Blood and Thunder Author: Hampton Sides | Language: English | ISBN:
B000W969O0 | Format: PDF
Blood and Thunder Description
In the summer of 1846, the Army of the West marched through Santa Fe, en route to invade and occupy the Western territories claimed by Mexico. Fueled by the new ideology of “Manifest Destiny,” this land grab would lead to a decades-long battle between the United States and the Navajos, the fiercely resistant rulers of a huge swath of mountainous desert wilderness.In
Blood and Thunder, Hampton Sides gives us a magnificent history of the American conquest of the West. At the center of this sweeping tale is Kit Carson, the trapper, scout, and soldier whose adventures made him a legend. Sides shows us how this illiterate mountain man understood and respected the Western tribes better than any other American, yet willingly followed orders that would ultimately devastate the Navajo nation. Rich in detail and spanning more than three decades, this is an essential addition to our understanding of how the West was really won.
From the Trade Paperback edition.- File Size: 1458 KB
- Print Length: 624 pages
- Publisher: Anchor; Reprint edition (October 9, 2007)
- Sold by: Random House LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B000W969O0
- Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #31,281 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #55
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > History > Americas > United States > 19th Century
- #55
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > History > Americas > United States > 19th Century
Blood and Thunder is a blockbuster! With this sweeping and comprehensive history, Hampton Sides vividly and engagingly retells the story of James K. Polk's and the nation's drive to absorb the West and expand America from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Along with this outsized and bold tale of conquest and manifest destiny, Sides generously presents us with a whole constellation of people and events, such as the deliberately provoked (by the U.S.) Mexican-American war, the jarring clash of Native-American and Anglo cultures, the life of the great leader of the Navajos, Narbona, and his awful death, the relentless and brutal efforts of the US Army at eradication of the Navajos and other tribespeople, the coming of the Civil War to New Mexico, and the creation of one of America's first pop heros, Kit Carson. Through newspapers and trashy pulp fiction westerns, known at the time as "blood and thunders," a larger than life western Indian killer and superhero was born, which had nothing whatever to do with the real person. But Americans needed such a hero as Kit Carson to entertain them and to make them feel safe in venturing far away to the west. Sides focuses in on Kit Carson's real life as if it were almost representative of an entire era.
The historian Sides is scrupulously even-handed in the telling of this tale and spares us no details, proving that history is often a messy business where sometimes the bad and good intermingle in the same person and event, and one can perhaps never know the whole truth. Nowhere in this work is this more clearly shown than in the person of Christopher Carson, the quiet, unassuming, and illiterate central figure in this drama who had an urge at a young age to take off to parts unknown.
Hampton Sides has given us a multi-faceted examination of the men and forces involved in the conquest of the American West and the way of life of its original settlers.
At the center is Christopher "Kit" Carson, who was a pivotal figure in the events and whose life has been so distorted by legend most today have little inkling of just how complex an individual and how heroic--in the true sense of the word--the man really was.
There are also telling portraits of others: President James Polk, engineer of Manifest Destiny, who believed it was his nation's biblical right to seize real estate all the way to the Pacific, no matter who else might claim the land; Stephen Watts Kearny, father of the U.S. Cavalry and one of the most underrated officers produced by this country, who Polk used to spearhead his land lust; the equally ambitious John C. Fremont and his father-in-law, Sen. Thomas Hart Benton, the apostle of Manifest Destiny; the energetic and interesting Brig. Gen. James H. Carleton, whose well-meaning dream of a refuge for the Navajo led them to Bosque Redondo and near extinction; the great Navajo leaders Narbona, Manuelito and Barboncito, and many others.
Diminutive in stature, Carson was--as Sides describes him early on: "...a lovable man...loyal, honest, and kind. In many pinpointable incidents, he acted bravely and with much physical grace. More than once, he saved people's lives without seeking recognition or pay. He was a dashing good Samaritan--a hero, even."
In the very next paragraph, Sides says, "He was also a natural born killer."
Carson was all of that. A humble man, a brave man, loyal to his friends, a demon to his enemies. He was a man of his times, yet stood head and shoulders above many of his contemporaries.
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