Boone: A Biography

by Robert Morgan

The story of Daniel Boone is the story of America—its ideals, its promise, its romance, and its destiny.

Bestselling, critically acclaimed author Robert Morgan reveals the complex character of a frontiersman whose heroic life was far stranger and more fascinating than the myths that surround him.

This rich, authoritative biography offers a wholly new perspective on a man who has been an American icon for more than two hundred years—a hero as important to American history as his more political contemporaries George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. Extensive endnotes, cultural and historical background material, and maps and illustrations underscore the scope of this distinguished and immensely entertaining work.

Genres: Biography, History, Nonfiction, American History, Audiobook, Biography Memoir, Outdoors

708 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 21, 2007

About the author

Robert Morgan is an American poet, short story writer, and novelist.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Elizabeth Cottrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

BOONE was a fascinating read, and offered many things I look for in a great biography: insight, understanding of why the subject is worth knowing, human perspective, and historical perspective, all in a narrative that flows like a good story. Robert Morgan, more known for his fiction, has accomplished much of this, though I dropped the fifth star because it needed some additional editing to remove a fair amount of unnecessary repetition and to improve the flow in a few places where the narrative bogs down. For the most part, however, this book was both edifying and entertaining.

The first words of the book are "Forget the coonskin cap; he never wore one." This sets the tone for one of the themes of the book -- that the myth of Daniel Boone was a phenomenon in itself and was often at odds with the real man, or was at least a larger-than-life image that served the purposes of those who helped create it. The author leaves no doubt, however, that Boone was a complex man of remarkable skill, industry, and courage.

Irony plays a starring role in the life of Daniel Boone. For someone whose fame and reputation were widespread -- during his lifetime and beyond -- Boone was a terrible businessman who was constantly, throughout his life, in trouble because of profligate spending and inattention to record-keeping and the details of proper legal transactions. His many prolonged adventures and exploratory expeditions made him an often absent husband to Rebeccah and their 10 children, though they moved many times to join him. Yet again and again he was celebrated, written about, elected to public office, and chosen for jobs over others without these weaknesses. The greatest irony of Boone's life is that his hunger for adventure and wilderness, for discovering uncharted territory, for living at one with Nature like the Indians, and the resulting trails that he blazed, actually paved the way for the rush of settlers westward that destroyed so much of what he loved. He lived long enough to appreciate and regret this irony.

Boone's relationship with the native Americans was particularly interesting in light of the conflicting stories about him and the suspicion by some whites that he was more sympathetic to the Indian cause than to theirs. He was greatly admired by many Indians for being such a skilled woodsman and hunter. When he was captured by the Shawnees for several months, he was adopted by the kidnappers, and there is good evidence that the bonds he formed with many members of that tribe endured to the very end of his life. Yet his reputation as an Indian fighter was made through his fearless and ferocious defense of various forts and settlements against Indian attacks; he had furs and horses stolen by the Indians time and again; and many among his family and friends were killed by Indians, including his sons James and Israel, and his brother Ned. The dangers and hardships of frontier life were masterfully and vividly portrayed in this book.

Perhaps the most compelling part of the book was the strong case made by the author for the impact that Boone and his legend had on thinkers, writers and artists in the decades after his death. He quotes historian Richard Slotkin, "[I]t was the figure of Daniel Boone, the solitary, Indian-like hunter of the deep woods, that became the most significant, most emotionally compelling myth-hero of the early republic. The other myth-figures are reflections or variations of this basic type." We find Boone's incarnations in the heroes of James Fennimore Cooper (e.g. Leatherstocking, Hawkeye and Natty Bumppo). The works of Thomas Cole, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Lord Byron, and Walt Whitman all reflect strong inspiration of Daniel Boone and the life he loved. "[By the 1850s], the image and legend of Boone had pervaded the American consciousness...Boone had become a figure of America's ideal self, a touchstone of poetry and history and national identity."

[Steven Peterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

What strikes me as the greatest accomplishment of Robert Morgan in this biography of Daniel Boone is stripping away the myth and describing the person. Boone himself was a complex figure. He was a great success as a trapper and explorer. He routinely failed as a businessman and land speculator. He was lucky and he made his own luck. Despite being so well known to Americans, he died in Missouri at 86 and was pretty much broke. His story was such that he was mentioned in the works of poets and writers. James Fennimore Cooper based a number of novels on his life and exploits, Natty Bumppo, "la longue carabine," the Pathfinder, Hawkeye, and so on.

