Cattle Kingdom reveals how the West rose and fell, and how its legacy defines us today. The tale takes us from dust-choked cattle drives to the unlikely splendors of boomtowns like Abilene, Kansas, and Cheyenne, Wyoming. We meet a diverse cast, from cowboy Teddy Blue to failed rancher and future president Teddy Roosevelt. Christopher Knowlton shows us how they and others like them could achieve so many outsized feats: killing millions of bison, building the first opera house on the open range, driving cattle by the thousands, and much more. Cattle Kingdom is a revelatory new view of the Old West.