Daniel Boone: Young Hunter and Tracker (Childhood of Famous Americans)
Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
  • Good Story
Daniel Boone: Young Hunter and Tracker (Childhood of Famous Americans)
Augusta Stevenson
Manufacturer: Aladdin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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  1. Davy Crockett: Young Rifleman (Childhood of Famous Americans Series.) Davy Crockett: Young Rifleman (Childhood of Famous Americans Series.)
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ASIN: 0020418302

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars Good Story.......2005-08-28

I learned a lot about indians and life in early america. I liked learing the facts and what really happened. It was really exciting. I think 8 and up should read this book. (...).
Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer (An Owl Book)
Average customer rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • A true woodsman
  • Well Detailed Book on the Great Backwoodsman
  • Very informative and enjoyable
  • Who was Daniel Boone?
  • One of the Great Biographies of Boone the Kentuckian
Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer (An Owl Book)
John Mack Faragher
Manufacturer: Owl Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0805030077

Amazon.com

The legend of the American frontier is largely the legend of a single individual, Daniel Boone, who looms over our folklore like a giant. Boone figures in other traditions as well: Goethe held him up as the model of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "natural man," and Lord Byron devoted several stanzas of his epic poem Don Juan to the frontiersman, calling Boone "happiest of mortals any where." But folklore is not history, and we are fortunate to have a reliable and factual life of Boone through the considerable efforts of John Mack Faragher. The contradictory admirer of Indians who participated in their destruction, the slaveholder who cherished liberty, the devoted family man who prized solitude and would disappear into the woods for years at a time--the real Boone is far more interesting than the mythical image, and in this book we finally catch sight of him.

Book Description

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History for 1993In the first and most reliable biography of Daniel Boone in more than fifty years, award-winning historian Faragher brilliantly portrays America's famous frontier hero. Drawing from popular narrative, the public record, scraps of documentation from Boone's own hand, and a treasure of reminiscence gathered by nineteenth-century antiquarians, Faragher uses the methods of new social history to create a portrait of the man and the times he helped shape. Blending themes from a much vitalized Western and frontier history with the words and ideas of ordinary people, Faragher has produced a book that will stand as the definitive life of Daniel Boone for decades to come, and one that illuminates the frontier world of Boone like no other.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars A true woodsman.......2007-08-13

This book provided very detailed information regarding Daniel Boone and his relatives. He's a legend worth learning about. You'll be able to separate the myths about him from the truth, according to the best available data.
Be ready for a long read.


5 out of 5 stars Well Detailed Book on the Great Backwoodsman.......2006-10-11

Well written and detailed book on America's back woodsman who seemed a precursor to the Mountain Man. Hailing from Pennsylvania, the author tracks Boone's introduction and love of hunting from his early years through his family's move to North carolina to Kentucky finishing his mature years in Missouri due to his constant thirst for better hunting and less people. Fascinating account of Boone's unique relationship with the Indians and cool head. His ability to sustain himself like a native and stay in the wilds alone or with small bands. The author not only does well detailing how Boone led parties into Kentucky and creating settlements but also verifies several exploits such as his saving the lives of his daughter and her friend who were kidnapped by Indians by using his knowledge of the geography of the land and the trails that the Indians used.

The author also details well Boone's controversial surrendering of his men to the Indians in exchange for sparing families at Boonesboro that is still somewhat puzzling as many thought him a traitor. Also a bit of a paradox is Boone's love of the hunt, staying away from home sometimes for a year or more while fathering 8 to 10 kids with Rebecca. Also interesting is his relationship with Rebecca who endured his long hunts and disappearances and may have had a child not Boone's that he accepted as the the consequences of his absence. Well worth reading, even covers Boone's warts particularly as a land surveyor, that obviously was not his skill. And unlike Fess Parker and the legend, he never wore a cookskin cap. But the author makes the facts as fascinating as the legend as Boone was in fact a fearless and independent man of the wilderness.