The book does a nice job of relating his family background, his childhood, and his increasing interest in trapping, hunting, and exploring. He fought in the French and Indian War (serving with Braddock on this ill-starred campaign) and the Revolutionary War. He was instrumental in helping the process of development of American interests in Kentucky. His relationship with Native Americans was complex.

His business efforts, designed to provide security for his family, routinely ended in failure. Land that he thought had been given him in Kentucky was lost through court action; he once lost $20,000 as he was going back to Virginia to deposit this and finalize land claims; and so on.

And, a stunning realization. . . . He went with a group of explorers and visited the Yellowstone area while he was in his mid 70s! How many 70 year olds would be able to cross half a continent in 1809 and return?

This book is a wonderfully balanced view of the life of Boone. For those who want to know the man more than the myth, this is most rewarding. Some nice features: a genealogy at the outset, a brief chronology of Boone's life. More maps would have been useful, to place his travels and life in a broader geographic perspective. Nonetheless, a fine work.

[Literary Chic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boone is a fantastic biography of an interesting early American. It is thorough and great at veering the reader away from the mythical "coonskin cap wearing baaar killer." However, sometimes it's cumbersome in details. While interesting, this biography takes a patient reader in my opinion.

I'm a Kentucky girl and loved all the great details about my state. Mr. Morgan uses familiar landmarks and accurate depictions of the Bluegrass State. Having had school field trips and long weekend visits to many of the locations described, it was nice to hear more of the history of Kentucky's infancy.

Even though it took me longer than normal to complete, Boone was well worth the time.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Travel Wilderness Road and spend some time in dangerous places with Daniel Boone in Boone: A Biography. With a cradle-to-grave biography that reaches beyond the life of its subject on both ends, Robert Morgan covers everything, both factual and dubious.

Morgan establishes early that Boone’s legends are sometimes larger than his life, but also that his life need not be embellished. As one of the first Americans that schoolchildren learn about, it’s easy to mistake the man for a fictional character, and we then carry some of that feeling forward into our adult ideas. Morgan lays out the truth as far as we can know it.

That said, much of the story is taken from the word of Boone’s youngest child, Nathan, who wasn’t alive for the first half of his father’s life. Morgan gives a lot of print to other authors, who have taken liberties to satisfy the readers of their own times, giving more weight to the myths than they probably deserve.

I knew quickly that I was going to tire of Morgan’s habit of using more than one “and” in a sentence to tie three things together, instead of comma, finding the record, I think, to be four total ands in one sentence. Either the tendency reduced quite a bit in the middle of the book, or I finally just stopped noticing, until near the end. The final chapter focuses on Boone’s effect on later authors, and reads more like a sermon than a summary.

I discovered quite a bit of repeated information throughout the book, though it was typically spread out enough so that it wasn’t distracting. Yet when I wanted to be reminded of who a mentioned person was, I often found my desire ignored.

Generally, I really enjoyed this, and would recommend it to others as a first biography of Boone. But it could have been 50-60 pages shorter and still done its job effectively.

[Laurel Bradshaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

A dense and well-researched book, but this is more about Daniel Boone, the legend, than it is about Daniel Boone, the man. It lacks the historical context of Blood and Treasure: Daniel Boone and the Fight for America's First Frontier, and I had trouble sorting out what was presented as fact or fiction. This did go into much more detail about Daniel Boone's life after Kentucky, and I thought the author's musing on Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman was interesting, but it wasn't compelling. It is a good presentation of what others wrote about Boone, his life, and his impact. More philosophical and poetical, than historical.

Description: The story of Daniel Boone is the story of America—its ideals, its promise, its romance, and its destiny. Bestselling, critically acclaimed author Robert Morgan reveals the complex character of a frontiersman whose heroic life was far stranger and more fascinating than the myths that surround him. This rich, authoritative biography offers a wholly new perspective on a man who has been an American icon for more than two hundred years—a hero as important to American history as his more political contemporaries George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. Extensive endnotes, cultural and historical background material, and maps and illustrations underscore the scope of this distinguished and immensely entertaining work.

[Dan Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a clearly written book about a fascinating man - if a good editor had interceded, this could have been a great book. He starts out painfully slowly with a boring genealogy of Boone, and that serves as a good example of what an editor could have removed to help the book move along. Beyond that, though, the author indulges himself in cringe-worthy generalizations about mankind, such as the theory that a man emerges as himself when his father dies (?) and then a laughable diversion arguing that geniuses have a 10 year period of achievement, and Daniel Boone had such a period of achievement, but his was 12 years. One senses that the author bored himself with a chronological treatment of Boone's life, so he rewarded himself with foolish attempts to make broad statements of human nature.

Fortunately, the history of Daniel Boone is a vivid one, and it overcomes the author's failure to find a good editor for his manuscript.

