Empire of Shadows is the epic story of the conquest of Yellowstone, a landscape uninhabited, inaccessible, and shrouded in myth in the aftermath of the Civil War.  Ina radical reinterpretation of the nineteenth-century West, George Black casts Yellowstone's reaction as the culmination of three interwoven strands of history--the passion for exploration, the violence of the Indian Wars, and the "civilizing" of the frontier--and charts its course through the lives of those who sought to lay bare its mysteries: Lt. Gustavus Cheyney Doane, a gifted but tormented cavalryman: the ambitious former vigilante leader Nathaniel Langford; scientist Ferdinand Hayden, who brought photographer William Henry Jackson and painter Thomas Moran to Yellowstone; and Gen. Phil Sheridan, Civil War hero, architect of the Indian Wars, and the man who finally succeeded in having the new National Park placed under the protection of the U.S. Cavalry.  The exploration of Yellowstone is a quintessentially American story of terrible things done in the name of high ideals, and of high ideals realized by dubious means.  George Black's Empire of Shadows is a groundbreaking historical account of the origins of America's majestic national landmark.