5 out of 5 stars Very informative and enjoyable.......2006-02-22

This is a terrific book on Boone, someone who was almost more of a legend and a myth to me than a real man. This book gives an absorbing and detailed account of his life. I didn't even know so much was actually known about Boone, but Boone was a man of great personal character and courage whose exploits were documented in many letters about him and in his diary. Also, the women get detailed treatment too, so you learn about their contributions on the frontier, too.

The American Revolution to the east mostly passed Boone by, but he was fighting another revolution and battle on the frontiers against the Indians. Some of the tribes I hadn't even heard of, such as the Westo, and I've read at least a little of Amerindian ethnology and history so I know the basics. Many of the battles and fights against the Indians are discussed in detail, which makes for fascinating reading as you see how tough and tactically sophisticated the Indians were in forest fighting engagements, which the settlers realized they had to adopt too or be wiped out.

Oddly enough, Boone was not always lionized as a frontier hero, there are cartoons of him lampooning his sometimes reclusive, loner ways, and his insatiable need for "elbow room," for which he sometimes left his family for weeks on end to go on long hunts and to explore the vast interior frontier. Sometimes the book goes fast, sometimes a little slow, as a read, but overall a very interesting book on this early American great and his adventures and trials and tribulations.

5 out of 5 stars Who was Daniel Boone? .......2006-01-16

John Mack Faragher believes that he was an American so steeped in legend and myth that while his name is known to all he is completely misunderstood. Faragher seeks to draw a portrait of Boone the man, minus the legend and myth, and his work is a wonderful reassessment of this iconic American hero. What we learn is that Boone was fine frontiersman who enjoyed the forests and the natural environment of Kentucky. He had a genuine affinity with the Shawnee Indians, with whom he had much in common but fought repeatedly and eventually helped to vanquish from the region. Boone was at his best when he was able to demonstrate a natural courage in the face of adversity, whether it be in fighting the Shawnee or in confronting other enemies. He had ambitions as a land speculator and entrepreneur but never made it work. He made and lost several fortunes in his lifetime.

The Daniel Boone of this biography is neither the intrepid loner of legend nor the larger than life frontiersman. He was essentially a family man who tried to ensure his place in the economy of Revolutionary America, going to the frontier to do so, and securing an inheritance for his children. Even-tempered and intelligent, if not well-educated, Boone was a man out for the "main chance." In dangerous times he rose to the occasion, as in the siege of Boonesborough in 1778, his captivity by the Shawnee for several months, and the rescue of his daughter Jemima and Betsy and Fanny Calloway from Indians when they were abducted.

Faragher does a fine job in separating the fact from the fiction of Boone's life, and this is an elegant and entertaining as well as illuminating book. If you have any interest whatsoever in the life of Daniel Boone this is the book to start with in learning about his remarkable life on the American frontier.

5 out of 5 stars One of the Great Biographies of Boone the Kentuckian.......2005-08-16

This is an excellent book in many ways. I would recommend it as a companion to the works of Draper, Bakeless, and of course his own "autobiographical" article in Filson, and the interviews with his son by Draper ("My Father, Daniel Boone: The Draper Interviews With Nathan Boone").


My particular interest in Daniel Boone is his association with Big Bone Lick, and his early visits there and I have written on this subject. Anyone seriously interested in early Kentucky history should read this book.
My Father, Daniel Boone: The Draper Interviews With Nathan Boone
Average customer rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • Nathan and Olive Discuss Father Daniel Boone
  • Boone, From Myth to Reality
My Father, Daniel Boone: The Draper Interviews With Nathan Boone
Nathan Boone , Olive Van Bibber Boone , and Lyman Copeland Draper
Manufacturer: University Press of Kentucky
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0813121035

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars Nathan and Olive Discuss Father Daniel Boone.......2003-06-24

Nathan Boone and his wife, Olive van Bibber Boone, had the kind of memories most people wish for. They remembered virtually all of the early history of Commonwealth of Kentucky. When Lyman Draper came to visit them for two months in 1851 he found them full of the most interesting and detailed memories of Daniel Boone. Not only had the elder Boone lived with them and shared his own memories, they had also lived through many of the incidents themselves, and knew many of the old pioneers -- old van Bibber was one of the earliest settlers in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Enjoyable, highly readable. I highly recommend this book.