[Rex Blackburn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent biography. Morgan skillfully captured Boone in his fulness -- the adept hunter and trapper, at home in the motherland of the forest; and the sloppy and careless businessman, a stranger in the fatherland of the town and settlement. Boone was the "essence of America's myth of itself; the epitome of its aspirations." A giant of American history.

A few takeaways from this one (the lengthy excerpt from chapter 5 is sublime):

-Ch. 1 - "As a young man, he began to create for himself the role of 'Daniel Boone.' And he spent much of his life perfecting that role. Despite his later protestation that he was 'a common man,' he seemed aware from early in his youth that he wasn't just playing himself, but a type -- what Emerson would later call 'A representative man.' Boone would embody in his actions and attitude the aspirations and character of a whole era."

"At least once Daniel became so distracted by his own explorations that he forgot the hours of the day--his home, the fact that he was supposed to help his mother. Before it got dark, Sarah had to round up the cattle herself and do the milking, strain the milk, and put it in the spring house to stay cool. Calm and prayerful, she worked at churning butter from the clabbered milk. But when Daniel did not come home by the next morning, and still had not returned by noon, she had no choice but to walk the five miles back to town to get help. A search party was formed, and they combed over the Oly Hills all the way to the Neversink Mountain range, northwest of the Monocacy Valley. They found no sign of Daniel that afternoon, but starting out early the next morning, they traveled farther and spotted a column of smoke. Late in the afternoon, they reached the source of the smoke and found Daniel sitting on a bear skin and roasting fresh bear meat on the fire. When asked if he was lost, he said no, he had known where he was all along, on the south shoulder of the hill, nine miles from the pasture. The search party accused him of scaring his mother and forcing them all to waste time looking for him, but he calmly answered he had started tracking the bear and didn't want to lose it, and besides, here was fresh meat for everybody. Whether the story is true or just one of the legends that grew around Boone later in life, it reveals as much about the way he was perceived and remembered as it does about his character. People later recalled that even from his boyhood, there was a sense that Daniel had been singled out. The story of the search party echoes the story in Luke 2:49 of the twelve year old Jesus Lost from Mary and Joseph. The boy is finally found in the temple conversing with the elders. When he is questioned and scolded, he explains that he has been about his father's business. The sense of the story is that Boone had already found his calling and destiny."

-Ch. 2: "'The soil is exceedingly rich on both sides of the Yadkin. Abounding in rank grass and prodigiously large trees. And for plenty of fish, fowl, and venison, is inferior to no part of the northern continent.' (taken from William Byrd's "A History of the Dividing Line," 1728). The Boones arrived on the Yadkin in the Fall of 1751....The bottomlands and meadows offered unsurpassed soil for farming, and the higher ground was ideal for grazing..." (timestamp 22:11) He gives some detailed information on the quality of the land and the agricultural practices specific to the region. This is helpful information for me, because Boone was living in the county adjacent to where my ancestors lived in the same time period. The author talks about the plentiful game in the area in this time -- a few remaining buffalo, elk, panthers, wildcats, wolves, abundant numbers of bear, along with healthy populations of deer and turkey."

"It was on this first long hunt into the southern wilderness that Daniel saw where his destiny lay. He was at that age where a young man begins to know the shape and direction of his inclination and future, begins to see who he is. If he had doubts before about his calling, the hills and streams of the colony of Carolina reassured him."

-Ch. 4: "Boone knew that the secret of hunting, as in so many other pursuits, wasn't just in marksmanship, but in attention, preparation, watching and listening, before one made a move."

"Bear meat was especially sweet and tender because of all the nuts the bears ate in late summer and autumn."

"Boone was known to carry a Bible and other books, including Gulliver's Travels. In middle life, he read considerably in history, which was his favorite reading."

-Ch. 5: BEAUTIFUL. "Now 35 years old, Boone had reached the age where a man of ambition and vision has to define himself. Frustrated by his failures at farming, in debt, unsuccessful previously in reaching Kentucky, he could not give it up now that he was finally there. He may have sensed that this was his moment - his destiny. In his mid-thirties, a man either reaches out toward risk and glory, or stays within the routines of the expected and ordinary. It is the age where men leave safe homes and jobs, and go on voyages, odysseys, perform transforming sacrifices. It is the age when Whitman wrote Leaves of Grass, and Columbus started to plan his voyage to the Indies. It is the age in which visionaries become prophets or explorers or inventors, or make fools of themselves trying. Putting behind him his accumulated failures and humiliations, such a man must seize the new prospect and ride with it to greatness or defeat. There is no turning back. When Boone decided to stay alone in the forests of Kentucky while his brother Squire returned to conduct business, he made a choice that revealed himself, to himself. He would not do what most other men would do. He would not be just a commercial trapper; he was that. But he was something else too.

