{"product_id":"astoria-john-jacob-astor-and-thomas-jeffersons-lost-pacific-empire-a-story-of-wealth-ambition-and-survival-isbn-9780062218292","title":"Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn the tradition of \u003cem\u003eThe Lost City of Z\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eSkeletons in the Zahara\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eAstoria\u003c\/em\u003e is the thrilling, true-adventure tale of the 1810 Astor Expedition, an epic, now forgotten, three-year journey to forge an American empire on the Pacific Coast. Peter Stark offers a harrowing saga in which a band of explorers battled nature, starvation, and madness to establish the first American settlement in the Pacific Northwest and opened up what would become the Oregon trail, permanently altering the nation's landscape and its global standing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSix years after Lewis and Clark's began their journey to the Pacific Northwest, two of the Eastern establishment's leading figures, John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson, turned their sights to founding a colony akin to Jamestown on the West Coast and transforming the nation into a Pacific trading power. Author and correspondent for \u003cem\u003eOutside\u003c\/em\u003e magazine Peter Stark recreates this pivotal moment in American history for the first time for modern readers, drawing on original source material to tell the amazing true story of the Astor Expedition.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUnfolding over the course of three years, from 1810 to 1813, \u003cem\u003eAstoria\u003c\/em\u003e is a tale of high adventure and incredible hardship in the wilderness and at sea. Of the more than one hundred-forty members of the two advance parties that reached the West Coast—one crossing the Rockies, the other rounding Cape Horn—nearly half perished by violence. Others went mad. Within one year, the expedition successfully established Fort Astoria, a trading post on the Columbia River. Though the colony would be short-lived, it opened provincial American eyes to the potential of the Western coast and its founders helped blaze the Oregon Trail.\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eIn 1810, John Jacob Astor sent out two advance parties to settle the wild, unclaimed western coast of North America. More than half of his men died violent deaths. The others survived starvation, madness, and greed to shape the destiny of a continent.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt a time when the edge of American settlement barely reached beyond the Appalachian Mountains, two visionaries, President Thomas Jefferson and millionaire John Jacob Astor, foresaw that one day the Pacific would dominate world trade as much as the Atlantic did in their day. Just two years after the Lewis and Clark expedition concluded in 1806, Jefferson and Astor turned their sights westward once again. Thus began one of history's dramatic but largely forgotten turning points in the conquest of the North American continent.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAstoria\u003c\/em\u003e is the harrowing tale of the quest to settle a Jamestown-like colony on the Pacific coast. Astor set out to establish a global trade network based at the mouth of the Columbia River in what is now Oregon, while Jefferson envisioned a separate democracy on the western coast that would spread eastward to meet the young United States.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAstor backed this ambitious enterprise with the vast for-tune he'd made in the fur trade and in New York real estate since arriving in the United States as a near-penniless immigrant soon after the Revolutionary War. He dispatched two groups of men west: one by sea around the southern tip of South America and one by land over the Rockies. The Overland Party, led by the gentlemanly American businessman Wilson Price Hunt, combined French-Canadian voyageurs, Scottish fur traders, American woodsmen, and an extraordinary Native American woman with two toddlers. The Seagoing Party, sailing aboard the ship \u003cem\u003eTonquin\u003c\/em\u003e, likewise was a volatile microcosm of contemporary North America. Under the bitter eye of Captain Jonathan Thorn, a young U.S. naval hero whose unyielding, belligerent nature was better suited to battle than to negotiating cultural differences, the \u003cem\u003eTonquin\u003c\/em\u003e made tumultuous progress toward its violent end.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUnfolding from 1810 to 1813, \u003cem\u003eAstoria\u003c\/em\u003e is a tale of high adventure and incredible hardship, drawing extensively on firsthand accounts of those who made the journey. Though the colony itself would be short-lived, its founders opened provincial American eyes to the remarkable potential of the western coast, discovered the route that became the Oregon Trail, and permanently altered the nation's landscape and global standing.\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003e“Peter Stark’s Astoria picks up where the Lewis and Clark Expedition leaves off, providing a fascinating and sometimes terrifying window into the brutal and acquisitive essence of not only America but of the human condition.  It’s also a great and ... an ennobling tale of survival.  Highly recommended.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNathaniel Philbrick, author of Bunker Hill, and In the Heart of the Sea\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A splendid account of the man and men who had the audacity, passion, and courage to dream of an American Empire. Peter Stark’s Astoria is a must read for anyone wanting to understand the power of leadership in its purest form.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eStephenie Ambrose-Tubbs, author of The Lewis and Clark Companion\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A valuable book . . .but more importantly for my perspective, it’s really good reading.