4 out of 5 stars Boone, From Myth to Reality.......2000-09-06

The Draper Interviews provide insight into the life of Boone, free of the myth and larger than life stereotype that has always surrounded this remarkable frontiersman. Nathan Boone's recollections of his father also gives us a glimpse of how Daniel himself viewed the world in which he lived and allows us to more clearly understand the man from which the legend sprung. Though many books written from similiar interviews are dull and rather boring, the Draper Interviews are arranged so that they make for rather stimulating reading and keep the reader eagerly in longing for the next chapter. Truly a "must read" for anyone interested in Daniel Boone or early Kentucky history.
How the West Was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky From Daniel Boone to Henry Clay
Average customer rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
  • Single best book on early Kentucky
  • The Forgotten Kentuckies
  • Two views of Kentucky
How the West Was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky From Daniel Boone to Henry Clay
Stephen Aron
Manufacturer: The Johns Hopkins University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 080185296X

Book Description

"A first-rate piece of work and a fine read." -- Alan Taylor, University of California, Davis

"This excellent history of early Kentucky resonates with the most important questions in the history of the early republic, frontier, and economic development. One of the book's great strengths is its 'genre-busting' quality, taking up ethnohistory and settlement history in the same narrative." -- John Mack Faragher, Yale University

Eighteenth-century Kentucky was a place where Indian and European cultures collided -- and, surprisingly, coincided. But this mixed world did not last, and it eventually gave way to nineteenth-century commercial and industrial development. How the West Was Lost tracks the overlapping conquest, colonization, and consolidation of the trans-Appalachian frontier. Not a story of paradise lost, this is a book about possibilities lost. It focuses on the common ground between Indians and backcountry settlers which was not found, the frontier customs that were not perpetuated, the lands that were not distributed equally, the slaves who were not emancipated, the agrarian democracy that was not achieved, and the millennium that did not arrive. Seeking to explain why these dreams were not realized, Stephen Aron shows us what did happen during Kentucky's tumultuous passage from Daniel Boone's world to Henry Clay's.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars Single best book on early Kentucky.......2006-01-29

Stephen Aron's "How the West Was Lost" is the standard work on Kentucky in the frontier and early-statehood eras. He provides cultural, social, political, and economic aspects of the settlement of the state and its transformation from a "good poor man's country" to the slave-holding, aristocratic-led state of Henry Clay in the early nineteenth century. "How the West Was Lost" combines sound analysis and comprehensive research to create a work that will influence scholars for years to come and that provides a road map for future researchers interested in almost any topic in that era of Kentucky history. Complementing the amazing amount of information on early Kentucky, Johns Hopkins Press allowed Aron to include fifty pages of footnotes, which address the historiography and identify key works in addition to providing citations for sources quoted.
Aron is one of the best scholars of western/frontier history currently in the field. He presents an even-handed view of America's westward expansion that lies somewhere between Frederick Jackson Turner's triumphalism and the New Western History's demonizing of white settlement.

3 out of 5 stars The Forgotten Kentuckies.......2003-09-10

This was assigned reading in my Kentucky History class. It covers the founding and settlement of Kentucky. What makes the book is the brief glimpses it gives of the Forgotten Kentuckies:

-- Free Kentucky. When the land was a giant game reserve for Native Americans, full of trees and animals, but devoid of people. Where the buffalo literally roamed until white hunters brought about their extinction in just a matter of a few years.
-- Pioneer Kentucky. When small families lived in the middle of nowhere, battling Mother Nature and Indians. A world where some Native American tribes tried to assimilate captured white settlers, and some missionaries tried to lead converted Indians.
-- Chaotic Kentucky. When the lawyers and land speculators showed up, driving free-thinking spirits such as Daniel Boone away.
-- the Bluegrass Era of Henry Clay. When wild Kentucky transformed into a mini version of the Old Dominion with its slavery and aristocratic living.
-- Outlaw Kentucky. When the Green River and other parts of the state tried and failed to rebel against the establishment.
-- The Great Revival. When evengelical religious fervor swept the state, bringing the Shakers among others.

