Boone: A Biography | Robert Morgan | A wonderful treatment of a great subject

Boone: A Biography | Robert Morgan | A Huge Life, a Huge Myth

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Boone: A Biography

	Boone: A Biography Robert Morgan A Shannon Ravenel Book, 2007 - 538 pages average customer review:based on 26 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A wonderful treatment of a great subject

At 538 pages Boone: A Biography is a terrific read. Robert Morgan, better known for his insightful and sensitive novels proves that he can turn his masterful storytelling ability to the nonfiction realm as well.

Boone: A Biography isn't easy to put down. If I called Boone a page turner it would be as much a statement about the life of the subject as it would be about Robert Morgans writing ability. Lets face it, Daniel Boone lived a life full of risk taking. He pushed the boundaries of the civilized world back and in doing so lived on the edge.

Born with a wondering spirit, Daniel showed his love of the woods around his Pennsylvania home at a very early age. Disappearing for long stretches at a time he explored, observed, and learned the ways of nature. He learned the ways of wild things, a gift that would later save his life many times.

One of the things a good biography does is tell the back story....the times the main character lived in. Morgan does a terrific job in letting us see Daniel Boone and the culture he came from. It was a rough time. The people on the frontier were beat up by life in general. Only the strong survived; the weak didn't make it. Cruel yes, but the country was better off for this reality. When James, Boone's son was tortured and killed by Indians, Daniel accepted the loss and then moved on. We of the twentyfirst century have a hard time dealing with that type of stoicism.

Wonderfully written, well researched, filled with copius notes, Boone: A Biography should be a sure read on your short list. Robert Morgan also includes wonderful pieces of trivia/folk lore. For example, where the term "buck" for a dollar came from.

Peace

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A Huge Life, a Huge Myth

Because he lived during the time before and after the American Revolution, the life of Daniel Boone encompasses one of the most important of historical periods. The story of Boone is the story of America, argues Robert Morgan, who is usually a poet and novelist, but has written a stirring biography of the frontiersman, _Boone: A Biography_ (Algonquin Books). There have been plenty of other biographies, starting while Boone was still alive, and all of them have either mythologized the subject or have had to attempt to clear the myths away from fact. The latter is not an easy task; for someone who was enormously famous and influential during his lifetime, there are surprising voids that we can know little about, apart from all the exaggerations and stories that have clung to the pioneer. Morgan has tried to make a chronological story, and it is a good one indeed, but it is not clouded by any undue admiration on the part of the author. Boone was a outdoors hero, but he was distinctly flawed when it came to the responsibilities of business dealings or legal documentation which he could not avoid. In fact, admired as he was during the time, Boone was during his life "accused of treason, fraud, and hypocrisy and was once court-martialed... He was blamed for dishonest and incompetent land surveying, and sued again and again for debt." Morgan shows eventually that Boone was not dishonest or incompetent, but merely careless. He only wanted to get more "elbow room" and get into the woods where he was supremely careful and capable, but one of the great paradoxes of his life was that he was drawn to people and they to him.

The demythologizing starts with the very first sentence of the book: "Forget the coonskin cap; he never wore one. Daniel Boone thought coonskin caps uncouth, heavy, and uncomfortable." Boone also would have been dismayed with his reputation as an Indian fighter. He admired the outdoor skills of the Indians, and he frankly sought friendly relationships with the Indians, an astonishing magnanimity since they repeatedly robbed him and killed members of his family. Boone's great problem was that though he loved being one against the wilderness (he often went out on long hunts by himself), he was a social being. Not only did his large family follow him in his westward advance through North Carolina, Kentucky, and Missouri, but so did other settlers, some deliberately following him and some just taking part in the general move west. He had enough of an ecological awareness to realize that the forces that drove the Indians away also drove away the deer, mink, beavers, and otter upon which he made his living as a woodsman, necessitating the next push westward. He also came to be aware at the end of his life that his way of living on the wilderness caused the very destruction of the wilderness he loved. On a more prosaic level, Boone had to take up shopkeeping or trade, and he became a surveyor. He was as good a surveyor as most surveyors around him, but the challenges of laying out tracts of land for sale within the wilderness called for more exact tools, and more exact documentation, than he was able to put to use. The unpleasantness of lawsuits over his surveys was bitter, and he had constant bad luck in taking political sides with those who claimed property in which he was to have a share but whose claims turned out to be invalid.

Remembering Boone for his life as a businessman would simply be silly; remembering that he was a genius in the woods, and a loving and fondly-remembered family man, but unlucky and unskillful in his financial affairs, makes Morgan's account well-rounded and believable. The legends, though, have to be confronted, and Morgan takes them from the first published stories about Boone's life all the way up to the influence of that life on Cooper, Whitman, and Thoreau. Boone's place in literature took off when schoolteacher John Filson came west to write about Kentucky and make his fortune from the book and from more settlers coming to the region. In 1784 he published _The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke_, and included a chapter "The Adventures of Col. Daniel Boon." Boone had cooperated with the book, and the chapter is in his voice. He comes across as a well-read, resilient model of a republican citizen, just the image his fellow citizens liked at the time. Boone also had an endearing dry humor and modesty that people loved. He really did say, when asked if he were ever lost in the wilderness, "No, I can't say I was ever lost, but I was _bewildered_ once for three days." Confronted with a tall tale of his hunting capability, he exclaimed, "I would not believe that tale if I told it myself." The figure of the hero, Morgan remembers, "is mostly a name to which the deeds and exploits, qualities of character, can be attached." The tales as best they can be confirmed are in this beautifully written account of a life that was important for itself as well as for the legends that grew from it.

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History that reads like fine fiction.

When a strong and evocative novelist like Robert Morgan (GAP CREEK) writes about a near-legendary figure from American history like Daniel Boone, the result can only be extraordinary. So it is with this book. Morgan's research is impeccable and his presentation will delight even those of us who have shied away from history and biography because of its traditional aridity and overly "scholarly" (in the absolute most horrific sense of the word) tenor and style. In many ways, the book reads like a novel, but one of the most welcome aspects is the frequent referencing to Boone's earlier biographers. The author pointedly and with spot-on accuracy (not unlike Boone's own marksmanship) portrays his subject as not only the huge figure of American expansionism and frontier heroics, but also as an inspiration, if not the progenitor of romanticism, admired by the likes of Wordsworth, Byron, Bartram, and Whitman. Readers who enjoy the historical work of David McCullough or Steven Ambrose or Nathaniel Philbrick or the fiction of William Martin, Allan Eckert, or James Fenimore Cooper, will find a lot to like here as well. A great reading experience.

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American History At It's Best

Extremely well written and researched life of Daniel Boone. Interested in America's early history than this is it! Facts brought to life of not only Boone but our settling beyond the Appalachians.

Boone, by Robert Morgan

Robert Morgan has written a great history lesson on Daniel Boone and the time period in which he lived. This is the best book I have read in many years and look forward to reading his next book whether fiction or non-fiction.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, page 5, 6

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