Daniel Boone
An American Life
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
The embodiment of the American hero, the man of action, the pathfinder, Daniel Boone represents the great adventure of his age—the westward movement of the American people. Daniel Boone: An American Life brings together over thirty years of research in an extraordinary biography of the quintessential pioneer. Based on primary sources, the book depicts Boone through the eyes of those who knew him and within the historical contexts of his eighty-six years. The story of Daniel Boone offers new insights into the turbulent birth and growth of the nation and demonstrates why the frontier forms such a significant part of the American experience.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lofaro (editor, The Tall Tales of Davy Crockett), a University of Tennessee professor of American studies, returns to one of his favorite subjects to repaint a portrait of the famed frontiersman with a new patina of insight, finding facts amid myths as he places Boone's life (1734 1820) in the historical context of the period. Boone, he writes, typifies Americans' "paradoxical relationship to the wilderness," which he sought "to subdue and improve and to preserve and enjoy." The phrase "may have" surfaces occasionally, but Lofaro has skillfully and authoritatively mapped the roots and routes of this wilderness wanderer who could not control his "itching foot." Beginning with Boone's Pennsylvania childhood and early years in North Carolina, the narrative continues through his long hunting expeditions, Kentucky explorations, Indian attacks, his 1756 marriage, blazing the Wilderness Road, founding Boonesborough, his escape from Shawnee Indians after months of captivity, his land claims loss and legal morass, followed by his celebrity status after John Filson's The Adventures of Daniel Boon(1784), a "bombastic, ghost-written retelling of the pioneer's 'autobiographical' adventures," turned Boone into an international frontier hero and icon. Striding through battles and bloodshed, Boone breathes and lives in this work, lightened with humorous anecdotes and descriptions of frontier customs and traditions. Lofaro's exhaustive research is evident on every page. 12 b&w illus.
