| List of Maps and Illustrations | p. xi |
| Author's Note | p. xiii |
| When America's Story was Dominated By Wood, 1785-1805 | p. 1 |
| Drawing the Colors of Rocks | p. 80 |
| Preface: The Pure Physics of Union | p. xv |
| Passing the Gateway | p. 55 |
| A View across the Ridge | p. 3 |
| The Wood Was Become Grass | p. 32 |
| High Plains Rafters | p. 52 |
| Shoreline Passage | p. 65 |
| Drawing a Line in the Sand | p. 6 |
| The Science That Changed America | p. 77 |
| Peering through the Trees | p. 17 |
| When America's Story Went Beneath the Earth, 1809-1901 | p. 73 |
| The Frontier and the Thesis | p. 24 |
| Encounters with the Sioux | p. 41 |
| The Lasting Benefit of Harmony | p. 75 |
| First Lady of the Plains | p. 49 |
| The Wellspring of Knowledge | p. 83 |
| The Tapestry of Underneath | p. 88 |
| Off to See the Elephant | p. 96 |
| The West, Revealed | p. 104 |
| The Singular First Adventure of Kapurats | p. 113 |
| The Men Who Gave Us Yellowstone | p. 129 |
| Diamonds, Sex, and Race | p. 139 |
| When the American Story Traveled by Water, 1803-1900 | p. 163 |
| Journeys to the Fall Line | p. 165 |
| The Streams beyond the Hills | p. 171 |
| The Pivot and the Feather | p. 180 |
| The Wedded Waters of New York | p. 196 |
| The Linkman Cometh | p. 214 |
| That OF Man River | p. 222 |
| When the American Story was Fanned by Fire, 1811-1956 | p. 239 |
| May the Roads Rise Up | p. 241 |
| Rain, Steam, and Speed | p. 248 |
| The Annihilation of the In-Between | p. 252 |
| The Immortal Legacy of Crazy Judah | p. 259 |
| Colonel Eisenhower's Epiphanic Expedition | p. 280 |
| The Colossus of Roads | p. 294 |
| And Then We Looked Up | p. 312 |
| The Twelve-Week Crossing | p. 316 |
| When the American Story was Told Through Metal, 1835-Tomorrow | p. 329 |
| To Go, but Not to Move | p. 331 |
| The Man Who Tamed the Lightning | p. 335 |
| The Signal Power of Human Speech | p. 351 |
| With Power for One and All | p. 357 |
| Lighting the Corn, Powering the Prairie | p. 375 |
| The Talk of the Nation | p. 385 |
| Making Money from Air | p. 396 |
| Television: The Irresistible Force | p. 406 |
| The All of Some Knowledge | p. 417 |
| Epilogue | p. 429 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 435 |
| Bibliography | p. 441 |
| Index | p. 451 |
| The First Big Dig | p. 188 |
| Setting the Lures | p. 91 |