Rock Island: An American History is the entertainingly unvarnished history of the United States. History books tend to be boring, Rock Island isn't. It's a delightful history of the Native Americans who first settled on the scenic bluffs at the confluence of the Mississippi and Rock Rivers and of the white men who fought for the Indians' lands and built one of America's prototypical cities on the rivers' edge. Through Rock Island's 340 year history, since Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet were the first white men to walk the rivers' banks until the information age, Rock Island tells the heroic, amusing, and ruthless stories of those who immigrated to America and how history's greatest nation was built. Rock Island is the fascinating history of America's patriots and villains, and how "the land of the free and the home of the brave" was won, stolen, and settled. It's a history that won't be found in student textbooks but is for all Americans, whether your ancestors arrived on the Mayflower or in the hold of a slave ship.