The best land under heaven : the Donner Party in the age of Manifest Destiny
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The work The best land under heaven : the Donner Party in the age of Manifest Destiny represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Chemeketa Cooperative Regional Library Service (CCRLS). This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.This resource has been enriched with EBSCO NoveList data.
The Resource
The best land under heaven : the Donner Party in the age of Manifest Destiny
Resource Information
The work The best land under heaven : the Donner Party in the age of Manifest Destiny represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Chemeketa Cooperative Regional Library Service (CCRLS). This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.
This resource has been enriched with EBSCO NoveList data.
- Label
- The best land under heaven : the Donner Party in the age of Manifest Destiny
- Title remainder
- the Donner Party in the age of Manifest Destiny
- Statement of responsibility
- Michael Wallis
- Title variation
- Donner Party in the age of Manifest Destiny
- Subject
-
- California
- trueDonner Party
- Donner Party
- Frontier and pioneer life
- trueFrontier and pioneer life
- trueFrontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.)
- History
- History
- Overland journeys to the Pacific
- trueOverland journeys to the Pacific
- truePioneers
- Pioneers
- truePioneers -- California -- History -- 19th century
- Pioneers -- West (U.S.) -- History -- 19th century
- Sierra Nevada (Calif. and Nev.) -- History -- 19th century
- trueSurvival
- trueThe West (United States) -- Description and travel
- United States -- Sierra Nevada
- West United States
- 1800-1899
- Language
- eng
- Summary
- "'Westward ho! For Oregon and California!' In the eerily warm spring of 1846, George Donner placed this advertisement in a local newspaper as he and a restless caravan prepared for what they hoped would be the most rewarding journey of a lifetime. But in eagerly pursuing what would a century later become known as the "American dream," this optimistic-yet-motley crew of emigrants was met with a chilling nightmare; in the following months, their jingoistic excitement would be replaced by desperate cries for help that would fall silent in the deadly snow-covered mountains of the Sierra Nevada. We know these early pioneers as the Donner Party, a name that has elicited horror since the late 1840s. Now, historian Michael Wallis continues his life's work of parsing fact from fiction to tell the true story of one of the most embroidered sagas in Western history. Wallis begins the story in 1846, a momentous "year of decision" for the nation, when incredible territorial strides were being made in Texas, New Mexico, and California. Against this dramatic backdrop, an unlikely band of travelers appeared, stratified in age, wealth, education and ethnicity. At the forefront were the Donners: brothers George and Jacob, true sons of the soil determined to tame the wild land of California; and the Reeds, headed by adventurous, business-savvy patriarch James. In total, the Donner-Reed group would reach eighty-seven men, women, and children, and though personal motives varied--bachelors thirsting for adventure, parents wanting greater futures for their children--everyone was linked by the same unwavering belief that California was theirs for the taking. Skeptical of previous accounts of how the group ended up in peril, Wallis has spent years retracing its ill-fated journey, uncovering hundreds of new documents that illuminate how a combination of greed, backbiting, and recklessness led the group to become hopelessly snowbound at the infamous Donner Pass in present-day California. Climaxing with the grim stories of how the party's paltry rations soon gave way to unimaginable hunger, Wallis not only details the cannibalism that has in perpetuity haunted their legacy but also the heroic rescue parties that managed to reach the stranded, only to discover that just forty-eight had survived the ordeal. An unflinching and historically invaluable account of the darkest side of Manifest Destiny, The Best Land Under Heaven offers a brilliant, revisionist examination of one of America's most calamitous and sensationalized catastrophes."--Publisher's description
- Biography type
- contains biographical information
- Cataloging source
- DLC
- Dewey number
- 978/.02
- Illustrations
-
- illustrations
- maps
- plates
- Index
- index present
- LC call number
- F868.N5
- LC item number
- W36 2017
- Literary form
- non fiction
- Nature of contents
- bibliography
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<div class="citation" vocab="http://schema.org/"><i class="fa fa-external-link-square fa-fw"></i> Data from <span resource="http://link.ccrls.org/resource/3pwbcalNeYE/" typeof="CreativeWork http://bibfra.me/vocab/lite/Work"><span property="name http://bibfra.me/vocab/lite/label"><a href="http://link.ccrls.org/resource/3pwbcalNeYE/">The best land under heaven : the Donner Party in the age of Manifest Destiny</a></span> - <span property="potentialAction" typeOf="OrganizeAction"><span property="agent" typeof="LibrarySystem http://library.link/vocab/LibrarySystem" resource="http://link.ccrls.org/"><span property="name http://bibfra.me/vocab/lite/label"><a property="url" href="http://link.ccrls.org/">Chemeketa Cooperative Regional Library Service (CCRLS)</a></span></span></span></span></div>
