Expansion Books

You know all those novels and movies with the absurd plot line about some impossible misson and there is only "One Man" who can do it? Well, Kit Carson was that man. This book is not so much a biography of Kit Carson as it is a history of the expansion of the American West told through the life of Kit Carson. He was the man who was there at every point. He helped explore the western trails to Oregon and California, helped take control of Los Angeles from the Mexicans, helped fight the Confederates when they tried to take New Mexico, and (against his better morals) fought to contain the fierce Navajo Indians.

Carson was a humble man, in no small part due to his illiteracy. He did everything from fur trapping, trading, exploring, hunting, soldiering, Indian fighting, farming, and more. He was always in the right place at the right time. He loved the West and he loved the people that lived there. He came to understand the Indians like few others, learning many of their languages.

But his real fame came from his unbelievable exploits: sneaking through enemy lines, dissuading hostile Indians using their own tongue, obliterating Confederate forces, and fighting off numerous Indians single-handedly. "Blood and Thunder" dime novels began to pop up throughout the country, exaggerating Carson's heroism. While his life of glory may seem to have deserved a gallant death in a battle for glory, the humble Carson instead suffered a slow, painful bed-ridden death. But the legacy he unintentionally created managed to live on for a long while after.

Sides is an incredible writer, creating vivid imagery and deftly tying all relevant events together.

This is a remarkably informative and well written book. This is the way historical narratives ought to be written, with great immediacy and drama that bring the events to life, but with all the benefits of hindsight and reflection. It is scrupulously fair to all the participants and provides a wealth of knowledge about all the cultures involved.

Hampton Sides has done a masterful job of telling the story of Kit Carson and the settlement of the American West, especailly New Mexico. Blood and Thunder reads as entertainingly as a novel.
Larry Carter

I have enjoyed this book as much as John Adams. Preconcieved ideas of history are put to rest. For the most part this is a part of history that has not been well documented for me. There was Lewis and Clark and then a big gap. This fills in the gap and is a must read.

A history of expansion into the southwest wrapped around a biography of Kit Carson. Wonderfully entertaining the more so for being historically accurate.

I've been reading a reasonable amount of history lately, and I was starting to get worried how much of it has left me rather cold. Either I find that I can't engage with the writing, or else I find the thesis of the writer poorly supported. I had started to get the bad bad feeling that my problem with historians was more about me than about the history itself.

Luckily, just about that point I picked up Alexander of Macedon. Excellent and apparently well-respected as history and delicious to read as a book. It doesn't talk down to the readers; it doesn't pretend to know more than it possibly can do. The prose is very good. The logic and structure of the book are clear and well-ordered. I really enjoyed reading it and felt that I learned a lot.

When I sat down to write this, I read some reviews and letters that were written by Green in the New York Review of Books. His tone was much as this book would lead me to expect-- acerbic, smart and witty. He is a very good writer. In fact, that seems to be one of the arguments most commonly used against his books. He writes too well.

A brief dip into the online world highlights two basic types of criticism for Alexander of Macedon. There are the Alexander fans who hate Green for not being flattering enough about their hero. (The fact that the book's title says nothing about "Alexander the Great" is kind of a giveaway that Green was not embarking on a course of further myth-making around the king. Shame, many seem to want him to be idolized and not studied.) The other criticism seems to come from Very Serious Academics who admit Green's enthusiasm for the subject matter, while making snide remarks about how he is more a novelist than a historian. The implication seems to be that this makes Green more suitable for armchair historians like myself than Very Serious Academics.

And that may well be true. Since I'm not a VSA myself, I can only report that it seemed just right for me. I'll also note, mildly, that he does seem to be widely respected and that the people who don't respect his work appear in the minority.

Alexander is a fascinating character. I have been thinking about him a lot since finishing the biography. His career raises a huge number of questions about the nature of greatness, and those questions obviously also matter to Green. I'm not sure if he ever settles for himself how "Great" Alexander really is-- but there is a firm argument made for his importance-- a hard argument to counter, in my opinion.

Recommended. Best history book that I have read in a long time.

Alexander, usually known as the Great, was truly great if we are speaking of military prowess. Perhaps the greatest general the world has ever known, Alexander had an insatiable desire to conquer. His motivation did not seem to lie in wealth but in the desire for power, the lust of battle, and the march toward deification. No army could stand against him, all other men were diminished in his presence, he was the ultimate conqueror. He conquered everything except himself, and this proved to be his undoing.

Today we all but idolize men such as Alexander, however it is worth noting that at his death he was universally hated. He most likely died of poisoning, possibly at the hand of his tutor Aristotle, and the entire world rejoiced. As soon as he died his empire fractured. Green writes, "He spent his life, with legendary success, in the pursuit of personal glory, ... and until very recent times this was regarded as a wholly laudable aim. The empire he built collapsed the moment he was gone" (p.488). Perhaps this is a lesson for us all.

This is surely one of the best biographies on the life of Alexander the Great. I recommend it for all that have interest in such subjects.

I'm very disappointed with this book.
I was looking for some objective and critic biography but this book have an obvious agenda from page one: put down Alexander by any possible means.
For Mr Green every good or great thing Alexander is credited to had done is just propaganda or flattery.
He can even doubt the result of a great battle like Granicus because our sources are few and unreliable. For him it was a defeat hidden by propaganda, a theory he make up with nearly zero backup from the ancient sources.
But instead, he don't hesitate to follow without doubt every nasty detail some of this sources could give us about the bad acts of Alexander (the chapter about Cleitus assassination for example is pure gossipy).
For me, thats not an historian...
A shame...

Peter Green is one of the foremost scholars of Alexander the Great. His biography of the Macedonian King is based upon the evidence of the ancient sources, which are themselves only secondary sources, since the eye-witnesses to Alexander's exploits are unfortunately no longer extant. Green does not have "an agenda" as some reviewers have suggested; he is merely evaluating the evidence of Arrian, Plutarch, Quintus Curtius, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, etc., etc. as it they read it in Callisthenes, Ptolemy, Aristobulus, Onesicritus, etc., etc. All of the non-extant primary sources had their own agendas. Callisthenes was Alexander's press agent and image maker; Ptolemy, who highjacked the king's body, wrote his subsequent history of the expediton in such a way that his own exploits were highlighted.

