Description
This commanding biography from New York Times bestselling author Robert Morgan transforms a mythic American hero a legend in his own time into a flesh-and-blood man.Morgan's sweeping biography of Daniel Boone is the story of America its ideals, its promise, its romance, and its destiny. It is the most comprehensive book ever written about the man who was the largest spirit of his time. Hunter, explorer, settler, he was a trailblazer and a revolutionary an American icon for more than two hundred years.Born in 1734, Boone participated in the colonization of North America, the settling of the Middle Plain, the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War, the election of his friend as the first president of the United States, the Louisiana Purchase, and the Westward Expansion. Unlike others of his time, he had a reverence for the Indians, who taught him how to hunt, navigate, and survive in the impenetrable wilderness. He accomplished feat after impossible feat yet was also accused of treason, fraud, hypocrisy; was court-martialed; and was sued for debt again and again. By the end of his life, most of his land claims had been lost to lawyers, politicians, and better businessmen than he.Extensive endnotes, fascinating cultural and historical background material, maps, illustrations, and an index underscore the scope of this distinguished and immensely entertaining work by a writer who, like novelist-turned- historian Shelby Foote, has the talent and the knowledge to make this legendary American come vividly to life. The Washington Post - Jonathan Yardley "Boone has been thought by many to be virtually a fictional character, subject of tall tales like Mike Fink the Keelboatman, or even Paul Bunyan," and it is "hard to rescue figures like Daniel Boone and Johnny Appleseed from the distortions of television and Walt Disney." Morgan's biography is just such a rescue job, and a wholly successful one. It is a trifle too long but the thoroughness and authority of Boone: A Biography are beyond dispute. Though there have been many biographies of Boone most recently, Michael A. Lofaro's well-received Daniel Boone: An American Life (2003) this one strikes me as ideally suited to today's reader with its vivid descriptive passages (Morgan is, after all, a novelist and poet), its persuasive portrait of Boone and its firm sense of his place in American history.