All in all, there's a little something here for everybody. It can be read on many levels. As an account of early Kentucky, a look at the worlds of Daniel Boone and Henry Clay, a case study on frontier expansion, or for just pure enjoyment.

3 out of 5 stars Two views of Kentucky.......2000-03-26

Stephen Aron's book depicts the two conflicting ideals of how Kentucky is to go down into history by pioneer Daniel Boone and then, the powerful Henry Clay. A very good book answering all the questions of historical Trans-Appalacha. I feel as if Aron could have shortened the book and still be able to get the point across of the two opposing sides.
A Companion for Owls: Being the Commonplace Book of D. Boone, Long Hunter, Back Woodsman, & c.
Average customer rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
  • On the whole, the world is level
  • black powder reading.
  • Creative Premise, Uneven Results.
  • Don't be ridiculous--its good.
  • Fictional I know, but almost totally inaccurate - Save your money
A Companion for Owls: Being the Commonplace Book of D. Boone, Long Hunter, Back Woodsman, & c.
Maurice Manning
Manufacturer: Harcourt
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0151010498

Book Description

This collection of highly original narrative poems is written in the voice of frontiersman Daniel Boone and captures all the beauty and struggle of nascent America. We follow the progression of Daniel Boone's life, a life led in war and in the wilderness, and see the birth of a new nation. We track the bountiful animals and the great, undisturbed rivers. We stand beside Boone as he buries his brother, then his wife, and finds comfort in his friendship with a slave named Derry.
Praised for his originality, Maurice Manning is an exciting new voice in American poetry.

The darkest place I've ever been
did not require a name. It seemed
to be a gathering place for the lint
of the world. The bottom of a hollow
beneath two ridges, sunk like a stone.
The water was surely old, the dregs
of some ancient sea, but purified
by time, like a man made better by
his years, his old hurts absorbed into
his soul, his losses like a spring
in his breast.
-from "Born Again"

Customer Reviews:

4 out of 5 stars On the whole, the world is level.......2007-10-10

This is a remarkably fun book.. a must for Kentuckians! Manning seems to be channeling D Boon, and the result is some remarkable poems as well as insights and speculations. In "The Sum Result of Speculation" is Boone's account of his land surveying ""Marking off thousand-acre parcels is a lot of paces, a lot of steps to count in your head ... I'm sad to say, walking this country for money only brought be loss; but I never once got lost.". In Sleeping in the Wilderness ... "No matter how well you dress the hide / a buffalo rug will always smell like buffalo".

From this frontier are thoughts of Boone presented about the Corp of Discoveries, Audubon, Jefferson, and 10 things he would say to Colonel Richard Henderson ("Henderson, you cur, I'll wipe that smirk right off your face.". ). The final section on "Illustrations, Inventories, and Maps" shows that Manning is also a imaginative illustrator, the "ring of sadness" around an Image of Boone's foot (which is also the shape of Kentucky).

Be sure to read the notes associated with each poem in the back. These not only present interesting facts, but some of Manning's own thoughts. Finally is an essay tracing English Romanticism through Wordsworth to D Boon .. Bear killer.

5 out of 5 stars black powder reading........2007-06-12

i am not a reader of poetry ...in general.... i stumbled across this at my local library and love it... i bought 4 copies from amazon and my friends are getting one.. gives you just a hint of the mind set of early frontier free thinking men (women)....

3 out of 5 stars Creative Premise, Uneven Results. .......2006-01-03

I wanted to enjoy Maurice Manning's second book more than I actually did. While the premise of a series of poems based on Daniel Boone's life is fascinating, the poems themselves start to break down, about mid way through the book until they seem overly focused on delivering information as if Manning simply wanted to include more of the research and especially the letters section are just that, letters. It's less important, at least to me to stick to the historical facts alone, though historical figures can often be more interesting than any purely fictional characters. Anyway, the last few poems almost make up for the letters as the poems return back to actual poems. Read this collection for the first and last section of poems.