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNancy Pearl on NPR's \"Morning Edition\"\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“In his book Astoria, Peter Stark has written a riveting account of one of the most important, but largely forgotten, turning points in the history of the United States, and he does this with great skill, crafting the story from many sources. . . . The book Astoria brings to life the people and circumstances of John Jacob Astor’s attempt to extend American control west of the Rocky Mountains. Stark keeps you reading, even though you think you already know how the story of Astoria ends. I recommend this to everyone who is interested in the development of the West and the Columbia River Basin in particular. Well researched and historically accurate, it reads much like an adventure novel, engaging you from start to finish.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eCoast Weekend\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Well researched and historically accurate, [Astoria] reads much like an adventure novel, engaging you from start to finish.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eCoast Weekend\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A truly great adventure story, filled with high drama and hardship that would put ‘Survivor’ cast members into a tailspin of humility.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBookReporter.com\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Peter Stark does readers a very large service in reminding us about this extraordinary and important piece of North American history. I can’t recommend Astoria highly enough for anyone interested in the colonization of the American West.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBookBrowse.com\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Astoria is ultimately worth reading not just because it’s about Oregon history, but because it contextualizes Oregon’s past within American history. Stark does a very good job of explaining exactly why Astor bothered with such a dangerous and expensive mission, why his employees had the problems that they did, and what it meant for the U.S. as a whole and Oregon in particular. The book is a welcome departure from romanticized tales of Lewis and Clark or of later pioneers. Settling Oregon didn’t happen because Americans are self-starting pioneers. No, it happened because a rich man in New York had a lot of money, a lot of ambition and, most importantly, a whole lot of hubris.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePortland Mercury\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Astoria is ultimately worth reading not just because it’s about Oregon history, but because it contextualizes Oregon’s past within American history. . . . The book is a welcome departure from romanticized tales of Lewis and Clark or of later pioneers.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePortland Mercury\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Stark’s delightful narrative is proof that even though Astor didn’t leave the legacy he intended, his grand failure certainly deserves its own place in history.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“For better or worse, the precedents set by Astor and his expeditions created a tangible American legacy of entrepreneurship, risk-taking, and manifest destiny.  Carefully researched and splendidly written—an utterly spellbinding account.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBellingham Herald\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A great yarn set in our own corner of the continent.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eInlander\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Stark’s compelling, contextual account of Astoria’s founding—at one time documented by none other than author Washington Irving - casts this early venture as a pivotal point in the development of the Pacific Northwest and the nation.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eCrosscut (Seattle)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Author Peter Stark retraces the journey in spellbinding detail, making use of journals to get inside the minds of these explorers who set out just two years after Lewis and Clark successfully crossed the continent. . . . Astoria brings to life a harrowing era of American exploration.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBookpage\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Stark tells their grim story well . . . ‘Astoria’ is a well-written . . . account of John Jacob Astor’s attempt to found a commercial empire in the Pacific Northwest. It illuminates the cultural limits of the American approach to frontier expansion.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePortland Oregonian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Peter Stark’s Astoria is a vivid recreation of an era when the Pacific Northwest was a vast unexploited wilderness, with Astoria as its main American colony. . . . Stark is particularly strong in describing the wilderness and its effects on human psychology.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eSeattle Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“[Descriptive] passages . . . make Stark’s fine book truly distinctive. They raise Astoria above the level of a well-done historical adventure and help the reader get into a scene and understand the context or see relationships between participants and between then and now. . . . In Astoria, Stark tells a great American story. By adding such passages filled with insight and perspective, especially when they link his tale to other cultures and geographies, he tells a great human story.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eChicago Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“[Descriptive] passages . . . make Stark’s fine book truly distinctive. They raise Astoria above the level of a well-done historical adventure and help the reader get into a scene and understand the context or see relationships between participants and between then and now.