text: Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West (9781400031108) This website requires javascript enabled in your browser to function properly.
  Thoroughly Engaging and Brilliantly Written
  By John Sollami - October 3, 2006	Blood and Thunder is a blockbuster! With this sweeping and comprehensive history, Hampton Sides vividly and engagingly retells the story of James K. Polk's and the nation's drive to absorb the West and expand America from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Along with this outsized and bold tale of conquest and manifest destiny, Sides generously presents us with a whole constellation of people and events, such as the deliberately provoked (by the U.S.) Mexican-American war, the jarring clash of Native-American and Anglo cultures, the life of the great leader of the Navajos, Narbona, and his awful death, the relentless and brutal efforts of the US Army at eradication of the Navajos and other tribespeople, the coming of the Civil War to New Mexico, and the creation of one of America's first pop heros, Kit Carson. Through newspapers and trashy pulp fiction westerns, known at the time as "blood and thunders," a larger than life western Indian killer and superhero was born, which had nothing... read more
  By Bill Pullman "Book reviewer" - October 20, 2006	This is a beautifully written book that takes epic form in retelling the settling of the American southwest from 1820 through the 1860s. From the Mexican war to the removal of the Navajo from Canyon de Chelly, Hampton Sides writes an engaging account of the results of manifest destiny, showing both sides, warts and all. The white man, while seeming noble in purpose, is shown to have been lacking in honor, and while the Indians were certainly shafted time and again they had many of their own faults. Central to this story is the famous mountain man Kit Carson, a man of many contradictions: though extremely intelligent he was also illiterate; he could speak many of the native languages, understood the Indian ways, and even had Indian wives but he also participated in the slaughter and removal from their lands of these same Indians. The book also includes engaging portraits of many of the important figures of this time period: Stephen Watts Kearny, John Fremont, the Navajo warrior... read more
  By John R. Lindermuth "J. R. Lindermuth, author ... - November 4, 2006	Hampton Sides has given us a multi-faceted examination of the men and forces involved in the conquest of the American West and the way of life of its original settlers.At the center is Christopher "Kit" Carson, who was a pivotal figure in the events and whose life has been so distorted by legend most today have little inkling of just how complex an individual and how heroic--in the true sense of the word--the man really was.There are also telling portraits of others: President James Polk, engineer of Manifest Destiny, who believed it was his nation's biblical right to seize real estate all the way to the Pacific, no matter who else might claim the land; Stephen Watts Kearny, father of the U.S. Cavalry and one of the most underrated officers produced by this country, who Polk used to spearhead his land lust; the equally ambitious John C. Fremont and his father-in-law, Sen. Thomas Hart Benton, the apostle of Manifest Destiny; the energetic and interesting Brig... read more
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