Customer Reviews

Frontier War for Amer Independ

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

William Nester's The Frontier War for American Independence is both dry as dust and ridiculously condescending. The subject matter provides ample fodder for compelling story-telling, but Nester merely serves up a boring recitation of treaties and casualty totals. Being told that Indians raided a village and killed 5 and wounded 3 hardly fires the imagination. Nor does it capture the facts of life on the ground during this dangerous time. Nester breathes no life into his subject.

Perhaps worse is the author's attitude toward Indians. We are told in the first chapter of the book that "Unlike whites, Indians saw strength in genetic and racial diversity rather than uniformity." You see, Indians were into diversity before diversity was cool. You get the picture. All of Nester's discussions of Indians are prefaced by comparisons to Europeans and Americans, always to the Indians' benefit. They are at least no worse. "Like Europeans, Indians were capable of committing the most vicious of crimes..." But these "crimes" are rarely described in any detail or are excused or even passed off as admirable. The taking of captives for life is proof of the Indians` commitment to diversity, for example. The fact that women and children captives would often refuse to be repatriated is evidence of the superiority of Indian culture. And on and on, ad nauseum.

Read Allan Eckert's Dark and Bloody River instead of this hopelessly dry and insulting work.

`The Frontier War for American Independence' is a barren desert of a book with nary an oasis of refreshment between its covers. The subject matter is both important and potentially fascinating, but Mr. Nester has no sense of its inherent drama, and cannot weave an interesting tale even from this, the most promising of material. He approaches it with all the skill of a high school phys-ed teacher who is expected to teach a history class on the side. There is some useful information on the subject here for the reader intrepid enough to brave the daunting Sahara of Mr. Nester's prose, (thus two stars rather than one) but it is not a journey that I recommend that you undertake.

Theo Logos