There was something he wanted to learn in the wilderness, and he needed to be alone. He had hunted alone before for days and weeks, but what he wanted to learn was here, and he couldn't say exactly what it was, but he sensed the uniqueness of the opportunity. He had been given a role to play - the best role he had ever known -- and he meant to make the most of it. He now proceeded to make those remarkable, solitary explorations of Kentucky which have given him immortality.

Boone was a leader and an English-speaking colonial. He had been called a "white Indian," and he was an expert marksman, scout, trapper, navigator of the forest. He was a woodsman -- but there was more, and he knew he was seeking more. In the name of his people...and his own nature, he was spying on the western wilderness, as if there was a secret he must obtain. It was beyond the next ridge, and it was farther down the river of his days...

Two years may be the time it takes to leave behind one's old self and see the world in a larger, clearer way. it would be the time Thoreau spent in his cabin at Walden....It was the time Goethe spent in Italy....Some would've said it was fame Boone was seeking in Kentucky, without quite knowing it, and they wouldn't be entirely wrong. For fame was one facet of what he felt imminent inside himself. He wanted to be known across the reaches of geography, across the boundaries of time -- but it was more than that. Something sacred, almost like religion. It was something he shared with the Indians more than with white people. it was about his contemplation of the clouds, of the grasslands, of the wooded ridge, and the sunset over the hurrying river. It was about how time would seem to stop, even as the stars came out. He must play his part in the great curve of time. It was about the lay of the new land just waiting for him to see and walk over it. Boone studied the different kinds of springs of the land...he studied the bones exposed in the raw salt licks, he must know this land as a man knows a beloved woman. He was determined to keep out of sight as he pursued his passion. And somehow, he felt he was chosen. It was as if he had been separated out for this mission of relish and discovery. It was a moment that would never come again-not in his lifetime, not in ten thousand years. And he had been sent there and burdened with the desire to cherish it....As others are inspired to preach, or nurse the sick, or lead in battle, he knew he had been given a sign and a window, and he must step across that threshold. Boone deliberately chose the peace of solitude, rather than mingle in the wild wranglings and disputings of the society around him, from whom it was ever his first thought to be escaping. Or he would never have penetrated to those secret places, where later his name became talisman."

Ch. 10 - "The sense of the spiritual was something he shared with the Indians, and likely learned -- in part -- from them. Every tree and river, rock and cloud, was alive. Haunted. Significant. After Boone would come many other great naturalists and artists, but none of them would have the legendary status of Boone, the air of the original. None had so much influence or inspired so many who came after. Like Washington, like Lincoln later, Boone inspired the craving for an ideal self. With Quaker tolerance for others, reliant and integrous; with a large capacity for wonder and reaching out toward the new and mysterious; brave, but cautious; sociable, diplomatic, calm in the face of danger, a lover of song and reading, a notoriously erratic speller. Daniel Boone did most of the things for which he is remembered between about 1770 and 1782."

**One personal note that I take away from Boone's life. Though he's a sterling example of both man and woodsman, the second half of his life was plagued by lawsuits, debts, and the stresses of an unkempt life. His dismissal of paperwork and details led to legal issues regarding his surveying, and seizure of lands that he might've held onto if he'd merely registered the deeds with the proper authorities. This great man was held in some ill-repute in his own day, because he didn't see to the details. The "boring" stuff that interferes with our passions must also be attended to with diligence, or it could be the ruin of a character otherwise marked by integrity, honesty, and wisdom.

[bup · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure what I was expecting from a biography of Daniel Boone, but I never got too close. The author argued, perhaps correctly, that Boone is a sort of Rorschach of the American psyche, and will always be mysterious, but it also feels like he didn't even really try.

Honestly, too, I had a hard time not being overly distracted by the narrator. His mouth and the English language are apparently on the outs, and fought a lot during the reading. He attacked sounds and they fought back. Further, he inflected some clauses the wrong way, emphasizing the wrong word or words.

Except for some basic facts about Boone's life (born near Philadelphia a Quaker, in debt a lot of his life, imprisoned by Shawnees for a couple of years, fought in a 1782 battle of the American Revolution), I don't have any better sense of the man than I did before I read it.

[Emily Sanders · Rating 5 out of 5]

This excellent biography takes us back to when much of the current United States was wilderness and the Native Americans were its dominant possessors. The bigger than life legends of Daniel Boone are picked apart, as the author seeks to distinguish between fact and fiction, but while showing the humanness of Boone, he never disparages or lessens his achievements. If anything, deciphering the real from the story only made the life of Boone more engaging.

