Readers' rating:
Published in USA
Oct 2006
480 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Information
Hampton Sides's extraordinary book brings the history of the American conquest of the West to ringing life. It is a tale with many heroes and villains, but as is found in the best history, the same person might be both. At the center of it all stands the remarkable figure of Kit Carson - the legendary trapper, scout, and soldier who embodies all the contradictions and ambiguities of the American experience in the West.
Click to the right or left of the sample to turn the page.
(If no book jacket appears in a few seconds, then we don't have an excerpt of this book or your browser is unable to display it)
"Although delivering little in the way of new information, Sides
eloquently paints the landscape and history of the 19th-century Southwest." - PW.
"... an enthralling account that concentrates on the period that begins with the Mexican War and ends with the forced "roundup" of the Navajo at the Canyon de Chelly." - Booklist.
"Sides works material well-known to historians, but less so to general readers, into an unchallenging but informative narrative." - Kirkus.
The information about Blood and Thunder shown above was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's online-magazine that keeps our members abreast of notable and high-profile books publishing in the coming weeks. In most cases, the reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author of this book and feel that the reviews shown do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, please send us a message with the mainstream media reviews that you would like to see added.
Gary Oakley
Hampton Sides is the author of Ghost Soldiers and other bestselling works of narrative history. His most recent book, Hellhound On His Trail (Doubleday, April 2010), is about the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. and the international manhunt for assassin James Earl Ray.
Hampton is editor-at-large for Outside Magazine and has written for such periodicals as National Geographic, The New Yorker, Esquire, Preservation, and Men's Journal. His magazine work, collected in numerous published anthologies, has been twice nominated for National Magazine Awards for feature writing.
A native of Memphis with a BA in history from Yale, Hampton has guest lectured at Columbia, Stanford, SMU, Yale, and Colorado College, among other institutions. He lives in New Mexico with his wife Anne and their...
Darling Days
by iO Tillett Wright
The Tea Planter's Wife
by Dinah Jefferies
An utterly engrossing, compulsive page-turner set in 1920s Ceylon.
William Boyd's Sweet Caress captures an entire lifetime unforgettably within its pages. It captivates.
About the book
Blood at the Root
"A gripping, timely, and important examination of American racism."
- PW Starred Review
Visitors can view some of BookBrowse for free. Full access is for members only.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends books that we believe to be best in class. Books that will whisk you to faraway places and times, that will expand your mind and challenge you -- the kinds of books you just can't wait to tell your friends about.
Subscribe to receive some of our best reviews, "beyond the book" articles, book club info & giveaways by email.
