana Treasure: Dr. A. O. Kenck, His Life and Times, by Helen Parsons Neilson
Full-Court Quest: The Girls From Fort Shaw Indian School, Basketball Champions of the World, by Linda Peavey and Ursula Smith
Bloodshed at Little Bighorn: Sitting Bull, Custer, and the Destinies of Nations, by Tim Lehman
Roadside History of Montana, by Don Spritzer
Montana's Home Front During World War II, by Gary Glynn
The Old Lonesome, by Carol Benson
A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, by Norman Maclean
2013
Frontier Soldier: An Enlisted Man’s Journal of the Sioux and Nez Perce Campaigns, 1877, by William F. Zimmer and Jerome A. Greene
A Ride to the Infernal Regions: Yellowstone’s First Tourists, by Calvin C. Clawson
When You & I Were Young, Whitefish, by Dorothy M. Johnson and Vivian A. Paladin
Looking Back: A Pictorial History of the Flathead Valley, Montana, by Kathryn L. McKay
Red Corner: The Rise and Fall of Communism in Northeastern Montana, by Verlaine McDonald
Very Close to Trouble: The Johnny Grant Memoir, by Johnny Grant and Lyndel Meikle
Montana 1948: A Novel, by Larry Watson
Sacajawea's Son: The Life of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, by Marion Tinling
We Pointed Them North: Recollections of a Cowpuncher, by E.C. “Teddy Blue” Abbott, et al.
The Whistling Season, by Ivan Doig
Montana UFOs and Extraterrestrials: Extraordinary Stories of Documented Sightings and Encounters, by Joan Bird
Montana Disasters: More Than 100 Years of Fires, Floods, and Other Catastrophes, by Molly Searl
2014
Heart of the Trail: The Stories of Eight Wagon Train Women, by Mary Barmeyer O’Brien
Wasting Libby: The True Story of How the WR Grace Corporation Left a Montana Town to Die (and Got Away With It), by Andrea Peacock and Jeff Bridges
The Lady Rode Bucking Horses: The Story of Fannie Sperry Steele, Woman of the West, by Dee Marvine
The House of Bair: Sheep, Cadillacs & Chippendale, by Lee Rostad
In the Heart of the Bitterroot Mountains: The Story of the Carlin Hunting Party of 1893, by Abraham L. Himmelwright
Behind Every Man: The Story of Nancy Cooper Russell, by Joan Stauffer
The Oatman Massacre: A Tale of Desert Captivity and Survival, by Brian McGinty and Tom Sleeker
Bleed, Blister & Purge: A History of Medicine on the American Frontier, by Volney Steele
Pictures, a Park, and a Pulitzer: Mel Ruder and the Hungry Horse News, by Tom Lawrence
Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune, by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell Jr.
2015
Dream Chasers of the West: A Homestead Family of Glacier National Park, by B. L. Wettstein
Montana 1864: Indians, Emigrants, and Gold in the Territorial Year, by Ken Egan
The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, by Daniel James Brown
The Bartender's Tale, by Ivan Doig
Adventure Tales of Montana's Last Frontier, by Gary A. Wilson
Night of the Grizzlies, by Jack Olsen
Evelyn Cameron: Montana’s Frontier Photographer, by Kristi Hager
Winter Wheat, by Mildred Walker
The Great Bicycle Experiment: The Army’s Historic Black Bicycle Corps, 1896-97, by Kay Moore
A Great Day to Fight Fire, by Mark Matthews
None Wounded, None Missing, All Dead: The Story of Elizabeth Bacon Custer, by H. Kazanjian and Chris Enss
2016
Nothing to Tell, by Donna Gray
Object Matrimony: The Risky Business of Mail-Order Matchmaking on the Western Frontier, by Chris Enss
Dark Spaces: Montana’s Historic Penitentiary at Deer Lodge, by Ellen Baumler
Barbed Wire: The Fence That Changed the West, by Joanne S. Liu
Bound for Montana: Diaries From the Bozeman Trail, by Susan Badger Doyle
Last Stand: George Bird Grinnell, the Battle to Save the Buffalo, and the Birth of the New West, by Michael Punke
The Iron Shirt, by Frank B. Linderman
Fathead Valley Landmarks: Historic Homes and Places of the Past, by Jaix Chaix and Lance Fahrney
Montana 1864: Indians, Emigrants, and Gold in the Territorial Year, by Ken Egan
2017
Three Ringlings in Montana: Circus Trains to Cattle Ranches, by Lee Rostad
Blind Your Ponies, by Stanley Gordon West
Rough Trip Through Yellowstone, by Emerson Hough and Scott Herring
When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II, by Molly Manning
American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon, by Steven Rinella
The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dustbowl, by Timothy Egan
Healy's West: The Life and Times of John J. Healy, by Gordon E. Tolton
Last Bus to Wisdom, by Ivan Doig
Deliverance Mary Fields, First African American Woman Star Route Mail Carrier in the United States: A Montana History, by Miantae Metcalf McConnell
2018
Wild Bunch Women, by Michael Rutter
People Before the Park: The Kootenai and Blackfeet Before Glacier National Park, by Sally Thompson
