Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West (Random House Large Print (Cloth/Paper))
by Hampton Sides
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Book Summary Information
Author: Hampton SidesEdition: Hardcover
Format: Large Print
Published: 2006-10-10
ISBN: 0739326724
Number of pages: 880
Publisher: Random House Large Print
Book Reviews of Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West (Random House Large Print (Cloth/Paper))
Book Review: History Clear Eyed
Summary: 5 Stars
Fascinating. A few flaws. All minor. Some more odd and interesting than others. The past tense of gainsay is gainsaid. It's Sierra Blanca not Sierra Blanco. Sides states that the Navajo had never encountered "white" men. Yet they had been in intimate contact with the Spanish for over two hundred years and many of them spoke Spanish. Freudian slip? He has judge Carlos Beaubien intoning the death sentence for the Taos patriots for treason, "Muerto," dead man, rather than "muerte," death. Presumably, Beaubien, whose son Narciso had been killed in the uprising, spoke Spanish. This is in the tradition of authors like John Nichols who, in Milagro Beanfield War, says that pendejo means "pubic hair," when if he had deigned to use the great resource right outside his doorstep, he would have readily apprehended that in New Mexico, pendejo means "fool." Sides says that the poorest Navajos (as opposed to the more affluent?) were called "ladrones," thieves, but does not explain. Finally, Sides seems unable to sort out the nomenclature for folks of Iberian descent. Sometimes they are "Spanish" buffalo hunters, sometimes "Mexican" trailhands, sometimes "Hispanic" soldiers or "Hispanic" men from the territory, sometimes "New Mexicans."
With all of this, this is still five-star reading. I couldn't put it down. I read it in record time. Sides is remarkably even handed. His research is obviously deep, his presentation captures and holds you. It is obvious that Sides has been to the majority of places he describes. I'm jealous. He has forced me to rethink Kit Carson. Carson's amazing peregrinations and his serendipitous appearance at every important juncture in U.S. western history forces us to again examine the great man theory and the role of luck in the course of human history. What if San Pasquale had gone the other way? What if Armijo had had some huevos and held the pass at Apache Canyon? Could anything have really stemmed the tide, turned aside a powerful nation bent on raping and pillaging a weaker neighbor? What would Mexico be today if it had not been immorally deprived of its northern territories, Texas, New Mexico and California? But this is like urinating into the wind. We cannot, as some would snidely suggest, choose the century or decade in which we want to live. We can, however, insist on our history clear eyed, unadulterated by hype or prejudice. Sides' narration forces us all to reexamine our pet prejudices. I pay him the ultimate compliment. Sides is a historian.
Summary of Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West (Random House Large Print (Cloth/Paper))
In the fall of 1846 the venerable Navajo warrior Narbona, greatest of his people’s chieftains, looked down upon the small town of Santa Fe, the stronghold of the Mexican settlers he had been fighting his whole long life. He had come to see if the rumors were true—if an army of blue-suited soldiers had swept in from the East and utterly defeated his ancestral enemies. As Narbona gazed down on the battlements and cannons of a mighty fort the invaders had built, he realized his foes had been vanquished—but what did the arrival of these “New Men” portend for the Navajo?Narbona could not have known that “The Army of the West,” in the midst of the longest march in American military history, was merely the vanguard of an inexorable tide fueled by a self-righteous ideology now known as “Manifest Destiny.” For twenty years the Navajo, elusive lords of a huge swath of mountainous desert and pasturelands, would ferociously resist the flood of soldiers and settlers who wished to change their ancient way of life or destroy them.
Hampton Sides’s extraordinary book brings the history of the American conquest of the West to ringing life. It is a tale with many heroes and villains, but as is found in the best history, the same person might be both. At the center of it all stands the remarkable figure of Kit Carson—the legendary trapper, scout, and soldier who embodies all the contradictions and ambiguities of the American experience in the West. Brave and clever, beloved by his contemporaries, Carson was an illiterate mountain man who twice married Indian women and understood and respected the tribes better than any other American alive. Yet he was also a cold-blooded killer who willingly followed orders tantamount to massacre. Carson’s almost unimaginable exploits made him a household name when they were written up in pulp novels known as “blood-and-thunders,” but now that name is a bitter curse for contemporary Navajo, who cannot forget his role in the travails of their ancestors.
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