by Allan Eckert. Softbound, 592 pages, 6" x 9". Picking up in time roughly where he left off in Gateway to Empire, the author immerses the reader in the history of the Northwest Territories and the Louisiana Purchase during the first half of the nineteenth century as he relates the dramatic events prestaging and composing the Black Hawk War of 1832. The tale of America's westward expansion and the trickery, warfare, purchase, theft, and treaty through which it was achieved.