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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 979.437
EAN: 9780195305029
ISBN: 0195305027
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: February 04, 2008
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Sales Rank: 21636
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
In late October 1846, the last wagon train of that year's westward migration stopped overnight before resuming its arduous climb over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, unaware that a fearsome storm was gathering force. After months of grueling travel, the 81 men, women and children would be trapped for a brutal winter with little food and only primitive shelter. The conclusion is known: by spring of the next year, the Donner Party was synonymous with the most harrowing extremes of human survival. But until now, the full story of what happened, what it tells us about human nature and about America's westward expansion, remained shrouded in myth.
Drawing on fresh archaeological evidence, recent research on topics ranging from survival rates to snowfall totals, and heartbreaking letters and diaries made public by descendants a century-and-a-half after the tragedy, Ethan Rarick offers an intimate portrait of the Donner party and their unimaginable ordeal: a mother who must divide her family, a little girl who shines with courage, a devoted wife who refuses to abandon her husband, a man who risks his life merely to keep his word. But Rarick resists both the gruesomely sensationalist accounts of the Donner party as well as later attempts to turn the survivors into archetypal pioneer heroes. "The Donner Party," Rarick writes, "is a story of hard decisions that were neither heroic nor villainous. Often, the emigrants displayed a more realistic and typically human mixture of generosity and selfishness, an alloy born of necessity."
A fast-paced, heart-wrenching, clear-eyed narrative history, A Desperate Hope casts new light on one of America's most horrific encounters between the dream of a better life and the harsh realities such dreams so often must confront.
Praise for Desperate Passage:
"His is the first significant book, written, like Stewart's, in a novelistic mode and likely to gain popular readership, to incorporate this new data.... Rarick's account is not really about science; it's about humanity.... Rarick has done his homework."--New York Times Book Review
"Rarick takes an evenhanded and thorough approach to the story of the Donners' covered-wagon migration across the country and their winter entrapment in the Sierras. His telling is evocative and easy to read."--Seattle Times
"With a reporter's doggedness and a scholar's thoroughness, Rarick has clarified the historical details. ... Rarick makes this compelling frontier drama all the more so."--National Geographic Adventure Magazine
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
Ethan Rarick's intriguing account of the Donner party's tortured attempt to reach California in the winter of 1846-47 is honest and well-written. In DESPERATE PASSAGE he has eschewed the tendency towards sensationalism found in so many other books about the emigrants and has relied on extensive research to tell the story of the small band of pioneers stranded in the Sierra Nevada mountains and its struggle for survival.
This book has many stories of heroism and cowardice, industry ... Read More
Rating: -
I live in the area where the Donner Party was trapped, and have read almost all that has been written on the subject. This is by far the most complete and accurate book I have read so far about this tragedy!!!
Rating: -
Everyone knows the story of the Donner Party's coming West and getting stranded trying to climb over the Sierra Nevada mountains, but Mr. Rarick has told this story in such an exciting way that I could picture every detail in my mind, and almost feel their pain. Both my husband and I could not put the book down until we had finished it, and then we were sorry that the story was over. It was one of the best books that I have ever read.
Rating: -
I had never before read a book about the Donner Party, and was lucky enough to have this be my first. I started reading it before dinner, and stayed up until 3 a.m. to finish. From the beginning, Rarick provides a complete picture of the members of the party, and the times in which they live. He immediately sets the stage to objectively describe what they should and should not have done along the trail. He is able to introduce people slowly, so as to not overwhelm, and provides interesting accounts. ... Read More
Rating: -
Rarick writes a very nice narrative of the Donner Party that includes references of the Hardesty and Dixon excavations of recent years. I liked the book and his generally neutral positions with a couple of exceptions. He is a bit too harsh on Lansford Hastings who is all but vilified as a main cause of the Donner Party's demise. Rarick seems to imply that Hastings should have waited indefinitely at Fort Bridger for straggling companies no matter what the consequences for all involved; he led nearly eighty ... Read More
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