Boone: A Biography - Hardcover

Morgan, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1565124553 ISBN 13: 9781565124554

Publisher: Algonquin Books, 2007

Synopsis

The story of Daniel Boone is the story of America—its ideals, its promise, its romance, and its destiny. Bestselling, critically acclaimed author Robert Morgan reveals the complex character of a frontiersman whose heroic life was far stranger and more fascinating than the myths that surround him.

This rich, authoritative biography offers a wholly new perspective on a man who has been an American icon for more than two hundred years—a hero as important to American history as his more political contemporaries George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. Extensive endnotes, cultural and historical background material, and maps and illustrations underscore the scope of this distinguished and immensely entertaining work.

About this title

About the Author

Robert Morgan is the bestselling author of numerous works of fiction—including the Oprah Book Club selection Gap Creek—and non-fiction, and is also an established poet with fourteen collections to his credit. Born in Hendersonville, NC, he teaches at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, where he is Kappa Alpha Professor of English.

From the Back Cover

The story of Daniel Boone is the story of America—its ideals, its promise, its romance, and its destiny. Robert Morgan reveals the complex character of a frontiersman whose heroic life was far stranger and more fascinating than the myths that surround him.

Particular events define a life that becomes legend. For George Washington it was the winter at Valley Forge. For Benjamin Franklin it began with a key on a kite string. For Daniel Boone it was finding his way through the wilderness to that narrow mountain gap into Kentucky in 1769, guaranteeing that the nation about to be born would extend to the west.

In this rich, authoritative biography, Robert Morgan offers a wholly new perspective on a man who has been an American icon for more than two hundred years—a hero as important to American history as his more political contemporaries Washington and Franklin.

Born in 1734 in Pennsylvania to English Quaker colonists, Daniel Boone led hundreds of settlers west over the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky and the Ohio Valley, and, finally, to Missouri, where he died penniless at the age of eighty-six, having lost his holdings to lawyers and politicians and better businessmen.

Morgan reminds us that Boone was more than a trailblazer: he fought in the French and Indian War and in the American Revolution; he served in the Virginia Legislature; he was a Freemason; he was a settler, landowner, and sometime surveyor; and his reverence for life in the wilderness inspired Romantic writers like Wordsworth, Bartram, Byron, Whitman—inspired Romanticism itself.

Boone was the first great American frontier hero—he cherished the land, and while he wanted to settle it, he also longed to conserve its wildness. Almost alone among his fellow settlers, Daniel Boone revered, studied, and emulated the Native American way of life, especially in the preservation of land resources. But his own claim for himself was much simpler: "I am a woodsman."

Robert Morgan's Boone sets the reader squarely down in those eighteenth-century American woods to meet a living, breathing Daniel Boone, ultimate American pioneer, dreamer, visionary.

Reviews

Many historical figures are more interesting in reality than in myth. Daniel Boone was one of them. Brilliant explorer, trapper and pathfinder, renowned marksman and revolutionary militia officer, he was also a loner, parent, legislator, settler and failed speculator. Poet and fiction writer Morgan (Gap Creek) portrays Boone in lively prose but also in excessive detail. Must we know of Boone's life week by week or of favored Shawnee coital positions? And must he give us references to Emerson, Thoreau and Faulkner? Morgan is a trustworthy, up-to-date authority who needs no support from others. Boone comes fully alive in his pages. Morgan's objectivity gives us a completely realized man, the greatest pioneer of the Trans-Appalachian west, who helped open Kentucky to settlement but kept going, settling eventually in Missouri. His luck was as legendary as his deeds, given what he seems to have escaped. Yet Morgan skillfully assesses and often questions the validity of all the tales of good fortune and heroism attached to Boone. Most appealing today, Boone was deeply respectful of the native tribes, a respect returned by the Indians, many of whom he befriended even when he was in conflict with them. If only others had possessed his wisdom and character. Illus., maps. (Oct. 16)
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*Starred Review* It is, of course, difficult for a biographer to glean the reality from the legends of an iconic figure, particularly if that figure was already surrounded by myth and legend in his own lifetime, as was Daniel Boone. Still, poet and novelist Morgan has made a valiant effort in his absorbing and stirring chronicle of the great frontiersman. He strips away some of the most blatant falsehoods about his subject's life. Boone did not "discover" Kentucky or the Cumberland Gap, and he was neither an "Indian-lover" nor a particularly eager Indian fighter. Although the reality of Boone's life and character is more complicated than the mythology, he still emerges here as a fascinating, admirable, and even noble character. He was, in fact, instrumental in the opening of the trans-Appalachian West before the Revolution and fought in both the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War. When necessary, he fought Indians, but he also established friendships with many tribal chiefs. He settled in Missouri before it was absorbed by the U.S. and died there at the age of 86. Throughout his life, he displayed an adventurous and generous spirit that, combined with a tough intelligence, make him well worth the accolades he continues to receive. This outstanding biography will be ideal for general readers. Freeman, Jay

Edition details

• Publisher: Algonquin Books
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1565124553
• ISBN 13: 9781565124554
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 538