All of what Green writes is in the ancient sources. He has not made up the facts that Alexander could be very unpleasant at times (Consider his treatment of Thebes, Tyre, and Gaza; not to mention his reported murders of Philip's general, Parmenio; Parmenio's son, Philotas; Alexander's old family retainer Cleitus; Alexander's cousin, Alexander of Lyncestis, and the king's own spin-doctor Callisthenes [Alexander ordered the last two to be carried around in cages, Lyncestis for three years and Callisthenes for several months until he died of obesity and lice in India, according to Plutarch.]).

If Green's Alexander does not live up to the "idealized" Alexander of those who have not read the ancient accounts, it is because we are dealing with a man who, with the aid of Callisthenes, had carefully crafted his own image. That image, which was always grandiose, became even larger than life after Alexander's death, when his successors got busy rendering the Macedonian king's image into their own images.

Alexander was not Alexander the Saint; Alexander the British Public Schoolboy; Alexander the Guy-I'd-Like-to-Have-a-Drink-With (Heavens forfend!); Alexander the Ideal Husband; or even Alexander the Nice, he was actually Alexander the Imperialist! And yes, he was Great! Anyone who can march an entire army--indeed a mobile state--around for ten years, traveling 22,000 miles through snow-blasted mountains and sand-driven deserts deserves the term Great, no matter how many men and women he kills in the process (and Alexander's collateral damage was not to be sneezed at!). The fact that we are even arguing about him today demonstrates that he achieved his dream in renouncing his father Philip and becoming, first the Son of Zeus-Ammon; and next the New Triumphant Dionysus. Alexander has indeed achieved immortality.

Peter Green has demonstrated Alexander's Greatness in a manner that is both exciting and eminently readable. If he has knocked the Macedonian off his gold-plated pedestal of propriety, Green has done readers a singular service, and, in the process, he has brought Alexander to life as the complex, deeply disturbing--and infinitely interesting--character that, according to the ancient sources, he certainly must have been.

It's obvious Mr. Green knows his stuff but I feel this was written for a few of his peers and not the average reader. He tends to explain why he thinks what he thinks, and why others might be wrong or right, or whether new research challenges long held beliefs, etc. which is fine when chatting with your pals who are also well versed in the subject but better left to an appendix in a book as it stems the narrative flow. Please just tell me what happened, tell me why you think so later. I trust you. More than once I found myself at the bottom of the page having to reread it because my mind began to wonder.
The author assumes the reader is an academic like himself and peppers the book with phrases like, "The truth of the matter can never be known for certain. If we apply the cui bono principle, then Alexander undoubtedly had everything to gain..." and "De l'audace, toujours de l'audace, encore de l'audace: all through his life this was to be Alexander's guiding star, ..." and so on.
This in not a friendly book for commuters or people who like to read before bed. The chapters range from 30-60 pages a piece so every time you pick it up you're making a commitment. One personal annoyance is that, when referring to something he has already touched upon, the author has the bad habit of saying (see above pg. 47) or (see above pg 123) It paints a picture of him editing it on his computer, why not just say see pg. 47 or pg. 123 why the "above"?
Academics and those already familiar with the subject may enjoy the book, History Channel historians who saw a cool special on Alexander and want to learn more may want to look elsewhere.

The Reality Dysfunction (parts 1 and 2) could be retitled "The Author's Dysfunction." The books start with some interesting sci-fi scenarios such as living and intelligent spaceships and habitats and human genetic modifications to achieve telepathy. There also are some interesting plots such as the Confederation's struggle to eliminate antimatter weapons and the investigation of an advanced alien society that committed mass suicide thousands of years past. These alone would have made a great, long novel, especially since Peter Hamilton writes well. Unfortunately, Mr. Hamilton could not leave well enough alone. He adds character after character (scores of them by the end of these two books), plot after subplot, location after location. Even more unfortunately, the overriding plot becomes a ghost story. The spirits of the vilest human dead, who have lived as miserable disembodied energy-beings for centuries, suddenly gain access to living persons whom they possess. The first thoughts of these vile re-embodied spirits are to help other vile spirits possess their own living hosts. (I found this unlikely, since the spirits hated each other in their afterlife existences.) But, the ghostly plot gets worse. The spirits, who instantly traveled hundreds of light-years (How did they get that ability?) to possess their human hosts, now have incredible super powers. They can screw-up all electronic devices, throw firebolts, instantly repair or reshape their bodies, work together to bring down buildings, and change planetary climate. And, in yet another subplot, one of the returned spirits is Al Capone, who will probably organize them like his old Chicago mob.

This ghost story now is absurd beyond any believing, because most science fiction does not include violations of the first law of thermodynamics (you cannot get energy from nothing) and of the second law of thermodynamics (high energy systems tend to fall apart unless more energy is added). Even fantasy books with magic usually require some source of magical power.

I should have read more critical reviews before buying (thankfully, in used paperback format) the entire six-book series. You should not read this series unless you can put your logic, reason, and science knowledge on hold.

Not well known in the US this British author is writing the best epic SciFi on the market.I have been reading this genre for more than 50 years and he is a breath of fresh air and this series is beyond a doubt his masterpiece.

If you like hard edged space opera, you'll this! It's Star Wars for adults, with more original ideas and better writing.

The Reality Dysfunction; Expansion is part 2 of 6 in a major story told by Peter Hamilton, including the two Reality Dysfunction novels, two Neutronium Alchemist novels and two Naked God novels. They must be read as a set and in order. That said: Expansion picks up where Emergence left off. The Possessed are finding their way off Lalonde and spreading throughout the known universe as fast as they can, while everyone else is a) trying to stop the problem on Lalonde, b) trying to figure out what is happening on Lalonde and c) trying to stop what is happening on Lalonde from happening elsewhere. Unfortunately they are a day late and dollar short as too many of the possessed, including the very insane Quinn Dexter - a Satanist priest - have managed to leave Lalonde before anyone even knew what was going on.

