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the Best Land Under Heaven: Donner Party Age of Manifest Destiny
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Barnes and Noble
the Best Land Under Heaven: Donner Party Age of Manifest Destiny
Current price: $18.99
Barnes and Noble
the Best Land Under Heaven: Donner Party Age of Manifest Destiny
Current price: $18.99
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Size: Paperback
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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. With
, Wallis has penned what critics agree is “destined to become the standard account” (
) of the notorious saga. Cutting through 160 years of myth-making, the “expert storyteller” (
) compellingly recounts how the unlikely band of early pioneers met their fate. Interweaving information from hundreds of newly uncovered documents, Wallis illuminates how a combination of greed and recklessness led to one of America’s most calamitous and sensationalized catastrophes. The result is a “fascinating, horrifying, and inspiring” (
) examination of the darkest side of Manifest Destiny.