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The career of John Charles Fremont (1813-90) celebrates and ties together the full breadth of American expansionism from its eighteenth-century origins through its culmination in the Gilded Age. Tom Chaffin's new biography demonstrates Fremont's vital importance to the history of American empire, and his role in shattering long-held myths about the ecology and habitability of the American West. As the most celebrated American explorer and mapper of his time, Fremont stood at the center of the vast federal project of Western exploration and conquest. His expeditions between 1838 and 1854 captured the public's imagination, inspired Americans to accept their nation's destiny as a vast continental empire, and earned him his enduring sobriquet, the Pathfinder. But Fremont was more than an explorer. Chaffin's narrative includes Fremont's varied experiences as an entrepreneur, abolitionist, Civil War general, husband to the remarkable Jessie Benton Fremont, two-time Republican presidential candidate, and Gilded Age aristocrat. Chaffin brings to life the personal and political experiences of a remarkable American whose saga offers compelling insight into the conflicts, tensions, and contradictions at the core of America's lust for empire and its conquest of the trans-Missouri West.… (meer)
3869. Pathfinder: John Charles Fremont and the Course of American Empire, by Tom Chaffin (read 21 Mar 2004) This 2002 biography of the famed explorer and the first (in 1856) Republican presidential candidate is well-done and tells the story of his life well. He made four or more expeditions in the West and they were tough trips. This book tells the story of those trips well, though I was not too interested in them. The account of how California came to be in the US is told in more detail than I have ever read before, and was interest-holding. This is a good book, especially the part covering his life from 1849 on. ( )
At its best, this book is a close examination of an enigmatic figure who deserves to be better remembered. At its worst, it has a certain prefunctory quality to it. These extremes roughly coincide with Fremont the explorer versus Fremont in his roles as military officer, politician and businessman. One could say that Fremont's real talents as an expedition leader and scientist allowed him to rise to the level where his incapacity to be an organization man was exposed. Still, if nothing else, Chaffin does do a good job of putting Fremont in context as an American conquistador. ( )
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
Westward the course of empire takes its way; The four first acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama with the day: Time's noblest offspring is the last. - George Berkeley
Frémont, the pathfinder of empire...To his hands was committed the magnificent task of opening the golden gates of our Pacific empire. - U.S. Magazine and Democratic Review
If one could seize America Or at least a fine forgetfulness That seeps into our outline Defining our volumes with a stain That is fleeting too
But commemorates Because it does define... - John Ashbery
Opdracht
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
To Meta and Zoie, good traveling companions
Eerste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
There are places in the American West--a mountaintop, say, or a parking lot--where you can stand and know that John Charles Frémont stopped there and wrote down what he saw.
Citaten
Laatste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
For, in the end, the American empire he envisioned had been realized on a scale--and in forms--beyond his wildest dreams.
The career of John Charles Fremont (1813-90) celebrates and ties together the full breadth of American expansionism from its eighteenth-century origins through its culmination in the Gilded Age. Tom Chaffin's new biography demonstrates Fremont's vital importance to the history of American empire, and his role in shattering long-held myths about the ecology and habitability of the American West. As the most celebrated American explorer and mapper of his time, Fremont stood at the center of the vast federal project of Western exploration and conquest. His expeditions between 1838 and 1854 captured the public's imagination, inspired Americans to accept their nation's destiny as a vast continental empire, and earned him his enduring sobriquet, the Pathfinder. But Fremont was more than an explorer. Chaffin's narrative includes Fremont's varied experiences as an entrepreneur, abolitionist, Civil War general, husband to the remarkable Jessie Benton Fremont, two-time Republican presidential candidate, and Gilded Age aristocrat. Chaffin brings to life the personal and political experiences of a remarkable American whose saga offers compelling insight into the conflicts, tensions, and contradictions at the core of America's lust for empire and its conquest of the trans-Missouri West.
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