Compulsive reading—a wonderful account, both scholarly and gripping, of a horrifying episode in the history of the west. Arthur M. After struggling across the desert, and nearly dying of thirst, losing many oxen, they reached the very summit of the Sierras, only to be trapped by blinding snow and bitter storms.
Many perished; some survived by resorting to cannibalism; all were subjected to unbearable suffering. In 1846 eighty-seven people—men, women, and children—set out for California, persuaded to attempt a new overland route.
Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West
The conclusion is known: by spring of the next year, the Donner Party was synonymous with the most harrowing extremes of human survival. But rarick resists both the gruesomely sensationalist accounts of the Donner party as well as later attempts to turn the survivors into archetypal pioneer heroes. In late october 1846, the last wagon train of that year's westward migration stopped overnight before resuming its arduous climb over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, unaware that a fearsome storm was gathering force.
Often, the emigrants displayed a more realistic and typically human mixture of generosity and selfishness, an alloy born of necessity. A fast-paced, heart-wrenching, clear-eyed narrative history, A Desperate Hope casts new light on one of America's most horrific encounters between the dream of a better life and the harsh realities such dreams so often must confront.
After months of grueling travel, the 81 men, women and children would be trapped for a brutal winter with little food and only primitive shelter.
Across the Plains in the Donner Party: A Personal Narrative of the Overland Trip to California 1891
In this narrative first published in 1891, virginia reed murphy 1833 - 1921 depicts the ill-fated expedition as well as her life after reaching the settlements, the period covered being from 1846 to 1861. The story of the Donner Lake party is well known. Reed, and two families of the name of Donner were among the first to join him.
Reed's daughter, who was then a child of twelve years of age. Mr. But before they reached this point, several disasters of great moment occurred. When they reached fort Bridger they were urged to take a cut-off, which, it was. Said, would save them three hundred miles. The only narrative published by a survivor of the ill fated party.
Southwestern journal of Education“An important contribution to Western history.
The Best Land Under Heaven: The Donner Party in the Age of Manifest Destiny
But in eagerly pursuing what would a century later become known as the "American dream, " this optimistic-yet-motley crew of emigrants was met with a chilling nightmare; in the following months, their jingoistic excitement would be replaced by desperate cries for help that would fall silent in the deadly snow-covered mountains of the Sierra Nevada.
We know these early pioneers as the Donner Party, a name that has elicited horror since the late 1840s. Superb. New york times book review"westward ho! for oregon and california!"in the eerily warm spring of 1846, George Donner placed this advertisement in a local newspaper as he and a restless caravan prepared for what they hoped would be the most rewarding journey of a lifetime.
Cutting through 160 years of myth-making, the “expert storyteller” True West compellingly recounts how the unlikely band of early pioneers met their fate. With the best land under heaven, wallis has penned what critics agree is “destined to become the standard account” Washington Post of the notorious saga.
Longlisted for the andrew carnegie medal for excellenceFinalist for the Oklahoma Book AwardA Publishers Weekly Holiday Guide History Pick“A book so gripping it can scarcely be put down.
The Donner Party: The Tragic Story of the Wild West's Most Notorious Journey
19th century americans were all too happy and eager for the transcontinental railroad to help speed their passage west and render overland paths obsolete. One of the main reasons people yearned for new forms of transportation is because of the most notorious and tragic disasters in the history of westward travel.
The party knew the journey would take months, but early snowfalls in the mountains left dozens of people trapped in snow drifts that measured several feet, stranding them in a manner that made it virtually impossible for them to go any further for several weeks. As writer ethan rarick summed it up, “more than the gleaming heroism or sullied villainy, the Donner Party is a story of hard decisions that were neither heroic nor villainous".
Eat him. Includes pictures*includes accounts and diary entries made by participants about the journey*Includes a bibliography for further reading*Includes a table of contents"Like fated trains of other epochs whose privations, that party began its journey with song of hope, sufferings, and self-sacrifices have added renown to colonization movements and served as danger signals to later wayfarers, and within the first milestone of the promised land ended it with a prayer for help.
