{"product_id":"francis-parkman-the-oregon-trail-the-conspiracy-of-pontiac-loa-53-isbn-9780940450547","title":"Francis Parkman: The Oregon Trail, The Conspiracy of Pontiac (LOA #53)","description":"“From boyhood,” wrote Francis Parkman, “I had a taste for the woods and the Indians.” This Library of America volume, containing \u003ci\u003eThe Oregon Trail\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Conspiracy of Pontiac\u003c\/i\u003e, brilliantly demonstrates this lifelong fascination. His first book, \u003ci\u003eThe Oregon Trail\u003c\/i\u003e, is a vivid account of his frontier adventures and his encounters with Plains Indians in their final era of nomadic life. \u003ci\u003eThe Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War after the Conquest of Canada\u003c\/i\u003e, Parkman’s first historical work, portrays the fierce conflict that erupted along the Great Lakes in the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War and chronicles the defeats in which the eastern Native American tribes “received their final doom.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Oregon Trail\u003c\/i\u003e (1849) opens on a Missouri River steamboat crowded with traders, gamblers, speculators, Oregon emigrants, “mountain men,” and Kansas Indians. In his search for Natives untouched by white culture, Parkman meets the Whirlwind, a Sioux chieftain, and follows him through the Black Hills. His descriptions of natives’ buffalo hunts, feasts and games, feuds, and gift-giving derive their intensity from his awareness that he was recording a vanishing way of life. Praised by Herman Melville for its “true wild-game flavor,” \u003ci\u003eThe Oregon Trail\u003c\/i\u003e is a classic tale of adventure that celebrates the rich variety of life Parkman found on the frontier and the immensity and grandeur of America’s western landscapes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eThe Conspiracy of Pontiac\u003c\/i\u003e (1851), Parkman chronicles the consequences of the French defeat in Canada for the eastern Native American tribes. At the head of the Native American resistance to the Anglo-American advance in the 1760s was the daring Ottawa leader Pontiac, whose attacks on the frontier forts and settlements put in doubt the continuation of western expansion. A powerful narrative of battles and skirmishes, treaties and betrayals, written with eloquence and fervor and filled with episodes of heroism and endurance, \u003ci\u003eThe Conspiracy of Pontiac\u003c\/i\u003e captures the spirit of a tragic and tumultuous age.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLIBRARY OF AMERICA\u003c\/b\u003e is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.“Like Thucydides, Francis Parkman conceived of historical inquiry as a literary enterprise of the highest order, requiring both scientific method and the art of rendering a story. As he narrated the sufferings of the French explorers, he studied early maps in order to imagine the wilderness as seen through their eyes. The ideal historical narrator, Parkman felt, ‘must himself be, as it were, a sharer or spectator of the action he described.’ He wrote as though he were a fellow-explorer at Champlain’s side.” \u003cb\u003e— \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrancis Parkman \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e(1823-1893) was one of America's first and greatest historians, author of such narrative masterpieces as \u003ci\u003eThe Oregon Trail\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eFrance and England in North America\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Conspiracy of Pontiac\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWilliam R. Taylor\u003c\/b\u003e, volume editor, is professor emeritus at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and former program director of the New York Institute for the Humanities. He is the author of \u003ci\u003eCavalier and Yankee\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eIn Pursuit of Gotham: Culture and Commerce in New York\u003c\/i\u003e.","brand":"Library of America","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46299825144037,"sku":"NP9780940450547","price":45.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780940450547.jpg?v=1742917559","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/francis-parkman-the-oregon-trail-the-conspiracy-of-pontiac-loa-53-isbn-9780940450547","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}