I appreciated the author's attempt to validate the contributions of Boone's wife and the other women in his life, as well as the several black men and slaves who were instrumental in the expansion of the west. Though there is little recorded about them, sometimes not even a name, they are recognized and credit is given where it is due.

The description of Daniel Boone's Kentucky was captivating; although vastly different to what it was in his day, I should like to see whatever remaining wilderness there is to be seen there today.

[John Rimmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A long and inspiring tour of Boone's life, myth, and lasting impact on the American image. I worried that this would be like many biographies that seek to make their name by gathering the scalp of a beloved historical hero. Boone is an easy scalp to take because of all the myth and legend that has built up around his life. But I quickly found Robert Morgan to be a respectful and confident writer, stripping away the veneer (e.g. the coonskin cap from the movies) to reveal a man whose actual life was large enough for many myths and legends without the need to embellish. By the end I felt that I had read the lives of several men back to back, for Boone's was one of many ups and downs, but always further West. Truly inspired by how many times he reinvented himself, by his close family ties, and by how he worked hard to maintain his integrity despite constantly being involved in scandals and lawsuits too big for him to handle.

[Mike McGrath · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recently learned that through Gramma Irene Malo McGrath, all of her descendants are related to Daniel Boone (1734-1820)! How cool is that! He is my first cousin 8 times removed! Our 7xGreat Grandfather, Benjamin Boone, was Daniel’s uncle! Boone’s grandfather was our 8x Grand Father.

This well written chronological biography combines family genealogy, adventure and US history that makes me really appreciate our Kentucky roots! And while touring with the VMCCA Lewis & Clark Year #2 cars in 2018, we saw his final homestead in Defiance, Missouri! Neither Meriwether Lewis nor William Clark ever mentioned meeting Daniel Boone on May 24, 1804, when they stopped at the village nicknamed Boone's Settlement, on the north bank of the Missouri River, some 60 miles upstream from St. Louis. This book will be a good source for “stories” of our pioneer ancestors!

[Robert Cox · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very thorough and historically accurate account of Boone's life. Which frankly makes for a much less interesting Boone. I can't help but compare it to "Crow Killer: The Saga of Liver-Eating Johnson" which focuses more on retelling the legend of John Johnston and arrives at a result that retains a narrative arc that makes for a much more enjoyable read.

Is there value to knowing the truth behind any historical legend. Absolutely. It just isn't as interesting as the larger than life characters we have created through retelling. Boone is a well written and researched biography, but don't expect a page turner

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since, I was a kid, I was always found the mythical Daniel Boone fascinating. As I got older, I realized I really didn’t know much about the man and that much of what I heard about him wasn’t even true. I have had this wonderful biography on shelf for a number of years and I am glad I finally plucked it off shelf.
It is an extensive look at the man and I ended up being more impressed by what this man accomplished. Opening up the frontier to the West, with the discovery of the Cumberland Gap and his love for nature and the wilderness is astounding.
If you are like me, and have always wanted to learn more about this legendary figure, this is the perfect bio to pick up. Morgan writes mainly fiction but he sure showed some fine craftsmanship with this book. Highly recommended.

[Michael Hantsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great biography of a figure I always assumed I knew a lot about, but is deeper and more culturally influential than I could have realized. This is an important book for understanding America and so many of its cultural and societal touchstones.

[Andrew Cox · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a highly regarded biography of Daniel Boone that just wasn’t for me - too much historical minutia and too little narrative force. It’s probably me - I do so much nonfiction reading at work that it has a very high bar to clear in the evenings. I’ve checked out the latest Murderbot book from the library to cleanse the palette.

[Patrick O'Hannigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert Morgan does a masterful job of introducing Daniel Boone to the rest of us. Beyond that, he also explains why Boone, who died in 1820, remains a significant American historical figure.

I've read a few biographies that are as good, but I've never read a biography that was better.

[Dan Carey · Rating 2 out of 5]

OMG, how Morgan does go on. This 20-hour audio book could easily have been 15 hours if an editor had managed to restrain Morgan's verbosity. Points raised over and over again, sometimes in anticipation of their place in the timeline, then at their occurrence, are then pointed back to at some later point in the narrative. I particularly had to laugh when Morgan accused some 19th-century biographers of Boone of indulging in purple prose, only to turn to it himself in the very same chapter. Morgan also seems oddly comfortable saying that whether or not some particular story about Boone really occurred does not matter; that it nonetheless reveals such-and-such about Boone's character.
I simply cannot recommend this book, but neither can I point you to some alternative. Wikipedia, perhaps?
[Audiobook note: Especially at first, narrator James Jenner seemed to me to take much-too-long pauses between sentences and paragraphs. Later, he either sped up or I had become accustomed to his rhythm.]