4 out of 5 stars Don't be ridiculous--its good........2005-12-08

First of all, I don't think the intention was ever to be historical, so anyone expecting that will be sorely disappointed. It is a book of poetry that deals with human interactions with nature, etc. I wish I had time to be more thurough in this discription! Read it, though, even if you are just checking it out from the Library.

2 out of 5 stars Fictional I know, but almost totally inaccurate - Save your money.......2005-10-04

I was disappointed with this book because although, I knew in advance that it is fictional poetry, most if the information it communicates about Daniel Boone is just completely inaccurate falsehoods. As a Boone descendant and historian, it was a disappointing read. The author appears to have written many things based solely on rumor without even doing any verifiable research. Otherwise he would not have written a lot of the stuff he wrote - good example; "D. Boone Kilt Bar on This Tree, 1760." Things he says about Boone and his faithful wife in that "poem" are untruths and writings such as this only perpetuate false rumors. I would love a book of poetry about Boone - this is not one. It is a book about some fictional character that bears very little if any resemblance to Daniel Boone the real person. The author of A Companion for Owls does not know Daniel Boone.
Daniel Boone: An American Life
Average customer rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • A Detailed Portrait of the Woodsman in the Wilderness
  • Daniel Boone
Daniel Boone: An American Life
Michael A. Lofaro
Manufacturer: University Press of Kentucky
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0813122783

Book Description

The embodiment of the American hero, the man of action, the pathfinder, Daniel Boone represents the great adventure of his age—the westward movement of the American people. The prototype for the frontiersman, he is an intriguing and multifaceted individual who both shapes and is driven by the complex forces of this dynamic period in history.

Daniel Boone: An American Life brings together over thirty years of research in an extraordinary biography of the quintessential pioneer. Based on primary sources, the book depicts Boone through the eyes of those who knew him and within the historical contexts of his eighty-six years. The story of Daniel Boone offers new insights into the turbulent birth and growth of the nation and demonstrates why the frontier forms such a significant part of the American experience.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars A Detailed Portrait of the Woodsman in the Wilderness.......2004-02-15

I blame television. When reading _Daniel Boone: An American Life_ (University Press of Kentucky) by Michael A. Lofaro, I realized that I didn't know anything about Daniel Boone. I thought he wore a coonskin cap and was a contemporary of Davy Crockett, and maybe fought at the Alamo. I discovered at the end of the book that Lofaro blames television, too. Boone's fame to my generation comes from "...Fess Parker playing the lead in _Daniel Boone_, a historical disaster for baby-boomers who still confuse Boone with Crockett" because Parker sequentially played one then the other in the mid-fifties. Lofaro had insight on my own ignorance, and his book is shot through with impressive scholarship that takes Boone, as much as possible, from myth and tall tales (and television-inspired error) and puts him into realistic historical perspective. There is plenty here that is inspiring, and fit for legend-making, and also plenty to show that Daniel Boone had essential trouble in managing to get along with society. And also (_pace_ Davy Crockett), Boone hated coonskin caps.

He was born in Pennsylvania in 1734, to devout Quakers. His rudimentary schooling shows up in many excerpts from his writings here; for instance, it seems to be true that on an East Tennessee tree he carved the inscription "D. Boon cilled a Bar on tree in the year 1760." Boone did indeed become an accomplished woodsman and hunter, and was always less fit for the life of frontier farming. He had a pattern of reaching out to new lands; he had a wanderlust, to be sure, and encroaching civilization always meant that he had to move to new frontiers to hunt game, but he was always eager to apply the simple solution of moving away when having people live around him was just too complicated. He would be on the move all his life. He fought for the British (along with Washington) in the French and Indian War, and then against the British in the western version of the American Revolution, which consisted mostly of fighting Indians. He had prodigious skill in the outdoors, and there are many stories here of heroism and craftiness. Although he could always win battles against Indians, he could not win against lawyers, and was often in court because of disputed boundaries he had surveyed. He was guileless and always assumed that treating someone honestly would get him honest treatment in return, an assumption that he never seemed to learn was unwarranted.

