Customer Reviews

The Louisiana Purchase

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This is a great history.

We all knew that the La. Purchase was a "steal" perpetrated during the Jefferson administration, that Bonaparte needed the money, that Lewis and Clark explored the territory and Jefferson skirted the Constitution to make the deal.

This book tells in very readable prose all that you probably did not know beyond that skeletal history - like the Lewis and Clark mission started as a military reconnoiter and only later turned into a scientific one.

Mr. Fleming takes the reader into the palace and diplomatic intrigues of France, Spain and England to tell us how the purchase really came about. He includes the bribes and backdoor dealings emanating from Paris and how they were understood or misunderstood in America. Mr. Fleming also portrays well the fledging politics and "spinning" in the new UNited States. Included are the views of the naysayers on both sides of the ocean in all four countries as well.

This is well-written and interesting throughout. Fleming's short descriptioins of each major character are brief but very concise. There is not a wasted word in the book. I strongly recommend it to anyone with even a passing history of the United States.

This is a fun way to re-read history 101. Remember what a wily scuzz Talleyrand was? And how upright Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were by comparison? And do you recall how rapid the rise of Napoleon was from commander of the French army to Emperor of France? Toss all these characters into the equation, add mosquitoes in Santo Domingo and the question of whether Spain or France owned the Louisiana Territory. Result is a tale well told with plenty of juicy adjectives missing from history textbooks - so fascinating it's like reading a sanitized modern novel.

Thomas Fleming adroitly weaves dates, events and places together with characterizations of the men who made it possible for the Louisiana Territory to become part of the United States. He stays with the main characters, focuses on pertinent peripheral events that tipped the scales at opportune times, and gives the reader a vivid sense of how closely diplomacy is related to patience, chicanery, misinformation, trial by press and bribery.

Two surprises to this reader were how very long it took to get news and legal documents from France to Washington, and from the East Coast to New Orleans AND how frequent and how quick was the tendency to try for secession on the part of loyal Americans as well as corrupt leaders. Only "diplomacy" and a tip of the scales of peripheral events kept the United States united through the years of Jefferson's presidency to the War of 1812.

So this is the story, warts and all, of how the United States bought the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million.
The book ends, not with the gala ball for 500, but with a laundry list of those who wanted full credit for what finally was hailed as a very good thing for the USA. And then it's on to the War of 1812 - but that's another story.

I enjoyed reading this little book. Fleming is a well known historian who spins out an improbable tale of how our country more than doubled in size overnight and how it almost didn't happen. If it were fiction I'm not certain I would consider it plausible. But it happened. My main gripe is this: Where the blazes are the index and bibliography? This smells of a publishing decision, not Fleming's. Whoever made it, it was wrong-headed.

This is by far the best book on the Louisiana Purchase that I've ever read. Fleming ties all the details together and presents the most interesting account of The Purchase out there.

"Substandard"?!--Hardly. "what territories it encompassed"?!--"who explored it"?!--These things are left out because these questions are answered by any American history textbook, ad nauseum.

What Fleming's (short) book concentrates on is exactly what is neglected in textbooks: "the diplomatic tug of war". As usual, he does it with a writing style that is captivating.

This book is an excellent source of info about the Purchase despite being very short. Gave me more info than any other source. Unfortunately, I thought I was ordering one book and received 2. I am giving the other to my friend for his birthday in July.

David Vargo

The Louisiana Purchase the great achievement of Jefferson's presidency . A miracle of diplomacy , we borrow money from An English bank which was just involved in financing the British military efforts to keep American colonies part of their empire , and whom we would shortly to go to war with again , to buy the rights to an vast area of land from a country that we are involved in a quasi war with. This book is a short but very informative and fast moving book covering many of the reasons for the purchase and the motives of the sellers. It is like Dragnet TV series fast entertaining while giving the facts just the facts something modern historians often ignore. Hooray for The Louisiana Purchase. Timely as we are approaching the 200Th anniversary of the leap forward in manifest destiny. This is a great companion book to "The Battle of New Orleans" by Remini. This is an exciting part of the miraculous growth of the American Republic .

This short book is a perfect example of substandard history writing. I call substandard historiography a way of writing history with a narrow focus on isolated events. Typically this is how school history textbooks are written (or used to be written).

"The Louisiana Purchase" by Thomas Fleming offers no explanation whatsoever about the broader social, political and economic context in which this momentous event took place. There are no maps and worse still, the reader will look in vain for a description of Louisiana: what territories it encompassed, who lived there, who explored it are subjects the author entirely leaves out. "The Louisiana Purchase" is just a chronicle of the diplomatic tug of war surrounding the deal in Paris and Washington and nothing more.

To this narrow focus I add a grotesque misrepresentation of the French side. The depiction of Napoleon is little more than a caricature: he is again and again portrayed as the Corsican ogre so dear to English propaganda, and the other French characters in the book get the same treatment.

Finally, what is also totally lacking in this book is reflection. Never does the author stop his narrative to share his thoughts with the reader although many of the events that he relates invite questions or comments. Like in a Hollywood film, events succeed each other without any respite.

This is simply not the kind of history one should read at the beginning of the 21st century.