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

This wasn't bad, though it could have been a hundred pages shorter. I wanted to read it because Boone's lifespan matches up pretty closely to the era that I am studying, but he was in Kentucky and Missouri, rather than Maine/Canada. So my people went one way and he went the other. It got me thinking about options in early America - where did people see opportunity? Why move to Kentucky, where you might very well get killed by Indians, when you could move to Canada, where you were much less likely to get killed by Indians? Was it just proximity?
I was also interested in all the times Boone flirted with the British (he WAS kind of flirting with moving to Canada). Morgan is determined to argue that Boone was leading the British along, never really interested in switching sides, etc, but then he notes that some of Boone's in-laws were loyalists. And Boone seems to have had no trouble moving to Spanish territory in Missouri - in fact, it sounds like he was delighted to leave US territory behind, and kind of disappointed when the states caught up to him. I think this could have been a nice chance to consider loyalty or lack thereof in this era. Boone became this American prototype, except really he was this man without a clear national identity.
I also have to say, books like this drive me a little crazy when they draw from early to mid-19th century biographies and treat them like they are just normal sources. To his credit, Morgan mentions occasionally that one story or another is probably an exaggeration, but there were a lot of really fishy stories that he simply repeated. And he didn't have to - for example, Boone was taken by the Shawnee at one point and "adopted," and lived with them for months. This was a golden opportunity to get into what scholars know today about how these "adoptions" actually worked, but Morgan basically just uses one of these antique biographies as his source and calls it good. He also could have spent a little more time on the fact that Boone and his whole family were slaveholders. He spent a little time there, but it seemed like he would give it a couple of sentences and then happily move on. He spent more time on spurious "one time Boone hid from Indians in a cave for a week, then shot two Indians with one bullet" stories than he did on slavery. Seems inappropriate.

[J.R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Separating fact from fiction in writing a biography of an iconic figure like Boone is a major challenge and Morgan is to be commended for this effort. It’s unfortunate the several efforts Boone made to leave a personal account of his life were lost due to accidents and misadventures and later biographers were forced to rely on written records that may have been biased or based on hearsay.

Morgan’s research clears up many of the false assertions about Boone and gives us a closer look at the real man. His is not a blatant example of hero worship—he gives us the good and the bad about the man. There is the honest, considerate and loving family man; the lover of the wild who would inspire Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman; the soldier, who never unnecessarily took a life. There’s the careless businessman, mired in debt and failing over and over again. There’s also the irony of the hunter who shot game with no thought for tomorrow and the lover of wilderness who led others who would destroy the solitude and beauty he cherished.

Boone obviously admired the Indian and their way of life, to the extent he was accused of treason and was able to overlook the murder of family and friends and the captivity of his favorite daughter and himself. Yet he was as culpable as others in the destruction of their society.

Morgan gives the impression the Quaker Boones and their neighbors had no problems with the Native Americans while living in Pennsylvania. Though the Quakers and Moravians did enjoy peaceful relations with the native peoples for long periods of time, tensions were increasing before the Boones left Oley Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania.

Land sales the Penns and their representatives negotiated with the Iroquois as early as the 1730s riled the Lenape/Delaware who claimed the same territory and influenced them to side with the French later in the strife known as the French and Indian War. Thanks to Conrad Weiser, a diplomat and interpreter, a peace was brokered in 1737 between the Iroquois and southern tribes, averting violence certain to have spilled over into Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Morgan refers to Logan who, seeking revenge for the murder of his family, helped spark the 1774 Dunmore’s War, as a Mingo. In fact, Logan (Tachnechdorus) was a son of Shikellamy, the Iroquois vice regent at Shamokin PA. Mingo is a corruption of the Lenape term “minqua,” which can be interpreted as “treacherous.”

Aside from these minor quibbles, I’d say Morgan has done a wonderful job in presenting a Boone who truly deserves the fame society has granted him.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liked the book. Thanks to the tv show I thought Dan'l Boone wore a coonskin cap and wandered around exploring the frontier and saving settler's lives.

This book gave me a much better and more detailed account of Daniel Boone and his life; I realized that there is a man behind the legend who struggled with much of the same things people do today.

