Customer Reviews

Unfortunate Emigrants

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Editor Kristen Johnson has done an excellent job of pulling together many difficult-to-obtain source documents that are pertinent to the Donner Party. She enhances the reader's understanding by presenting detailed biographical information about each document's author, combined with copious footnotes, all of which are extremely helpful and unbiased. The tremendous amount of research required to synthesize the material is quite apparent. Johnson's volume of material helps to counterbalance some of the older, more biased works of Donner literature. This is a "must-read" for anyone interested in American history, the great western overland migration, or simply in tales of survival. Congratulations to Ms. Johnson upon compiling an interesting, eclectic mix of old and rare--some almost forgotten-documents which really improve our understanding of conflicting viewpoints of one of America's greatest mysteries. (This text refers to the hardbound edition of the book, c. 1996.)

Johnson's book is a great reference for anyone interested in the Donner Party. It is a compilation of written source materials, most contemporary to the Donner event. The book contains many personal accounts of the tragedy, given from widely diverse sources, from survivors and rescuers to "yellow journalists" of the time. Johnson's compilation is a testament to how the Donner Party story affected people of the time, and how their varying perspectives affected their opinions. Johnson avoids reader confusion with a complete set of footnotes, detailing where various writers were inaccurate or incomplete in their retelling of this amazing story of the West.

This book takes many early, hard to find, publications and compiles them into one comprehensive resource. The book has excellent annotations and summaries which place events into perspective and help give a fair, balanced view of the Donner Party tragedy. Highly recommended for anyone who has an interest in our western history and the early settlers who helped to form it. This is a great follow-up book to McGlashan and Stewart

It's a text book for colleges. But it's well written, and each author who contributed their view point of the Donner tragedy, goes from the ridiculous to the sublime. One of the more interesting books on the subject.