Several teams of Marines and mercenaries are sent to Lalonde, to very little avail. The only team that makes any headway is one sent down from the Lady Mac, as Joshua Calvert has apparently rubbed some of his luck off onto everyone he touches.

CAUTION, MILD SPOILERS:
One thing that bothered me, however, was that the only woman mercenary - Ariadne - just seems to vanish somewhere between picking up Father Horst and the children and the final show-down where the mercenaries hold off the Possessed so the children can escape. Maybe I missed something, but the mercenaries were fighting in pairs, none of which included Ariadne, and Theo was driving the hovercraft - Ariadne was not mentioned. What happened to her? It's bothersome.

At any rate, this chapter in the series moved much more quickly than did Emergence, and the story seems to be coming together quite nicely. I found that I was becoming more aware of the various peoples and their relations to one another - Hamilton really is a master storyteller to wind so many threads together and make them all work. I feel comfortable recommending this story - at this point anyway - to anyone who would enjoy an epic science fiction story, or epic space opera.

Quite simply, these books are a heck of a LOT of FUN. The overall quality of the writing is high. The world building is amazing. Characters, from monarchs to street rats, are believable and intriguing. The dialog is very natural and the humor is funny (this is rare in ANY genre, trust me.) The future tech is fantastic, the action is non-stop, the plot twists are imaginatively fun...and the bang for the buck is incalculable. (Okay, I'm no prude, but the sex scenes didn't do much for me. They're very short though - 2 to 3 paragraphs maybe?)

Call me sub-genius, but I think one critic said the bad guys were "too violent." Hmmm, keep that cold pack right there on your temple, Johnny... Yes, I occasionally lost track of a character thread that hadn't "been around" for a while. It never took more than a few paragraphs for the setting, character or plot line to refresh me though.

These books are as much fun as the Many Colored Land series by Julian May (read them too!) In summary, if the critics have better stuff, please get it published so I can read it!

'Song of the Morning Star' is a lyrical masterpiece that leads you along a dreamy and, at times, surrealistic portrayal of the characters and events before, during and after June 25, 1876; soemthing that can be called The Battle of the Little Big Horn or Custer's Last Stand. As an exercise in wriitng it is nagnifcant, as any rype of history it should come with a warning label.

Evan Connell would probably call it 'The Day the White Man Got What he Deserved,' and it stars George Armstrong Custer as the contras-Jesus who dies for all our sins commited upon the native Americans. Mr. Connell takes the facts at hand and - garbing them in a absolutely superb writing styles lies us to his conclusions about who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. A lesser writer would have botched this effort at propaganda, producing something more akin to 'Obamanation.' It os not so much that the author twists facts or falsifies information but rather than he engages in the worst sort of character assasination through his gloriously well-written descriptions of the key individuals. Example Benteen is presented as having the agate-colored eyes of a killer, based upon Connell's opionion - and that is what and all it is - of a photograph. The author also seems to have slighting things to say about virtually everyone else, citing a litany of mortal and immortal sins as well as physical disabilities; all these add up to s slanderous description of US military personnel equal to what was depicted in 'Platoon' and 'Buffalo Soldiers.'

If you have read nothing about Custer before this book, be sure to read something thereafter that is less soothing to read but more accurate. I suggest 'The Day the World Ended at The Little Bighorn,' a much more equitable presentation of the story.

I have been to the battlefield and have read and seen numerous documentaries of the Big Horn" battle (even watched the made for television series by the same title as this book), and I can say that the series was not as good as the book and neither has anything else I have seen or read about that fatal day in Montana over one hundred and thirty years ago.

Those who study the Little Big Horn battle seem to fall into two camps where this work is concerned, some love it for it literary style, others loath it as it doesn't adhere to a strict timeline in recounting the events preceding and encompassing the battle. Instead, this book is a literary collage but its coverage is so well written that it is absolutely captivating. It encapsulates the spirit and mystery of the Little Big Horn like no other book. It's all here-the "hotspur" Custer as Connell calls him, the defiant Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, Reno described by the Crow scouts as "frothing at the mouth," the surly Benteen, Keogh and Comanche, spurious survivor stories galore and the evocative landscape of the battlefield itself. All captured in words and conveyed in a highly entertaining manner. It's almost as if Connell says we can never solve all the mysteries of this battle, so let's dispense with chronological history and just have fun! Besides, there are tons of excellent histories that do follow the conventional route that one can turn to for a more ordered look.

My first visit to the Little Big Horn took place in 1994 and I took a special paid tour that included the Crow's Nest. I remember our guide talking about Connell and how, when he was shown factual errors in the first edition of this book, he readily agreed to change them and acknowledlged his mistakes. Our guide said that not all authors are that way where their books are concerned. Speaks well of him and his book. Only drawback--the index is very scanty so don't rely on it if you look for references for, say, the names of all of Custer's officers.

On a whim, I purchased this book at a London bookshop in the late 1980's, and was immediately captivated by it. Since then, I have reread Son of the Morning Star at least half-a-dozen times, each time with greater pleasure. Notwithstanding the passage of more than two decades since its original publication, "Son of the Morning Star" remains magisterial. One Amazon review I read denigrated this book because it was, according to the writer, inadequate for the serious historian. Perhaps. There exists no shortage of books devoted to Custer, intended for the "serious historian," among them Evan's 1999 exhaustive "Custer's Last Fight." "Son of the Morning Star" does not purport to cater to the "serious historian." It is, as Dee Brown remarked, "unique and for that reason should endure." Buy it. Read it.

This slightly dated work by an accomplished novelist is well worth slugging through its lack of organization and meanderings to extract the huge compendium of facts contained therein. Please note; while other readers have thought this was an historical novel, it isn't fiction. It would deserve five stars if better organized and possessed a better index, but alas, one can't have everything. The reader will read and note a fact or story, but find himself unable to locate it later without reading through the entire book again.

