The Oregon Trail : A New American Journey by Rinker Buck
---------------------------------------------------------------
Author: Rinker Buck
Number of Pages: none
Published Date: 07 Jun 2016
Publisher: Large Print Press
Publication Country: United States
Language: English
ISBN: 9781594139697
File size: 36 Mb
Download Link: The Oregon Trail A New American Journey
---------------------------------------------------------------
An epic account of traveling the length of the Oregon Trail the old-fashioned way--in a covered wagon with a team of mules, an audacious journey that hasn't been attempted in a century--which also chronicles the rich history of the trail, the people who made the migration, and its significance to the country.
Spanning two thousand miles and traversing six states from Missouri to the Pacific coast, the Oregon Trail is the route that made America. In the fifteen years before the Civil War, when 400,000 pioneers used the trail to emigrate West--scholars still regard this as the largest land migration in history--it united the coasts, doubled the size of the country, and laid the groundwork for the railroads. Today, amazingly, the trail is all but forgotten.
Rinker Buck is no stranger to grand adventures. His first travel narrative, Flight of Passage, was hailed by The New Yorker as "a funny, cocky gem of a book," and with The Oregon Trail he brings the most important route in American history back to glorious and vibrant life.
Traveling from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Baker City, Oregon, over the course of four months, Buck is accompanied by three cantankerous mules, his boisterous brother, Nick, and an "incurably filthy" Jack Russell terrier named Olive Oyl. Along the way, they dodge thunderstorms in Nebraska, chase runaway mules across the Wyoming plains, scout more than five hundred miles of nearly vanished trail on foot, cross the Rockies, and make desperate fifty-mile forced marches for water. The Buck brothers repair so many broken wheels and axels that they nearly reinvent the art of wagon travel itself. They also must reckon with the ghost of their father, an eccentric yet loveable dreamer whose memory inspired their journey across the plains and whose premature death, many years earlier, has haunted them both ever since.
But The Oregon Trail is much more than an epic adventure. It is also a lively and essential work of history that shatters the comforting myths about the trail years passed down by generations of Americans. Buck introduces readers to the largely forgotten roles played by trailblazing evangelists, friendly Indian tribes, female pioneers, bumbling U.S. Army cavalrymen, and the scam artists who flocked to the frontier to fleece the overland emigrants. Generous portions of the book are devoted to the history of old and appealing things like the mule and the wagon. We also learn how the trail accelerated American economic development. Most arresting, perhaps, are the stories of the pioneers themselves--ordinary families whose extraordinary courage and sacrifice made this country what it became.
At once a majestic journey across the West, a significant work of history, and a moving personal saga, The Oregon Trail draws readers into the journey of a lifetime. It is a wildly ambitious work of nonfiction from a true American original. It is a book with a heart as big as the country it crosses.
Read online The Oregon Trail : A New American Journey
Buy and read online The Oregon Trail : A New American Journey
Download and read The Oregon Trail : A New American Journey for pc, mac, kindle, readers
Download to iPad/iPhone/iOS, B&N nook The Oregon Trail : A New American Journey ebook, pdf, djvu, epub, mobi, fb2, zip, rar, torrent
Download more files:
basic tutorial for cinema 4d
jet 10 inch band saw manual
astropop deluxe keygen generator sims