Inevitably, as the donner party’s supplies began to run low, there was little hope of acquiring new provisions high up in the mountains, and even worse, their location and the technology of the time also made it virtually impossible for relief expeditions to reach them.
Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora
Smallwood takes us into the ports and stone fortresses where African captives were held and prepared, and then through the Middle Passage itself. Smallwood offers a penetrating look at the process of enslavement from its African origins through the Middle Passage and into the American slave market. Smallwood's story is animated by deep research and gives us a startlingly graphic experience of the slave trade from the vantage point of the slaves themselves.
. Stephanie E. The result is both a remarkable transatlantic view of the culture of enslavement, and a painful, intimate vision of the bloody, daily business of the slave trade. She begins her narrative on the shores of seventeenth-century Africa, tracing how the trade in human bodies came to define the life of the Gold Coast.
In extraordinary detail, we witness these men and women cramped in the holds of ships, gasping for air, and trying to make sense of an unfamiliar sea and an unimaginable destination. This bold, innovative book promises to radically alter our understanding of the Atlantic slave trade, and the depths of its horrors.
The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate
The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party
In this gripping narrative, new york Times bestselling author Daniel James Brown sheds new light on one of the most legendary events in American history. Following every painful footstep of Sarah’s journey with the Donner Party, Brown produces a tale both spellbinding and richly informative. From the #1 bestselling author of the boys in the Boat comes an unforgettable epic of family, tragedy, and survival on the American frontier“An ideal pairing of talent and material.
Engrossing. A deft and ambitious storyteller. Mary roach, new york times book reviewin april of 1846, set out west from Illinois with her new husband, her parents, twenty-one-year-old Sarah Graves, intent on a better future, and eight siblings.
All We Left Behind: Virginia Reed and the Donner Party
Virginia acknowledges the fallibility of the adults in her life and begins to rely on her own judgment. But enthusiasm turns to alarm when her father and other party leaders make decisions that put the families dangerously behind schedule. Anger erupts. In a frantic effort to reach California before winter, the Donner Party takes an untried shortcut, with heartbreaking results.
Thirteen-year-old virginia Reed is thrilled to ride ahead of the wagons each day beside her adored father.
Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness
. Drawing on seven years of his own research and the work of other esteemed Lincoln scholars, Shenk reveals how the sixteenth president harnessed his depression to fuel his astonishing success. By consciously shifting his goal away from personal contentment which he realized he could not attain and toward universal justice, and America, Lincoln gained the strength and insight that he, required to transcend profound darkness.
Shenk relates lincoln’s symptoms, and offers compelling evidence of the evolution of his disease, including mood swings and at least two major breakdowns, from “major depression” in his twenties and thirties to “chronic depression” later on. Shenk reveals the treatments lincoln endured and his efforts to come to terms with his melancholy, including a poem he published on suicide and his unpublished writings on the value of personal—and national—suffering.
Based on careful, intrepid research, Lincoln’s Melancholy unveils a wholly new perspective on how our greatest president brought America through its greatest turmoil.
The American Revolution: A History Modern Library Chronicles Series Book 9
He knew that the revolution not only had legally created the United States, but also had produced all of the great hopes and values of the American people. Ellis, author of founding brothers A magnificent account of the revolution in arms and consciousness that gave birth to the American republic. Our noblest ideals and aspirations-our commitments to freedom, constitutionalism, the well-being of ordinary people, and equality-came out of the Revolutionary era.
No doubt the story is a dramatic one: thirteen insignificant colonies three thousand miles from the centers of Western civilization fought off British rule to become, sprawling, a huge, in fewer than three decades, rambunctious republic of nearly four million citizens. The revolution, in short, gave birth to whatever sense of nationhood and national purpose Americans have had.
But the history of the american revolution, like the history of the nation as a whole, ought not to be viewed simply as a story of right and wrong from which moral lessons are to be drawn. New york times bestseller“an elegant synthesis done by the leading scholar in the field, which nicely integrates the work on the American Revolution over the last three decades but never loses contact with the older, classic questions that we have been arguing about for over two hundred years.
Joseph J. It is a complicated and at times ironic story that needs to be explained and understood, not blindly celebrated or condemned.