The "slightly dated" aspect is deserved as it, a 1984 work, does not contain the archeological data unearthed by Fox et al since that time. Nonetheless, for sheer facts, statements, and opinions, this is the reader's single best source on the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

I recommend this book for purchase and reading.

Very thorough and well-organized. The story lays to rest the myths good and bad of these three heroes of the Alamo, but this only serves to make them more human and far more interesting. As a Texan who was raised on many of the legends, I was a little upset that some of the stories may not be true (the line in the sand), but was actually more impressed with the three as individuals by the end of the book, and appreciated more the often contentious road to Texan independence. Furthermore, while the book focuses mainly on Bowie, Crockett, and Travis, there are tremendous insights into many individuals and processes involved in the revolution, including reflections on the reluctant leadership of Stephen F. Austin (whom I greatly respect) and the unsteady and unpredictable leadership of Sam Houston (whom I do not). Very informative and well worth the time.

Davis is meticulous in his research, teasing from the legends what we know, what can be deduced, what is probable, improbable, and impossible. So, if you want scholarship, an in-depth understanding of the truth, as near as it can be determined, this book is great.

Davis' sketches of the personalities and characters of Crockett, Bowie and Travis were also impressive.

But, IMO, if you want a wallopping page-turner, look elsewhere.

Quick! Name the three most famous battles fought on what is now US soil! Well, there may be some room for discussion but I would go with (in no particular order) The Battle of the Little Big Horn, Gettysburg, and The Battle of the Alamo. Two of these have their stature largely established on legend more than fact since there were few, if any, surviving witnesses from the side that most of us focus on. Indeed, little use has been made of the observations of the winning sides. Most references I've read discount most of the eyewitness accounts. This leaves two of the three battles with a limited availability of historical sources (while books on Gettysburg continue to emerge with new sources, interpretations and perspectives). In view of the apparent limitations he had to work with, what William C. Davis has done for the Battle of the Alamo is a truly impressive work of research, organization and perspective.

Be forewarned; this book of 587 pages of text and roughly 160 pages of footnotes uses merely 4 or 5 pages to tell of the Battle itself. Davis relies almost exclusively on Sutherland's "Fall of the Alamo" which is rather less extravagant than popular legend. While this book limited its' account of the actual battle, it gives, perhaps, the best written account of the events leading up to the Battle. It does so, as its' title implies, by focussing on the lives of Davy Crockett, James Bowies and William Barret Travis.

The threee men's lives display three seperate directions and give us three seperate understandings of the motivations of men in that time and place. Crockett was the explorer who became restless each time civilization moved into the neighborhood. He was the most famous of the three both in his time and in History and his was the life we enjoyed reading the most. His political career was "interesting" but not worthy of any more impressive adjective. His demise was the event that elevated his life but he would have been remembered even without the Alamo (albeit by far fewer people).

James Bowie was the wheeler dealer whose land-grabbing schemes were so boldly and so crudely illegal that most readers will find themselves having to make excuses to keep plodding through the morass of thievery. In time his exploits become more engrossing to the reader but there was always a new angle to twist in order to create a new fortune on paper. Bowie's bravery in Texas might have elevated his name higher than it was had he not already been half-dead with Typhoid Fever before the Battle even began. As it was, his name would have been obscure in modern times had it not been for the Alamo. His knife and his legal trail of fraudulent claims would have been all that was left to his fame (and it was his brother who invented that famous knife).

William Barret Travis was the least know of the three and the least acclaimed. As a kid I often wondered who this Travis character was and why was his name mentioned with Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie. Travis was a lawyer of limited ability until he fled to Texas to escape his debts back home. There he eventiually found his abilities in the legal profession and he represents that stabelizing effect that professionals bring when they arrive at the frontier settlements. Travis might possibly have exceeded the fame of his two counterparts had it not been for his death at the Alamo. That is because Davis portrays his legal mind as one of a man with great political promise. (Or he could have drifted deeply into obscurity).

The details that the author gives us is an excellent study of the emerging American Nation. The explorer, the fortune hunter, and the civilizer were a sort of system that led to the development of the great American continent. Reading the stories of these men gets confusing at times. (I often had trouble figuring out if I was reading about Bowie or Travis since their financial lives were so similar). However, the details leading up to the Alamo gave me a much better appreciation of the actual events. I may not have been as excited about reading of the Battle (as I was in reading Jeff Long's "Duel of Eagles") but I realized at the end of the book that I had gotten more out of it than any other account of the Alamo. These men (and others such as Sam Houston) were fatally flawed but they were also very interesting. Kudos to Willam C. Davis for putting together such a well-conceived and well-written account.

This book is a very well conceived idea that tries to understand what happened at the Alamo through the eyes of three people. Each provides a different perspective to life in Texas and life in the United States in the time period leading up to the Alamo. A crook like Bowie has fled from land speculations schemes and is trying to make a name for himself in Texas. Travis has abandoned his family and gone to make an honest life and escape the debt he built up. Finally we have David Corckett the hero of Tennessee who has lost elections and patience with Andrew Jackson heading to Texas. All of these three have led colorful lives with Crockett being the most interesting. This book serves as a biography to all three while describing the importance of the Alamo to Texas. It is very well done and you find yourself going through the book very quickly. I highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in understanding what life looked like in the United States in the years leading up to the Alamo.

William Davis, best known for his excellent works on the American War Between the States (oh, alright, "Civil War" if you insist) delves into the Texas Revolution with this work, and presents historians with an excellent glimpse at the three principal figures of the Alamo Siege. This triple biography gives an excellent in-depth look at the careers, motivations, and personal lives of three men on their march to an appointment with destiny.

I highly recommend all of Mr. Davis' works, especially "Deep Waters of the Proud" and "Look Away!"

This is the best biography on Alexander the Great.

It covers his entire life and a short period thereafter. We find Alexander growing up in Macedonia, being tutored by Aristotle, and his military training in his father's expeditions.

Then we are taken on Alexander's military conquest of the known world. Through, the Middle East, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and to India.

We have a front row seat on all the known battles.

This book is the definitive biography of Alexander the Great.
It is excellent.

