Reviews for Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West

The average rating for Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-03-29 00:00:00 Paul Clark This is how history should be written. This is the kind of book that spoils you for other books. Hampton Sides' Blood and Thunder is a sprawling account of the opening of the American southwest. It starts in 1846, with American soldiers arriving in Santa Fe, and ends roughly around the time of the First Battle of Adobe Walls in 1864. The two decades in between are stuffed with drama, horror, and heartbreak. All the stuff that used to fill the dime-store "blood and thunders" that lends this book its tongue-in-cheek title. You have General Stephen Watts Kearny taking the Army of the West on one of the longest marches in U.S. Military History. You have the underrated political genius of James Knox Polk and his ambitious continental designs. You have the Mexican-American War that Polk orchestrated, as fought in New Mexico and California. There are battles and massacres, explorations and discoveries, triumphs and tragedies. This is a sometimes-wildly digressing story, hopping manically from one place to the next, like my kids on Christmas morning. (And on Halloween, Easter, their birthdays. Pretty much any day involving candy). One moment you'll be reading about James Henry Carleton investigating the Mountain Meadows Massacre; the next you'll be with soon-to-be Sand Creek villain John Chivington as he's fighting the Confederacy at Glorieta Pass. It's enough to give you whiplash, but the good kind of whiplash, like when you turn away from your video game to see your kids doing something cute. Despite the overstuffed nature, Sides keeps things manageable by utilizing two backbones to carry the narrative. The first is famed hunter/trapper/scout/soldier Christopher "Kit" Carson. The second is the sad story of the Navajo Indians whose "long walk" to their reservation on the Basque Redondo is a tale redolent of the "Trail of Tears" yet oddly unremembered today. These storylines provide a moral framework for the rest of Sides' story. In some ways, this is a very old fashioned book. There are enough battles (from San Pasqual to Canyon de Chelly) to satisfy someone looking for a military history. It also relies heavily on the "great man" style of history. There are perceptive biographical sketches of the aforementioned Kearny and Polk (who Sides argues might be the most efficient and effective US President), as well as explorer John C. Fremont, politician Thomas Hart Benton, and Union General Edward Canby. Over them all towers the diminutive Carson, who Sides rightly finds the perfect embodiment of all the grim contradictions found in many of the men who helped open the West. Carson was kind and humane, except when he unleashed his terrible, lethal rage. He treated with the Indians, respected them, knew their customs and traditions, yet could mutilate the body of a warrior he'd just killed without batting an eye. He was on the forefront of a racial conflict, yet loved and married both an Arapaho woman named Singing Grass, and a Hispanic woman named Josefa. He was illiterate, yet spoke more than half a dozen different languages. Yet this is also a very modern book. Sides writes in an incredibly inclusive style that seeks a diversity of viewpoints. There are a lot of white males, as might be expected (see the preceding paragraph), but there is also significant space devoted to Navajo leaders such as Narbona and Manuelito. You are given the opportunity to see things from their perspective, as they are forced to leave their ancestral homes for a reservation they're meant to share with long-time enemies. Sides also spends time with diarist Susan Magoffin, as well as Fremont's able and intelligent partner, Jesse Benton Fremont. He strives to fill in the blanks of Carson's wives, who elude us through a lack of primary documents. There is not a perfect 50-50 split, of course; I doubt that's possible with extant sources. The fact that Sides makes an honest effort, indeed goes out of his way to find other voices, goes a long way with me. More than that, Sides is interested in the cultural context. He is clearly riveted by the intricate customs and practices of the Navajo, and spends a good deal of time exploring and explaining their worldview. What's more, Sides uses this information to amplify the historical record. For instance, after Narbona's death, he describes Navajo funeral rites. This has the double effect of giving you a better understanding of the Navajo people, while providing an idea of how Narbona was probably laid to rest. The best part of all - yes it keeps getting better! - is that Sides is an excellent writer. He is a naturally gifted storyteller with a deep sympathy for his historical subjects. This is a vanishingly rare book that connects you with the past in a tactile way. I dare you not to be moved by the final agonies of Kit Carson, dying from an aortic aneurysm a month after his beloved wife. (His last words fitting for a man who straddled cultures: "Doctor, compadre, adios!"). He has an unerring eye for details both profound and small, whether dealing with Navajo death taboos or James K. Polk's excruciating urinary stone surgery. Sides seamlessly combines effortless prose, competent research, and astute judgments. It melds the old way of historical writing with the new, to create a marvelous hybrid. Sides gives you the "blood and thunder" of the West while maintaining a moral clarity of vision. He is not out to deliver harsh verdicts or to elevate undeserving heroes, but he can recognize a calamity when it's looking him in the face. He is absolutely comfortable in the ethical ambiguities of America's westward expansion, navigating the many, many competing impulses animating the men and women of this story. This book represents an ideal for me. A work that is both exciting and introspective, that is both sharply incisive and generously big-hearted. It's not an easy balance to strike, and it's worth reading when it happens.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-01-11 00:00:00 Susanne Macmahon Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson & the Conquest of the American West by Hampton Sides was a powerfully written and meticulously researched tale of the American West primarily from the early nineteenth century through the Civil War when President Polk's vision of Manifest Destiny was the ideological vision of the United States of America sweeping from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Having grown up in Colorado, New Mexico and California, I loved this book not only for its rich history but for its vivid descriptions of the southwest. "They all had Spanish names and had had them since before the pilgrims sailed to Plymouth Rock: The Sandias. Manzanos. Ortiz. Jemez. Los Cerillos. Sangre de Cristos. San Mateos. Atalaya. Some seemed so close they could plucked as effortlessly as pendulous fruit, others more than a hundred miles off, thin blue phantoms rising from the Navajo country in the hazy west." "The sagebrush gave way to cornfields and sheep pastures and then scattered houses, and finally the men dropped down to the somber capital--the Royal City of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi. Although it had a fabled name with a venerable history--it was founded in 1609--Santa Fe was not a town that sought to impress anyone, numbering at most seven thousand inhabitants." But at the heart of this saga is Christopher "Kit" Carson who was an integral part of this story. "There was something uncanny about Carson, in the way he popped up from the shadows and impressed his name on the scenes of history. . . . he did have a curious knack for making himself present at the critical instant. Whenever an expedition was in trouble--real trouble--he was there to bail it out." It was also the chilling tale of the Navajo nation who found themselves unwilling participants in the last stages of Manifest Destiny. "It was not a single migration, but a series of them. . . But taken all together, it was a forced relocation of biblical proportions, one of the largest in American history--second only to the Trail of Tears of the Cherokees."