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eChicago Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“In this harrowing historical tale of adventure and hardship, journalist Peter Stark re-creates a largely forgotten 19th-century expedition-during which one group crossed the Rockies and another sailed around Cape Horn-to establish America’s first colony on the Pacific Northwest coast.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eParade Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“The story of its founders is harshly inspiring, a deeply researched look into the irresistible drive to explore the unknown and the capacity of people to survive, not only the elements, but one another.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eMinneapolis Star Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Peter Stark weaves a spellbinding tale from this lost chapter of American history. Astoria gave me the sense all readers long for: that nothing exists but the riveting narrative unfolding in your head.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLaurence Gonzalez, author of Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why and Surviving Survival: The Art and Science of Resilience\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Stark vividly writes of fur trader John Jacob Astor’s capitalist quest … [a] fascinating account… that never loses its focus.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Who knew? Astoria is more than just a burgeoning neighborhood in Queens. Montana writer Stark tells us it was also the first American settlement on the West Coast. New York businessman Astor, with support from President Jefferson, launched two expeditions in 1810 - overland and by ship. Astor envisioned a trade outpost, while Jefferson was thinking of a democracy from sea to shining sea. And Stark recounts the perilous journeys.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“New York businessman Astor, with support from President Jefferson, launched two expeditions in 1810 - overland and by ship ... and Stark recounts the perilous journeys.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Stark offers a thrilling true-adventure tale filled with unforgettable characters, clashes of culture, ambition, and physical hardships from starvation to Indian attacks to cruel weather. A breathtaking account of an expedition that changed the geography of a young nation and its place in global commerce and politics.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“... a thrilling true-adventure tale ... A breathtaking account of an expedition that changed the geography of a young nation and its place in global commerce and politics.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“In Astoria, Peter Stark recounts the colony’s history as a fast-paced, enjoyable adventure tale.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“With so much infighting, paranoia, double-crossing, madness, and starvation, the two expeditions supply plenty of narrative action to fuel Stark’s dueling narratives.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eOutside\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“In his new book, Astoria, veteran journalist Peter Stark tells the story of how that primordial Astor tried to make good on a dream that might have gone far beyond simple money-making. . . . Stark moves skillfully back and forth from one segment of the splintered expedition to another. He also raises a tantalizing question about the enterprise as a whole.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“In his new book, Astoria ... Stark moves skillfully back and forth from one segment of the splintered expedition to another. He also raises a tantalizing question about the enterprise as a whole.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Peter Stark leaps aboard at the very beginning of John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Northwest enterprise, then clings tenaciously to witness every twist, by land and by sea, along the entire desperate ride.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJack Nisbet, author of Sources of the River and The Collector\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“This saga of ambition and adventure and courage is vividly told and thoroughly researched, a not very well known story of ambition confounded. Shipwrecks, bloodiness, and starve-to-death treks through drifted snow in the Rockies-Astoria is a hard-edged beauty.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eWilliam Kittredge, author of A Hole in the Sky\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAstoria is a scintillating corrective to the “guts and glory” school of American history and economics. [...] Grandiose visions ... have consequences, and Peter Stark’s depiction of the body count that results from this one unfolds with the inevitability of a fine tragedy and comedic zing of a good action flick. - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eDavid James Duncan, author of The Brothers K and The River Why\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A fast-paced, riveting account of exploration and settlement, suffering and survival, treachery and death. [Stark] recovers a remarkable piece of history: the story of America’s first colony on the continent’s West coast.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus (Starred Review)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A page-turning tale of ambition, greed, politics, survival, and loss.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ecco","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44889191547109,"sku":"NP9780062218292","price":27.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780062218292.jpg?v=1730230721","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/astoria-john-jacob-astor-and-thomas-jeffersons-lost-pacific-empire-a-story-of-wealth-ambition-and-survival-isbn-9780062218292","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}