David Remley

This is the third biography on Kit Carson I've read in the past six months and so far rereading what is more or less the same story over and over again, with nuanced differences from each author, hasn't gotten the least bit old. By now I know the noteworthy beats of Carson's life from memory so it's not like there are many surprises left to discover. I should restate that. Even though I know how his story ends, the value of Carson's biography lies in the telling and, subsequently, in his show more legacy. There are always new hidden truths waiting to be discovered, even from a tale I know by heart.

David Remley's report on Kit Carson is the kind of biography I love—a full measure of a person's life, triumphs AND failings, with an occasional impartial judgment from the author. For many decades during his life in the 19th century and many more after his death, Carson was regarded as a great American hero of westward expansion. And then starting around the 1960s the pendulum swung the other way, and Carson was re-branded a cold-blooded killer. No argument from me. He was all those things. His active involvement in the forced Long Walk of the Navajo's, for example, is especially egregious in light of being thought a hero. There's this tendency by many—a shortcoming in my opinion—to pass judgment on the past according to today's standards. I'm not interested in the labels of hero and villain when it comes to history. Leave that to fiction. The real world is not that simple. The value of the biography lies in context and motivation. Who is this extraordinary person, living in an extraordinary time and doing extraordinary things? Remley's book captures exactly this tone. show less

Mr. Remley provides more family religious (Scots-Irish Presbyterian) background for the Carson family than other authors, and when telling the same stories other authors have researched and told, he uses a different angle, drawing upon the prevalent common justification of time and place (mid-1800s New Mexican border territory).