Boone was amazed that he became famous. There was a bogus autobiography printed in 1784, that was translated into German and French, and made Boone internationally known. He was painted by the young John James Audubon. James Fennimore Cooper based much of Natty Bumppo on him, and in a note to one of the Leatherstocking Tales said that Boone headed out from Kentucky to Missouri in later life "because he found a population of ten to the square mile inconveniently crowded." Tales of Boone's dry wit became staples. He did indeed, when asked if he had ever gotten lost in the wilderness, reply, "No, I can't say as ever I was lost, but I was bewildered once for three days." He blazed trails, most notably through the Cumberland Gap, and then was dismayed that they became widened for wagon travel and further encroachment by civilization. Ending up in Missouri, he spent his last years hunting buffalo and trapping beaver. He died at 85, as the nation was pushing further west and the wilds were more speedily declining. Lofaro's informative biography puts the brilliant pioneer and naïve citizen at the center of a complicated and longstanding war between settlers and Indians.

4 out of 5 stars Daniel Boone.......2003-11-27

This book tells how Dniel showed honesty and cofidince. Everything about Daniel Boone is in this book. If you have a report due on a leader this is want you want. I prefer this book to anyone.
A Sketch of the Life and Character of Daniel Boone
Average customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars
  • An Elegent Gem!--Kentucky Reader
  • Rare piece of Americana!--Western Writers of America
  • New first-hand light on Boone!
A Sketch of the Life and Character of Daniel Boone
Peter Houston
Manufacturer: Stackpole Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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  1. My Father, Daniel Boone: The Draper Interviews With Nathan Boone My Father, Daniel Boone: The Draper Interviews With Nathan Boone
  2. Daniel Boone: His Own Story Daniel Boone: His Own Story
  3. Daniel Boone: Master of the Wilderness Daniel Boone: Master of the Wilderness
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  5. The Life of Daniel Boone The Life of Daniel Boone

ASIN: 0811715221

Customer Reviews:

4 out of 5 stars An Elegent Gem!--Kentucky Reader.......1998-12-05

Houston's Boone is a diminutive book but one brimming with contemporary insights plus editor's annotations into frontier life featuring new stuff on Boone, hide tanning, buffalo, Indians, and early hunter anecdotes. An elegent little book with a gorgeous jacket, a highly collectable bit of old-time Kentuckiana.

4 out of 5 stars Rare piece of Americana!--Western Writers of America.......1998-12-04

Murray State University (Kentucky) history professor Ted Franklin Belue discovered the only known copy of Peter Houston's manuscript about his personal recollections of the famous frontiersman, Daniel Boone, in the Lyman C. Draper papers at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin in 1990. Written in the 1840s by a friend and neighbor of Boone's, the original manuscript was stolen from the author's grandson in 1887, but luckily for future historians, the grandson had, mere weeks before the theft, mailed a copy of the lengthy work to the prolific historian, Lyman Draper. Belue has done a masterful job in presenting this rare piece of Americana to the reading public. Replete with extensive annotations and notes, a pictorial section, and an impressive bibliography, the book goes a long way in shedding light on everyday times on America's first western frontier during the 1770s and 1780s. For those of WWA's membership who believe, as I do, that "western" writing is defined as that which encompasses the entire American frontier experience, from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific shores, this book will provide several hours of interesting reading, indeed.--Jim Crutchfield, Managing Editor, Roundup Magazine April 1998, Western Writers of America

4 out of 5 stars New first-hand light on Boone!.......1998-12-03

Long ago Peter Houston's A Sketch in the Life and Character of Daniel Boone should have been properly annotated and published. Ted Franklin Belue has done historians a genuinely useful service in transcribing into a readily available and readable form this insightful contemporary view of Daniel Boone and the times. This is an addition to the Daniel Boone-Frontier America story, casting a new first-hand and contemporary light on the subject. Dr. Thomas D. Clark, Historian Laureate of Kentucky, professor emeritus of the University of Kentucky, and author of many books on Kentucky and the American South.
Daniel Boone: Master of the Wilderness
Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
  • one of the best!
  • A narrative history of Daniel Boone
Daniel Boone: Master of the Wilderness
John Bakeless
Manufacturer: University of Nebraska Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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  1. A Sketch of the Life and Character of Daniel Boone A Sketch of the Life and Character of Daniel Boone
  2. The Life of Daniel Boone The Life of Daniel Boone

ASIN: 0803260903

Book Description



In his introduction to this edition of Daniel Boone: Master of the Wilderness, Michael A. Lofaro, a professor of English at the University of Tennessee and the author of The Life and Adventures of Daniel Boone, assesses John Bakeless's achievement: "After fifty years his is still the standard by which all other biographies of the frontiersman are judged."