This is a big book in volume as well as content being over 500 pages long but Oxford historian Robin Lane Fox has contrived to make it interesting for the reader from beginning to end. Many facts have been written about Alexander over the years, some true, some doubtful and much that is pure speculation. This in turn has given Alexander a mythical quality, bordering on god like proportions.

The author's writing style is both concise and lucid with no pretensions to the fact that he is the master and the reader by his very nature is the pupil. In a nutshell the author writes for everyone not just the scholar. This book is for anyone with an interest in the life and times of Alexander. The author progresses through the life of Alexander putting a little more meat on the bones with every passing phase of Alexander's relatively short life.

This is a book for everyone. For those who have found it difficult, or even impossible in the past to read and I mean read a history book from start to finish, rather than just go cherry picking facts from the numerous pages, then this is a good book to get your teeth into. It can be read almost like a novel, but is far more interesting than any fictional book.

A brilliant book. It reads like an historical novel, but it isn't. Sure, there is some speculation, but based only on the author's impeccable grasp of logic and circumstances. If you want to know about Alexander the Great, but want more than a list of dates and events - there is no better book than this IMHO.

I worship ATG and feel sooo guilty because I should portend these intense emotions for the saviour, GOD and such but this man....Oliver I do not think u were much present for this direction as your commentary is wonderful but you do not even know how to pronounce your main characters NAMES...JESUS!! I found the red light of his arrow attack in India sooo obtuse and the back n forth history unrequired...BUT MUCH BETTER than the Burton film and then there is the bookend of the ring drop is VERY powerful, I just feel faint when I see that...his history is soooo profound and I appreciate your attempts to capture any part of it...Colin was beyone my comprehension as a superb actor with his incredible range, I know no other that could do this role....Angelina was beautiful, evil and loving simultaneously and I could care less about anyone's accent...I would have liked to see more of ATG's accomplishments (i.e. TYRE, etc) but know that this would have been a 16hr film...thank you all for giving me a wonderful excitement that there existed true leaders in this world...

I've picked this book up in a Florida mall basicly because the movie just came out featuring Colin Farrell. The film took me 3 hours and the book took me 3 months, but every piece of extra time was worth it.

This book describes the hardships during the journey and is comprehensive in detail. Seeing the movie afterwards made it feel like so much detail was missing, it just wasn't the whole story. And the movie was based largely on this book.

If you like the movie and want to take it a step further, I recommend this book. This is the real story.

The Age of Gold is a fascinating read. The book primarily deals with the California gold rush and its consequences, but the author adeptly deals with so many other issues related to California's early history. These include the struggles to build order in newly created communities, racial relations, the transcontinental railroad, the Civil War, international trade, etc. Mr. Brands's primary thesis is that the gold rush was not simply an influential event that helped shape California and our nation's history, but that it was a truly paradigm-shifting type of moment. He superbly demonstrates the effects of the gold discovery on mining and transportation technology. He argues persuasively that the gold rush played an important role in shaping the national character. He argues that the early admission of California into the Union, itself facilitated by the discovery of gold, inflamed North-South tensions and may have speeded the resort to rebellion. The gold discovery also encouraged the creation of the transcontinental railroad, which, as Brands argues, created the largest integrated market in the world and transformed America into an economic power.

And yet, I don't want people to get the impression from what I've written so far that this book deals solely with large, impersonal socioeconomic and political forces. Because this book is first and foremost a tale of fascinating personalities. This is, in my opinion, where Mr. Brands really makes his mark, in retelling the stories of the men and women who braved numerous obstacles to come to California and who then created the technology and the institutions that led to its statehood. Brands relies almost exclusively on personal diaries and firsthand accounts in the first section of the book, which details the practical difficulties of reaching California from the eastern US and from foreign countries in the mid-19th century. The first part of the section covers the voyage by sea, both around the Cape Horn and over the Central American isthmus. The latter route was taken by Jesse Fremont, wife of famous explorer John, who crossed the isthmus with her young daughter while her husband was conducting an overland expedition. The second part of this section looks at those who made the overland expedition from the eastern states. While the grueling hazards of cross-country travel are pretty familiar to most Americans who learned about the Oregon Trail and the Donner party in school, Brands nonetheless adds new layers to this dramatic story through his expert storytelling and adept use of diaries.

After detailing what people went through to reach California, Brands analyzes daily life in the territory and discusses the challenges of creating law and order in a place overflowing with newcomers whose primary goal was not to create a society but simply to strike it rich. He points out that San Francisco in its earliest days was overrun by criminal gangs (including some fearsome Australian gangs), who in turn were confronted by vigilante citizens' groups. In the absence of building codes, the city was also a perennial fire hazard. The process of creating a society was long and drawn out. Brands next looks at the role California and its bid for statehood played in national politics, and specifically its role in inflaming North-South tensions and contributing to the outbreak of war. Individuals who loom large in this section include William Sherman, who played an important role in California politics prior to the Civil War, and John Fremont (along with his extraordinary wife), who unsuccessfully carried the Republican banner in the presidential election in 1856. Finally, after the civil war, Brands turns his attention to the creation of the transcontinental railroad, including the important role in its construction played by former governor Leland Stanford.

Along the way, Brands manages to cover numerous other issues, including the threat posed by the populating of California to Native Americans, the debates in early California over slavery (including the fascinating legal case of Archy Lee), life in California for original Mexican Californians and immigrant Chinese, and much more. And again, I want to emphasize the fact that while Brands deals adeptly with large-scale historical forces, his narrative is populated by fascinating individuals, and informed by their personal accounts. In conclusion, I'd recommend this book to anybody with an interest in American history, and anybody with an appreciation for well-written and intelligent social history.

The Age of Gold is the best book that I have read (and I have read quite a few) about the California Gold Rush for it tells the story in the words of the people involved and gives a feeling of the incredible change the discovery of gold brought to the State of California.

Mild disappointment. Too episodic and written just north of the level of a USA Today article. I think the author intends the narrative episodes to illustrate valid historic points, but he doesn't really tie the narrative and the theses together explicitly, and he isn't a good enough writer to make them flow together implicitly.

