Ordeal By Hunger: The Classic History of the Donner Party―Pioneer Survival and Tragedy in the 1846 Sierra Nevada - Softcover

Stewart, George R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0395611598 ISBN 13: 9780395611593

Publisher: Harper Voyager, 1992

Synopsis

Award-winning author George R. Stewart's history of the Donner Party is “compulsive reading — a wonderful account, both scholarly and gripping, of horrifying episode in the history of the west" (Pulitzer Prize-winner Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.)The tragedy of the Donner party constitutes one of the most amazing stories of the American West. In 1846 eighty-seven people — men, women, and children — set out for California, persuaded to attempt a new overland route. After struggling across the desert, losing many oxen, and nearly dying of thirst, 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. Incorporating the diaries of the survivors and other contemporary documents, George R. Stewart wrote the definitive history of that ill-fated band of pioneers. Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party is an astonishing account of what human beings may endure and achieve in the final press of circumstance.

About this title

About the Author

George R. Stewart (1895–1980) is the author of Pickett’s Charge, Names on the Land, and the International Fantasy Award–winner Earth Abides, as well as numerous other books of history, biography, and fiction. He taught for more than fifty years at the University of California, Berkeley. 

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper Voyager
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0395611598
• ISBN 13: 9780395611593
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416