I found it kind of sad actually; that a man who so loved the wilderness of Kentucky but lived through the disappearance of wildlife as well as the land being divied up by holding companies and settlers. He didn't get to keep a piece of it himself - always moving onto somewhere with less financial headaches, less settlers and more wildlife.

Living in Kentucky, this book gives me an appreciation of the area where I live, but I wonder how much of this country Daniel Boone would recognize today.

[Patricia Mendez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having grown up on the Disney t.v. show, Daniel Boone, I appreciated being disabused of the fantasy ideas I had absorbed as a child about this man. This book was so interesting not only about Daniel's life but also about the wilderness of Can tuck ee (Kentucky) and the Shawnee Indians. It seems like you can almost reach out and touch the time and place at one moment. And in the next moment you can't help feeling sad that this world is gone. The wilderness, the wild animals, the native American cultures, the pioneer culture were so unique and yet changed so quickly in the 18th century.

This biography is well-written and brings Daniel Boone to life. Not in the fictious, larger-than-life legend way, but with all his human qualities and God-given talents, strengths and even weaknesses.

[Kristy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I got to page 118 of this book and decided it just wasn’t capturing my attention so I stopped reading it. If the author would have written about Boone’s life and experiences more, the book would have been extremely enjoyable. However, the author would go off on tangents comparing with other philosophical, historical figures to Boone rather than concisely portraying Boone’s life. This book was not exactly what I had envisioned it would be. When the author spoke about Boone’s family, travels, and experiences, it was quite an enjoyable read, but the author wasted too many pages on philosophical comparisons lacking historical detail. I’m glad this was a library book, and I didn’t purchase it.

[Ranette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hello Parrish relatives!! Did you know our GGG grandpa, Edward Parrish knew Daniel Boone? This is recorded in a county history from that time.

I just loved this book, especially the 2nd half, starting with Ch. 9 were Boone chased down some Indians who stole his daughter, Jemimah. He loved to hunt, roam and move west. He tried to make peace with every one, and be honest. Lots to understand about the times, Indians, and settlers.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

The subject matter was good, and facts (when available) were dutifully related, but I didn't care for the style of writing. It read more like a really long essay about Daniel Boone instead of a biography. There was way too much conjecture, too much repetition, too much referencing of Thoreau and Dickinson and Whitman and Twain. And there were certainly not enough maps. The narrative is also periodically interrupted by a textbook-style explanation box about some other topic.

[Kyle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I could not get through this book. I was frustrated by the lack of information on who Boone truly was. The author kept including myths to explain his character, but then adding that it is unsubstantiated, so we cannot be sure about it... Very frustrating. Also, it was just not captivating in any way. Historically, it is interesting though.

[Jake Roese · Rating 1 out of 5]

A Boone fanboy trying to glorify the myth. There is not much historically important to this stupid biography.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book. Very well written.

[Gregory Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's hard to put into words just how exhaustive this biography is. When I found this book, I was eager to learn more about Daniel Boone the "real" person, as opposed to the legend that is so popular. After spending many hours with this book, I now feel like I know Boone better than many other early Americans. He was complex, a true character of the wilderness, and much more layered than simply being a woodsman. He was a surveyor, a world-class hunter, a fighter, a builder, a trader, a trapper, a husband, a father, a brother, and many other titles.

I was most drawn to the geography of this story. I was drawn to the stories about the way he crossed rivers, climbed mountains, and hunted the wilderness that many of us see in our backyards now. He was part of the group that tamed the wilderness. Connecting with his stories of interactions with Native Americans was probably the most memorable section of this book; I just had no idea how often Boone and his contemporaries interacting with Natives. They were not *always* enemies nor *always* friends. The relationship went back and forth, with often-deadly consequences.

The book has a few sections that really stood out to me, one of which being the harrowing account of some of the battles he participated in during the context of the American Revolution. The other, more of a spread out theme rather than a specific section, was Boone as a family man. It turns out that the frontier was more complicated than I ever imagined. Boone was, at times, a part of a Shawnee community, taken in as son and brother with Natives. Yet, he had his own family with children that he loved and cared for. The scene of his daughter (and another girl) being kidnapped by a small group of Natives and then rescued by Boone is literally the stuff of legend... and the entire scene felt like something wildly cinematic.

I appreciate how the end of the book Morgan tackles the Boone legend with considerable detail. He pulls from noted historians like Richard Slotkin, while also bumping into the more hagiographic narratives of Boone's life. He even makes the comparison that Boone, like Washington then later Lincoln, had a persona that people tended to reshape in their own image... and in a likeness that was befitting of a particular national narrative (for example, some baptized him in their own brand of Christianity rather than acknowledging his very real, very textured faith).

