Dreams of El Dorado
A History of the American West
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- ¥2,800
発行者による作品情報
From a New York Times bestselling author, a masterful history of the American West—from the California Gold Rush to the settling of Oklahoma and beyond.
"Epic in its scale, fearless in its scope, this is a bravura performance from one of our master historians." —Hampton Sides, bestselling author of Blood and Thunder
In Dreams of El Dorado, H. W. Brands tells the thrilling panoramic story of the settling of the American West, from Lewis and Clark’s expedition in the early nineteenth century to the closing of the frontier by the early twentieth. He introduces us to explorers, mountain men, cowboys, missionaries, and soldiers, taking us from John Jacob Astor’s fur-trading campaign in Oregon to the Texas Revolution, from the California gold rush to the Oklahoma land rush. Throughout, Brands explores the contradictions of the West and explodes its longstanding myths. The West has been celebrated as the proving ground of American individualism; in reality, the West depended on collective action and federal largesse more than any other region. The West brought out the finest and basest in those who ventured there, evoking both selfless heroism and unspeakable violence. Visions of great wealth drew generations of Americans westward, but El Dorado was never more elusive than in the West.
Balanced, authoritative, and masterfully told, Dreams of El Dorado sets a new standard for histories of the American West.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
University of Texas historian Brands (Heirs of the Founders) argues convincingly that the reality of the American West was very different than the way it was mythologized: as the epitome of the nation's frontier spirit, where the individual could ignore the rules of government and society and, ideally, strike it rich. Surveying the region's history from the Louisiana Purchase through the closing of the frontier, Brands ably recounts the stories of individuals such as Thomas Jefferson, who was both thrilled and alarmed by the immensity of this newly acquired territory; the merchant John Jacob Astor, whose attempt to gain control of the Pacific Northwest's fur trade collapsed in an orgy of violence between his agents and local Native Americans; and the missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, who ventured to Oregon to proselytize to the indigenous people but were brutally murdered by members of the Cayuse tribe, who blamed them for the lethal spread of measles. He also introduces readers to lesser-known figures, such as the quartz mine workers of post Gold Rush California, who brought the Industrial Revolution to the Pacific frontier, and the Irish and Chinese migrants whose back-breaking labors built the Transcontinental Railroad. Brands delivers lucid prose and short, tightly focused chapters. This broad but clearly structured study, with its many well-chosen illustrations, is likely to have wide appeal.