His key premise appears to be "The California Gold Rush was really important. Here are some examples." And the examples are often interesting and amusing, but not enough on which to hang a story which has no point.

I have learned so very much about American history from this book. I had no idea the discovery of gold in CA had affected the entire nation's history in so many ways.
The book is well written, very thorough and at times even exciting in its revelations.

I buy more books faster than I can read them so I always have a large queue of books to read. Over half of the books I read are about history. I picked up this book intending to simply read a few pages to get an idea of its content but, once I started reading, I couldn't put it down. What Brands has done better than perhaps any other historian is put the gold rush into historical, social, political, and even world context. When gold was discovered in January of 1848, China was having a revolt that cost more lives than any other conflict of the 19th Century (approximately 13,000,000!), France was in the middle of a revolution, and depression was sweeping Europe. Ironically, the trip to the gold fields was a longer journey for Americans on the East coast than it was for any other nation bordering the Pacific Ocean. People from all over the globe dropped everything and headed for California. The journeys of those who sought gold were often the greatest adventures of their lives and many of them never survived the trip. They headed into the unknown not knowing what would happen to them and having only a vague idea of what was in store for them. Doctors, lawyers, farmers, shopkeepers, laborers, gamblers, criminals, seamen, and virtually everyone imaginable dropped everything and headed for California.

The first part of the book covers some of those incredible journeys both by land and sea, relying on first-hand accounts by those you made the trip. I found that part of the book alone to be fascinating. Brands then takes us to the gold fields and briefly describes how the evolution of mining technology developed. But that's only the beginning; we learn about the amazingly rapid growth in the population of California and how it impacted the the people involved. We also learn how California's admission into the Union caused brought the underlying causes of the Civil War to a head. Unlike many historical books, Brands puts everything into context, giving meaning to his subject.

I haven't done justice to this book in this review. But I can tell you that it is one of the finest books of its kind that I have read and I am a voracious reader of history. If you have any interest in history at all, you will almost certainly find this a fascinating read. H.W. Brands may be one of the finest historians of our time. I can't recommend this book too much.

I have searched high and low for a better story on Alexander the Great, and this is without a doubt, the tops. Nobody gets the ancient world like Mary Renault. Nobody! I think she is the reincarnation of one of Alexander's concubines. Anyway, she understands the man, unlike so many other writers. This is not your typical novel, but is high literature, superior to the vast majority of the trite trash taught in English classes. Effeminate college professors fear teaching heroic and manly books like this. Put this on your shelf next to W. Shakespeare. Do not buy just this one book, but all three in the series because you will be dying for the next injection just like an addict. Go ahead, take a chance, just like A. the G. And just like him you will achieve V i c t o r y . . .

No writer of historical fiction has ever done a better job of creating a vivid picture of her subject. The characters of Olympia and Philip and their legendary son Alexander are made as real as today's best known celebrities, and include a plethora of good and bad elements painted with amazing empathy. The portrayal of Alexander's tutor Aristotle and his life long comrade and lover Hephaistion are also well done, and the warfare of Alexander's early days is done with cinema veritie clarity. This is a more than fitting prelude to the author's rendition of Alexander's subsequent life in The Persian Boy.

Pros: Some really strong scenes and Alexander's relationships with those around him are very interesting.

Cons: The story as a whole doesn't hang together well, the omniscient third point of view doesn't quite work here, Alexander could be better characterized, and the scenes with sex or violence leave something to be desired

There are places where this book really, really shines. Individual scenes, especially those detailing Alexander's relationship with his mother, his father, or Hephaistion are positively intriguing in part because these characters are so interesting, so well drawn.

It is therefore a bit surprising that the book fails to do full justice to its main character, Alexander. Alexander remains a bit too one-dimensional, a bit too god-like throughout the book and besides, we don't really see enough of him because of Renault's tendency to head hop to random, unimportant characters. This is unfortunate -- her main talent lies in slowly drawing out her characters, in making the reader empathize and identify with them. She is scarcely able to do this when she devotes so little time to each individual character.

This also gives the story a strangely disjointed feeling. It jumps around too much. Although the book is well written in general, Renualt is sometimes so incredibly vague about the sex and violence that I am not sure what happened, an annoying tendency.

Although this book isn't as good as later books in the Alexander books, there are certainly some great moments that show Renault's skill. 3+ stars.

Mary Renault did meticulous research for her story of Alexander the Great from birth to manhood. It is told from the viewpoint of another young man, employed by Alexander, who became his personal servant and close friend. The various happenings in Alexander's life are taken from recorded history, and fully filled out with descriptions of the culture and mores of the times. Most of the people mentioned were actual persons who interacted with Alexander, including his parents, who fought bitterly over his allegiance to each of them. I found it a fascinating history, and noted a stark comparison of times throughout the ages. Nothing changes.

Wish they'd reprint all Mary Renault's work for today's readers, since she's a master at bringing you right into the times. She writes with authority, which she had, and with an authenticity that takes your breath away. This is her first book about Alexander, to be followed by "The Persian Boy", which is my favorite book of all time. If this time period and Alexander the Great fascinates you as it always has fascinated me, I suggest you buy both these books and wallow in them.

This was an enjoyable read. The author presents a balanced perspective of Washington and portrays him fairly accurately. Although his Potomac plans eventually proved of little utilitarian worth, the vision that gave birth to them show the spirit of the man more than anything else. The only reason why I didn't give 5-stars is because some of the text dragged on a bit, particularly as it relates to distances and locales.

Grand Idea has not gotten the attention it deserves, it seems to me.
It is a compelling, outstanding addition to books about the revoluntionary war period, and is a terrific bit of biography recounting Washington's life following his retirement from the Army in 1783.
This book is not only informative, but is a highly entertaining read.
I hope that Joel Achenbach takes on another such project soon. Ellis, Ferling, McCullough, Woods, Chernow step aside and make room for Achenbach.