The Watershed Years (in Open Spaces), by Russell Rowland
Death & Survival in Glacier National Park: True Tales of Tragedy, Courage, and Misadventure, by C.W. Guthrie and Ann Fagre
Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869, by Stephen E. Ambrose
Bold Women in Montana History, by Beth Judy
The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey, by Rinker Buck
Badluck Way: A Year on the Ragged Edge of the West, by Bryce Andrews
Astoria: Astor and Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Tale of Ambition and Survival on the Early American Frontier, by Peter Stark
News of the World, by Paulette Jiles
2019
Black Elk Speaks, by John G. Neihardt
Hope in Hard Times: New Deal Photographs of Montana, by Mary Murphy
The Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, by Candace Millard
The Last Crossing, by Guy Vanderhaeghe
Indian Creek Chronicles: A Winter Alone in the Wilderness, by Pete Fromm
The Wild Inside: A Novel of Suspense, by Christine Carbo
Montana 1889: Indians, Cowboys, and Miners in the Year of Statehood, by Ken Egan
2020
A Country Doctor and the Epidemics: Montana 1917-1918, by Steven Helgerson
Grinnell: America's Environmental Pioneer and His Restless Drive to Save the West, by John Taliaferro
Rangers, Trappers and Trailblazers: Early Adventures in Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness and Glacier, by John Fraley
Arbuckle: A Novel, by Russell Rowland
Plow a New Furrow: The Story of Peter and Freda Hedmond, by Emma Hedmond
Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive, by Stephanie Land
River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, by Candice Millard
2021
Ride the Jawbone, by Jim Moore
The Lentil Underground: Renegade Farmers and the Future of Food in America, by Liz Carlisle
The Hanging Tree and Other Stories, by Dorothy M. Johnson
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America, by Erik Larson
Lady Long Rider: Alone Across America on Horseback, by Bernice Ende
River With No Bridge, by Karen Wills
Mrs. Wheeler Goes to Washington, by Elizabeth Wheeler Coleman
Heroes of the Bob Marshall Wilderness, by John Fraley
The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
A Darkness Lit by Heroes: The Granite Mountain-Speculator Mine Disaster of 1917 Butte, Montana, by Doug Ammons
2022
In the Hurricane's Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown, by Nathaniel Philbrick
March, by Geraldine Brooks
The Salish People and the Lewis & Clark Expedition, by the Salish-Pend d’Orielle Culture Committee
The Perfect Horse: The Daring U.S Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis, by Elizabeth Letts
The Paris Library: A Novel, by Janet Skeslien Charles
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II, by Sonia Purnell
One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow, by Olivia Hawker
Opportunity, Montana: Big Copper, Bad Water, and the Burial of an American Landscape, by Brad Tyer
The Last Green Valley: A Novel, by Mark Sullivan
The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed, by John Vaillant
2023
Brothers on Three: A True Story of Family, Resistance, and Hope on a Reservation in Montana, by Abe Streep
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder, by David Grann
My Wilderness Life: One Man's Search for Meaning in Montana’s Wilderness, by John Fraley
A Black Woman's West: The Life of Rose B. Gordon, by Michael K. Johnson
American Copper, by Shann Ray
Montana Legacy: Essays on History, People, and Place, by Harry Fritz, Mary Murphy, and Robert Swartout
Montana Disasters: True Stories of Treasure State Tragedies and Triumphs, by Butch Larcombe
The Names of the Stars: A Life in the Wilds, by Pete Fromm
Big Rock Candy Mountain, by Wallace Stegner
The Secret Life of Cowboys, by Tom Groneberg
2024
Disturbing the Sleeping Buffalo: 23 Unexpected Stories That Awaken Montana’s Past, by Sally Thompson
Riverside: The Incredible Story of Marcus Daly, Founder of Anaconda Copper, Pioneer and Citizen of Montana, by Miriam Poe Ryan
The Fox and I: An Uncommon Friendship, by Catherine Raven
Prairie Nocturne: A Novel, by Ivan Doig
Brave Hearted: Women of the American West, by Katie Hickman
A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them, by Timothy Egan
Historic Tales of Flathead Lake, by Butch Larcombe
The Flicker of Old Dreams, by Susan Henderson
The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland, by Jim DeFede
The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America, by Timothy Egan
Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian’s Journey Home, by Chris La Tray
A Decent, Orderly Lynching: The Montana Vigilantes, by Frederick Allen