In any event, this was a wonderful book. The main reason I haven't given it five stars is that it's almost *too* exhaustive. Several of the main themes are repeated ad nauseum. I would have liked to see the prose trimmed a significant amount. The analysis itself is fascinating and important, but having those themes repeat several times throughout the book made it feel unnecessarily lengthy. (By way of example, the "wilderness as body for sexual conquest" theme felt... not only overdone, but a bit of a stretch. It felt more like literary commentary than a work of history in these sections.)

I would not assign this book for any courses, but I certainly would recommend it to students of early America. If you know someone who loves books like Ambrose's *Undaunted Courage* and other books of this frontier era, they will love this volume.

[Brenden Gallagher · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Many believe Boone in his final years saw clearly the contradictions of his life, how his 'love of nature' had led not to a future of peaceful hunting with Indians but to the destruction of the hunting grounds the Indians had preserved so long."

"The story of Boone is the story of America. From the Blue Ridge to the Bluegrass, from Yadkin to the Yellowstone, no man sought and loved the wilderness with more passion and dedication. Yet none did more to lead settlers and developers to destroy that wilderness in a few short decades."

These two passages contain the major theme and major tensions of Robert Morgan's masterful biography of the frontiersman Daniel Boone. Morgan clearly has a deep respect for the transcendentalist writers of the mid-1800s and the European romantics of the same era. He has sought here to write a Romantic or Transcendentalist biography. In Morgan's view, Boone's life can be read as a work of art that greatly influences and shapes reflections on nature and the frontier experience that would come later.

My favorite section of the book was a roughly 100 page section in which Morgan describes Boone's years as a trapper and explorer in the wilderness. Untethered from major battles or tragic personal events in Boone's life (those would come), Morgan tries to capture Boone's love of the vast untamed wilderness. He is free to spend pages describing a particular trapping technique or a certain pocket of the vast undiscovered country.

The most compelling point that Morgan makes about Boone is that he represents an alternative American history that the sins of the settlers made impossible. While Boone fought the Native Americans, and they fought him, there was a mutual respect, and even playfulness about their early encounters. It was almost as if Boone was challenged to prove himself to local tribes and because he did, he was allowed to live among them. As America pushed west, it became clear that the United States would spell the end for the Native American way of life, and that the way of the settler was not a way of compromise.

Boone too would be steamrolled by progress. He spent the first half of his life in the woods and the second half in debt. Because he stood for an approach to the wilderness that desired something short of capitalist clear cutting, he too would have to go.

Of course, Morgan puts its better than I can. He writes:

"Over that period that great meadow would cease to be a land of buffalo and hunters and become a land of layers, politicians, accountants, slave holders and hemp planters. However much he might come to hate the change, Boone was as much to blame as any other single human being."

This idea: that Daniel Boone was at once the greatest lover and greatest destroyer of the frontier is as beautiful and tragic an idea as you could find in any fiction. And of course, this contradiction is one still playing out in America today.

[Wayland Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've always been interested in the Colonial/Revolutionary periods of American History, and one of the bigger names from that era is Daniel Boone. I've read a bit about him in the past, done school papers on him, and even found out that I have an indirect link from my family to his. I'm almost always willing to learn more, so I read this one.

Boone went from a child of Quaker immigrants from England to a legend in America, and his story is interesting and heartbreaking. He rose to fame, but fortune eluded him. He surveyed land in Kentucky and Missouri, and, when he died, "owned not so much land as would make his grave."

The man, from all accounts, was at his best in the woods. Exploring, hunting, seeing things no other white man had seen were things he loved almost as much as he loved his wife Rebecca. Rebecca gets a good bit of mention in this book, and that's a rarity. I'm glad to see it.

While Boone's was amazing within in his skill set, he did a lot less well in "civilization." He was cheated, swindled, sued, and didn't himself by being an indifferent record keeper. He lost many fortunes through theft and deceit, but kept on going, seemingly sure his break would come. It never really did.

He established forts, saved captives from Indians (and seemed more at home with the Indians than with most whites), blazed trails, and led men in battle. In return, he was accused of treason, fraud, and lost everything he had more than once.

He's an interesting figure, and the writer remarks a few times that Boone loved the wilderness, the balance with the Indians and the animals, and did so much to end that period of history, seemingly never realizing he was helping destroy what he loved. Boone was a very contradictory man, and even the stories about him contradict each other many times.

A legend of the West (when the West was Kentucky and Missouri), he's well worth learning about if that era appeals at all. My only complaint about the book is the author repeats himself at times. I don't know how many times we needed to be told that forts couldn't really be captured without artillery, for example, but it comes up a lot.