A great introduction to Washington's early years and exploits before the Revolutionary War and his compulsion with exploring and establishing the Potomac region as the gateway to the West. Can be a bit dull when it discusses geography in parts, but overall really interesting.

Joel Achenbach begins with, as he admits himself, a small incident in the life of George Washington: a tour he took of his properties in western Pennsylvania in 1784; much of this trip was made by way of the Potomac River. Washington believed the Potomac would be the perfect Gateway to the West, connecting the Atlantic seaboard with the Ohio River, requiring only a few portages between connecting rivers along the way beyond Cumberland, MD. He was especially keen on this idea after the establishment of the nation's capital on the banks of the river just below the Great Falls. The idea flopped: besides natural obstacles, the river was just not deep enough to handle the ships that would be plying its waters; also (and Achenbach makes little mention of this) new settlers were already streaming across the Alleghenies via numerous trails well established in PA - the main viaduct to the West from the end of the Revolutionary War to the completion of the Erie Canal. But Achenbach would have a very short book if he ended it there. Instead he develops the use of the river through the canal age (the C&O graces its banks), the railroad era (the B&O ran along its banks in spots), right up to the highway period. The book becomes something it didn't seem to start out being and by the half-way point has little to do with George Washington or the Potomac River itself. Achenbach is a popular historian - his prose is laced with modern slang terms and his research is all based on second-hand sources. Despite this, he is a good writer, able to capture our interest: his account of Washington's final days before his death is powerful and moving. But basically the book is an overview of the value of the Potomac River as a thruway to the West; it's a mildly compelling though interesting book, but not very penetrating. It's a good capsule history.

`The Grand Idea' is a book with a very loose central theme - George Washington's vision (share by many others) of the westward expansion of the young United States, and his idea to use the Potomac River as the crucial tie that would bind the trans-Appalachian western frontier to the coastal population center. The book meanders, (much like the undisciplined and changeable river in its subtitle), all over from that center, covering much of the history of the republic from the end of The Revolution to the end of Washington's life, and then beyond.

Through the first ten chapters, starting with Washington's trip across the mountains into Western Pennsylvania in 1784, then winding leisurely through the second half of Washington's career, the book sometimes approaches closely to the theme of Washington's Potomac improvement plan, but often veers sharply away while examining other aspects of Washington's presidency and the early republic. The book's pace changes dramatically in the last five chapters, going from a lazy stream to raging rapids. Four of the final five chapters cover the history of the United States from 1800 through the Civil War, concentrating on internal improvements such as canals, turnpikes, and railroads, but hitting on such historical markers as the Lewis and Clark expedition and the War of 1812 as well. The final chapter details the state of the Potomac River in the twenty-first century, and serves as a "where are they now" look back on many of the internal improvements and key locations from earlier in the book.

It would be easy for me to dismiss this book as poorly focused, light-weight, popular history, yet I can't quite do that. While there is no doubt that Achenbach's book is pop history, and often light-weight and lacking focus, it is also a well written and compelling story, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. The first ten chapters, covering Washington's career from the end of the Revolution to the end of his life, introduce many important but often overlooked episodes of American history, including Shays Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion, the Indian Wars of the 1790s, and the compromise which led to the building of Washington D.C., and includes a cast of semi-obscure, fascinating American characters who merit further study, including Albert Gallatin, Light Horse Harry Lee, and Hugh Henry Brackenridge. While it has nothing to teach scholars of the period, for the novice, it is a fun to read crash-course on the early republic, suggesting many fascinating avenues of continued study.

Theo Logos

What we really need in this and future administrations is a Secretary of History so that we can recognize what has been done right and wrong in the past and avoid the wrongs and repeats the rights in the future, exactly what we don't do.

Robert Kagan challenges the perception, that a country's foreign policy shall be based on its economic interests only. This book is a very solid effort to prove, that the US foreign policy in the 19th century was a fusion of economic interests and the reasons like morality, humanitarianism and national liberation. What Kagan basically says, is that the most of the 19th century American politicians were not used to think along the lines of "a pragmatic foreign policy" - the term, which has been so much in use these days, and particularly in Europe. Obviously, besides economic calculations, the US policymakers at that time had also their ideological calculations.

The author does not rebuff the allegations, that the desire for personal profit had played a role in every acquisition of new American territory. But he adds, that American expansionism was possible first and foremost by attraction, based on a superior political and economic system and only then by force of arms. "American global influence need not depend on the perpetual mlitary subjugation of overseas colonies. While the use of force might sometimes be necessary to gain American traiders equal access to foreign markets, America's real and lasting influence would come through the power of trade itself".

At the end of the 19th century the United States declares war on Spain, however. A signifcant reason for that, was awareness that the continuation of the Cuban Civil war included the total destruction of American property and investments. But as the author puts it, although those were important considerations, for President McKinley they were secondary to the humanitarian crisis. Robert Kagan mentions that some historians are insisting that the humanitarian concerns in this case were just a cover for selfish economic interests, while most American historians had been baffled that the United States had gone to war for abstract reasons.

Interesting enough, to read the whole book, was to find out that President Grant, in his second inaugural address, expressed his conviction that "our great Maker is preparing the world, in His own good time, to become one nation, speaking one language". The author adds to that, that most of Americans at that time believed, that all nations are treading the same path to become civilized; some faster, some slower. Today, this acknowledgement appears to have outlived glory days; it is modern to discuss cultural diversity. The question, therefore, is whether American world expansion in the 21st century is as inevitable as the expansion in the Western hemisphere during the 18th and 19th centuries? Perhaps Robert Kagan will tell us about that in his next book.

I recently purchased this book and have started reading it after hearing parts of a radio interview with the author. I have not finished reading it yet, but the portion I have finished I was not overly impressed with. I'm no liberal by any stretch of the imagination, but this book seems to be such a naked apologetic for Neo-Conservatism that it is hard to to take the author seriously.

Although he quotes Perry Miller on Page 8, his treatment of the Puritans in the rest of the chapter seems to be diametrically opposed to Miller's observations and to that his most famous student Heimert, both of whom paint them in a far more generous light.

