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205 of 222 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thoroughly Engaging and Brilliantly Written, October 3, 2006
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. He first apprenticed as a trapper and learned from the best of the mountain men, then took the western landscape in as if it were a part of him. He became the most reliable guide and trailblazer known and began to serve the US Army as it sought to tame not only the wild natives but the nation of Mexico as the one-dimensional president, James K. Polk, pursued his obsession of obtaining the West for America. Carson himself, Sides tells us, had a deep abiding respect for the native peoples, married first an Arapaho woman, whom he deeply loved, and, after her sad death, he married a Cheyenne, which quickly proved to be a disaster. On his farmstead in Taos, he coexisted with and accommodated nearby tribes, who knew of and respected him. And he knew and understood the customs of many of the tribes. Yet he also exhibited unbridled violence and murdered countless warriors for what he thought were just causes. Another seeming irony in Carson's life was his being a willing instrument in opening up the West to the rest of the nation, but then sensing, toward the 1850s, that the very settlers he helped were shrinking the once inexhaustible land. They wantonly and stupidly slaughtered the buffalo, were wiping out the silvertip grizzlies, and had brought smallpox and other European diseases to the defenseless tribes, helping to wipe them out as well. Carson, as Sides says, "saw the tendrils of civilization creeping in; the America he had left behind [in the East] was finally catching up with him."
This is an extraordinary book, filled with heros and villains, and richly and expertly written. Although Kit Carson's life figures prominently in this work, many other pivotal figures are brought to life to tell this tale. One can never go out West again and feel quite the same about it after reading this work. I urge you not to miss it.
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35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Walks In Beauty, November 4, 2006
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. Married to a Mexican, he shared the viewpoint of his Hispanic relatives and neighbors when it came to the Navajo and was Carleton's spear in driving the Dine from their homeland and on the Long Walk. Yet he loved the Ute and helped save them from the forces destroying other tribes.
Sides does not romanticize. He is a storyteller, and his words keep one turning the pages; no dry history this. He reveals the good and the bad about all the people in this book. It is a grand book. One that should be required reading in high schools and colleges to inform future generations of how we came to our present place in history.
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40 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The results of manifest destiny. . ., October 20, 2006
This is a beautifully written book that takes epic form in retelling the settling of the American southwest from 1820 through the 1860s. From the Mexican war to the removal of the Navajo from Canyon de Chelly, Hampton Sides writes an engaging account of the results of manifest destiny, showing both sides, warts and all. The white man, while seeming noble in purpose, is shown to have been lacking in honor, and while the Indians were certainly shafted time and again they had many of their own faults. Central to this story is the famous mountain man Kit Carson, a man of many contradictions: though extremely intelligent he was also illiterate; he could speak many of the native languages, understood the Indian ways, and even had Indian wives but he also participated in the slaughter and removal from their lands of these same Indians. The book also includes engaging portraits of many of the important figures of this time period: Stephen Watts Kearny, John Fremont, the Navajo warrior Narbona, and Senator Thomas Benton. the Author is even handed and fair in portraying all those involved. This book proves that truth is stranger than fiction. Speaking of fiction, I also recommend Across the High Lonesome set in the modern American west.
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