Louisiana Purchase: An American Story

by John Chase (preface)

Commemorating the 200th anniversary of America's best buy. Originally syndicated in strip form in daily newspapers throughout the United States, this book is depicted in an understandable and easily read format and backed up by competent research.

Genres: Nonfiction, Comics

96 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1992

Reviews

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog · Rating 4 out of 5]

Louisiana Purchase: An American Story by John Chase, has a multitude of flaws. It is meant to be at once serious and not. It should help if you know something about the late John Chase, but a book, should be able to transcend its time and place. I am on the center of the niche audience. New Orleans born, alive and reading when Mr. Chase was doing political Cartoons and the occasional light history. So there it is, I will give him the benefit of several legitimate doubts,

Against his many failures, John Chase is not of the 21st century, and even as he tries to acknowledge, women, people of color and the peoples of Americans first nations, he is a cartoonist, and grants himself unlimited rights to apply characterization. If it helps he is just as free at cartoon characterizations for Frenchmen, including Napoleon, Englishmen, American and Canadian fur traders, later river boat men. And so goes the list.

Bottom line Louisiana Purchase: An American Story , is a reprint of a cartoon strip Mr. Chase wrote to honor America’s200th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase. You are very likely to learn some things you did not know. Chase can wander off topic, usually to mark out an otherwise lost hero , but his research is valid. Have fun with the book. Even if your idea of fun is being outraged at just how he tried to be respectful and very obviously, maybe deliberately was not.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a chunk of American history that I didn't know much about. And since it was in comic book mode, it was a fun read.