Brendan’s Alternate Tagline for The Undiscovered Country:
“Undiscovered” really depends on your point of view.
Quick synopsis:
A look at American westward expansion through the lives of four famous faces.
Fact for Non-History People:
The American Census Bureau declared the western frontier “closed” in 1890.
Fact for History Nerds:
The U.S. military tried using camels for transport in the mid-19th century, but it went badly and they behind a population of feral camels that roamed Texas for decades.
My Take on The Undiscovered Country:
The story of a country in four lives is the basic premise of The Undiscovered Country by Paul Andrew Hutton. I really enjoyed Hutton’s previous book, The Apache Wars, so I had high hopes for this one. Like many great sequels, this one is bigger and also better.
Hutton looks at the expansion of the U.S. from before the revolution to the end of the Wild West. He uses four people as the lenses to look through for each time period. You may have heard of Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Kit Caron, and Buffalo Bill before. I did have some worries that Hutton many end up too high-level by focusing on specific lives, but I was quite happy how fast paced the book felt without losing a tremendous amount of detail. Sure, the Apache Wars got their own book, but Hutton is able to pack a lot into a little.
This is a great book for someone who is not too well-versed in the people and time periods covered. It’s just simply very good and worth a read.
(This book was provided as an advance reader copy by NetGalley and Dutton Books.)
Verdict:
A great read. Buy it here!
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