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars one of the best!.......2006-05-14

This is one of the great biographies. It remains interesting and entertaining - and scholarly! - from first to last. It is one of those excellent reads that takes you back 200 years so that you can feel the autumn leaves under your feet as you slip silently through the great forests. If only the majority of biographies could be as well-written, well-researched and well-paced as this one. One of the best biographies of anyone that I have had the pleasure of reading. Highly recommended, even in the light of recent biographies of Boone.

5 out of 5 stars A narrative history of Daniel Boone.......2005-12-17


John Bakeless's biography of Daniel Boone was published in 1939. Except for a brief study by Reuben Gold Thwaites published in 1902, it was the first biography of Boone that was historically significant; many at the time called it definitive. Later biographies of Boone have been published (most importantly John Faragher's LIFE AND LEGEND OF AN AMERICAN PIONEER in 1992), but Bakeless's book is still relevant if no longer definitive.

Daniel Boone, the icon of the American pioneer, was born in Pennsylvania (a museum marks the spot of the original cabin in which he was born in Birdsboro) in 1734. Driven by land speculation and problems with the Quaker church, the Boone family moved to the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina. Here Daniel attended "the College of the Wilderness," learning all there is to know about hunting and shooting and surviving in the wilds (he had very little formal education and could write barely anything more than his name).

After a hunting trip to Florida, Boone in 1769 went on what turned out to be a two-year exploring/hunting excursion to Kentucky via the Cumberland Gap. A few years later, remembering the Gap, he began laying the Wilderness Road through it and settled what became known as Fortress Boonesboro. Conflicts with the Indians were frequent and in 1778 he was captured by the Shawnees, with whom he was a prisoner for three months. He escaped, however, and was back in Boonesboro in time to help defend it from the British and Indians.

Land troubles and ever the wanderlust compelled Boone to move from Kentucky with his family to Missouri, near La Charette. Here he farmed and dealt with the Indians and probably thought it too was becoming too tame and "crowded," but before he could move further west, he died in 1820.

Bakeless is an old-fashioned narrative historian who paints a large, colorful portrait of his subject and the world he inhabited. He is interested in the STORY of Boone's life and relates events in a narrative context. He doesn't neglect facts (indeed, many later Boone biographers have found little reason to alter his chronology or factual details), but stays away from political, psychological, and sociological analyses. He debunks legends where he can. Bakeless takes his subject seriously and relates his life in an interesting way. Still a joy to read.
Life of Daniel Boone, the great western hunter and pioneer, comprising an account of his early history, his daring and remarkable career as the first settler ... his autobiography complete as dictated by
Average customer rating: Not rated
    Life of Daniel Boone, the great western hunter and pioneer, comprising an account of his early history, his daring and remarkable career as the first settler ... his autobiography complete as dictated by
    Michigan Historical Reprint Series
    Manufacturer: Scholarly Publishing Office, University of Michigan Library
    ProductGroup: Book
    Binding: Paperback

    GeneralGeneral | United States | Americas | History | Subjects | Books
    United StatesUnited States | History | Historical Reproductions | Formats | Books
    ASIN: 1425537618
    Release Date: 2005-12-20

    Product Description

    This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's preservation reformatting program.
    Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road (Chambers, Catherine E. Adventures in Frontier America.)
    Average customer rating: Not rated
      Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road (Chambers, Catherine E. Adventures in Frontier America.)
      Catherine E. Chambers
      Manufacturer: Troll Communications
      ProductGroup: Book
      Binding: Paperback

      GeneralGeneral | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
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      ASIN: 0816700389

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