His comments on the political and practical philosophy of the founding fathers is new to me and somewhat interesting, possibly there will be some pearls waiting for those who decide to stick it out. I'm not sure I will end up being one of their number.

In Dangerous Nation, Washington Post columnist and former U.S. state department employee Robert Kagan makes a compelling case for a new way to interpret the history of U.S. foreign relations. Most scholars contest that America's foreign policy up until the early twentieth century might best be described as "isolationist" in nature; a potential global power which only unleashed its global influence when threatened by two world wars and a fifty year Cold War. Kagan, conversely, argues that the United States pushed forth a foreign policy of expansion and global influence from its inception. As the book's title suggests, other nations recognized this incipient tendency in U.S. foreign policy, especially European absolutists. In a growing era of modernity and liberal democracy, monarchists were wary of both American global potential and the ideals for which they stood.
Kagan's interpretation of the past seems to hinge on his own experiences of the present. For example, on page 158, Kagan's contention that in the early 19th century's era of European revolutions, "the United States was unavoidably a protagonist in this Cold War-style global confrontation" reveals an interpretation of the past fixed solely in a modern mindset. This statement seems less surprising considering Kagan's former role in the U.S. State Department during the Reagan administration. Superimposing a Cold War framework onto a conflict revolving around monarchies, not to mention completely devoid of nuclear weapons, is bad enough. Realizing that Cold War frameworks, at least to many policy experts, are no longer relevant in today's terrorist-focused foreign policy, makes even Kagan's "modern" framework seem dated. In other words, basing one's interpretation of the past is one thing; basing it on a neo-con's experiences of the 1980s seems a little, well, one sided.
Kagan's nuanced summary of slavery's role in shaping early nineteenth century is more likely to win applauds from modern diplomatic historians. In his seventh chapter "The Foreign Policy of Slavery," Kagan takes the most pressing domestic issue of America's first seventy years and shows out it affected the outlook of foreign policy makers. Revolutionaries turned statesmen of no lesser stature that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were quite wary of the slave uprising in Haiti--an event wholly under-appreciated by American historians--and according to Kagan (on page 185), this even produced "an acute national vulnerability that was recognized in both the North and the South." The latter of these groups were, for obvious reasons, more concerned with black uprisings, especially those in close proximities of Spanish settlements. This threat, Kagan convincingly argues, helped to influence the aggressive foreign policy of early American statesmen.
Some theoretical background would add much to Kagan's easily accessible summary of U.S. Foreign Relations. For example, he is astute to point out that George Washington's now famous warning against engaging in European "entangling alliances" simply implied staying out of the realm of European military enterprises; Washington was more concerned with westward expansion, especially the Ohio territory. Indian removal in the west prompted a whole new realm of land-based foreign policy that sea-led European Empire did not have to deal with regularly. Kagan would have been better served by noting the classics in U.S. foreign policy to actually flesh out this observation. For example, what would Frederick Jackson Turner's (now admittedly antiquated) analysis say about this early westward myopic tendency? Or, conversely, what might a borderlands methodology contribute to Kagan's overview? These criticisms are not meant to simply point out what Dangerous Nation should have addressed for criticism's sake; instead, they show an under-appreciation of foreign relation's historiography.
Race relations played a key role domestically, and Kagan hints at its influence on determining the ideas of policymakers. For example, he points out Alexander Hamilton's flirtation with the idea of freeing Venezuela from Spanish rule--a lofty goal for the young statesman. Yet, Hamilton felt confident of success in any such endeavor, either on the western border or overseas, due to a supposed "natural order" of things. Kagan chalks this up to a liberal-enlightenment worldview, supposedly one best characterized by the influence of Adam Smith's invisible hand (an idea that permeated America's entire worldview in the late 18th and early 19th century, not just its economics). But could racism have had more influence on Hamilton's view of the Spanish instead of his seemingly natural gift for cockiness? Put another way, Hamilton, along with John Adams, supported the abolition of slavery even before the revolution. Yet, how stratified were these men's racial ideas, and to what degree did they influence foreign policy ideas? Kagan does recognize that Hamilton, the Anglophile, scoffed at the idea of serious Spanish resistance. In Hamilton's contradictions, other scholars might have looked past a Cold War paradigm to see the complexities that race might have played in nascent U.S. foreign policy.
Kagan's neglect of nuanced analysis clouds his entire investigation, and his sweeping conclusions illustrate the most glaring mistakes of this otherwise well-written book. For example, his myopic fixation on the privileged men who shaped the foreign policy of early America only hints at the social and environmental issues which might have played a greater role in American foreign policy. In other words, Kagan's single-minded expansionist paradigm backed by a basic understanding of modernity-led self-assuredness, only provide part of a much greater historical reality. Realities of geography with regard to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as the greatest barrier of European hostility are under-appreciated; realities of private industries in influencing government decisions; realities of racism, economic peaks and crashes, social and intellectual thought, all are underrepresented in what seems to be a book intent on reviving American historical consensus. In other words, Kagan's book seems to make unforgiving arguments for the sanctity of American actions both at home and abroad, and for this reason--combined with a lack of academic nuance--it reads like a former government official endorsing his nation's actions...which, of course, it is.
The most glaring omission of this monograph: where is William Appleman William's in this analysis? Arguably the most influential historian of U.S. Foreign Relations of the past century, Williams' analyses, both in The Contours of American History and in The Tragedy of American Diplomacy beg to be included in Kagan's methodology. Admittedly, the latter of these works only skirts into an investigation of the late 19th century (opting instead to focus on the early twentieth century). That being said, Kagan's book hinges on understanding American ideology, especially through the lens of enlightenment liberalism. This lens is exactly what Williams' examined ad nauseum in his works on diplomacy he influence of a liberal economic weltanschauung, even if Kagan choses not to agree with, should not go unnoticed by any scholar of nineteenth century U.S. diplomacy. It is because of this glaring omission, Kagan risks losing his credibility both in the academy and in government diplomatic circles.

Reviewed by Muhammed Hassanali

Kagan's main thesis is that America has always actively participated in state affairs beyond its borders