3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
challenging, May 27, 2005
This review is from: The Fist in the Wilderness (Paperback)
I would argue with the previous reviewer and call this book "challenging" rather than monotonous; of course it depends on the level of your interest in the subject...for me, it approaches the passionate...the author uses what might be called the "immersion" method of historical writing which can indeed be exhausting; this is not a book to be read in huge swatches; rather,a few pages at a time must be digested thoroughly...it requires a commitment of time and concentration, and should be read steadily from start to finish...you wouldn't want to put it down for weeks and then try to pick it up again. This book rewards effort; the reader will leave it with a vast knowledge of this arcane subject and most likely, a feeling of gratitude for a huge lesson in North American geography. It's amazing to find out how little you know about the latter subject until you start reading a book like this....also recommended, the author's ONE MAN'S WEST, a lively and fascinating chronicle of early mining and ranching adventures.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Long-winded, exhausting and monotonous, February 4, 2002
This review is from: The Fist in the Wilderness (Paperback)
The amount of research which went into this book must have been phenomenal but the writing style is so complex and confusing, it can be difficult to follow. This is the political and economical side of the fur trade business during the early 1800's from the point of view of John Jacob Astor and Ramsay Crooks of the American Fur Company. There is much to be learned from the book, especially relationships between the United States, England, France and Spain; establishing international boundaries; the never-ending saga of allowing (or not allowing) whiskey into the Indian country; the tense competition between the fur companies, etc. Better have a dictionary handy too as some of the wording will need defining to the average reader.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
A Wow!, November 18, 2008
This review is from: The Fist in the Wilderness (Paperback)
Without a doubt, this is the finest book I have read about the American fur trade. It is the biography of Ramsey Crooks, John Jacob Astor's primary field agent, and his amazing participation in the early years of America's post colonial participation of this business. If you read about Astor and the fur trade, the literature seems to focus on Astor's Astoria in 1811 and then jumps 25 years to 1830, when fur expeditions began embarking from St. Louis focused on the Rocky Mountain trade. If you enter the fur trades history during the romantic period of the Mountain Man, one could be left with the impression that the mountain trade and the fur trade are synonymous.
No so. The fur trade began in the 1650s and lasted until the 1840s. It was one of the key economic drivers behind the exploration and settlement of all North America. It launched wars, set today's international boundary between the United States and Canada and, reaching China, was truly a global endeavor. This is a segment of that story, from 1803 until the business was supplanted by Chinese silk in the 1840s. It is a story of the middle days of this business when the fur business' focus centered on Minnesota's Boundary Waters, Wisconsin's Prairie du Chien and Michigan's Mackinac Island, i.e., the time in the fur trade that seriously predates the fabled Mountain Man. It is wonderfully well written and presents some of the very early history of Detroit, Chicago, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan prior to the time when whites fought Indians for territorial control of these areas.
Much went on here and we meet characters that are the stuff of legend: William Clark, Tecumseh, Zebulon Pike, James Wilkinson, Manuel Lisa, the Chouteaus, etc., too many, far too many movers and shakers to list here. Let me just say that Lavender's story is smack in the middle of the overall struggle between the United States and Britain for control of the North American continent!
It is the story of John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company in competition with Britain's Hudson Bay Company, a most integral part of early US economic history. It was a competition waged deep within the heart of the country when US and British law was either nonexistent or diametrically opposed. It gives the reader a visceral understanding for early western US hatred for the British and for Britain's unending efforts to obfuscate the terms and conditions of the Treaty of Paris.
An empire was at stake and so too was unbridled wealth.
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