John Mack Faragher

An accessible, narrative history of California from before the arrival of the first Europeans in the 16th century right through to 2020 and the Covid crisis. Faragher's intention throughout seems to be to bring out the story of how California became the astonishingly diverse place it now is, without losing sight of the many ways in which, during those centuries, people in positions of strength have abused their power to exploit those weaker than themselves, or to take short term (and show more ultimately catastrophic) advantage of the region's 'natural bounty', which of course masks a rather fragile ecosystem.

In short, humans have behaved as badly in California as in most other parts of the world, but here it is all compressed into a relatively short time-frame and rather isolated from the outside world, so the effect is often much more dramatic, when we read for example about the way in which Franciscan misisonaries exploited Native Californians as (in effect, if not name) slave workers, and later American miners and settlers pushed them off their land; or nineteenth century white trade unionists campaigned against civil rights for Asian workers, or agribusiness used the police and national guard to defeat striking workers, or .... right through to Rodney King — and most of the time they got away with it in the courts and legislature. You get the picture, it wasn't pretty.

Of course, we get the positive stuff too, and I got to fill in a lot of gaps in my knowledge of how it all fitted together, especially the bit before 1846, which I've never really seen explained properly before. Faragher takes a lot of trouble to make the book accessible to non-professional readers (in fact, he tells us that he got his grandchildren to road-test it from the point of view of young readers). But this means that he doesn't use technical terms without explaining them first, not that he dumbs anything down.

There are no footnotes and a few maps, but otherwise the only illustrations are charming line-drawings (by Weshoyot Alvitre) at the head of each chapter, which gives it all a bit of the feel of a pre-war children's book. show less

The author here tries really hard. Before I got this audio book I struggled with just what he said many Americans in the mid 20th century did, not knowing the difference between Daniel Boone and Davey Crocket. This was true of me, and I never knew there was a Daniel Boone show, let alone that he was played by the same actor who played Crocket.

Daniel Boone's story is steeped in legend and this helps separate the real man from the legend, to the point its boring at points. He's just a regular show more dude. show less

A thorough history of California.

In a series of short and easily digestible chapters the author describes the history of California from what we know of the Indigenous people before European contact to the modern day.

Many histories of California tend to gloss over its history before 1846; this work does not. The author goes into considerable detail regarding the Indigenous people, the days of the Spanish missions and Spanish rule, and the twenty-five year period of Mexican rule. The author show more does not spare detail as he covers California's history as part of the United States, covering the socio-political and cultural events and milestones of each decade since the 1840s.

The author interweaves the history of his own ancestors into the story of the development of California, and never forgets the existence and influence of the Indigenous people on the land. A very insightful and judicious exploration into California's heritage.

**--galley received as part of early review program show less

Daniel Boone: The Life of an American Legend and Pioneer by John Mack Faragher. I started this audio book when we were in the U.S. traveling up and down I-75 through Kentucky. It's fun to hear an historic place mentioned in a book and look up and see that the same place is at the next interstate exit. This book taught me a lot about the history of Kentucky, and frontier life in general. As my own family's migration to Kentucky in the 1800s was somewhat tied to the trailblazing work of people show more like Boone and Col. Richard Henderson, I found the historical picture painted in this book to be pretty fascinating. A historian by the name of Tapp is quoted in one of the last chapters to boot.

Boone is perhaps a legend only because he lived long enough to become one. But his life was so full of strange-but-true happenings it reads almost like a comic book. Taken captive by natives, later adopted as a blood brother, later killing those same blood brothers, and losing his fortune along with most other pioneer settlers along the way, just to mention a few chapters. He was a survivor who would lie, change sides, appear to change sides, and do whatever it took to survive the next day. But he certainly wasn't a coward.

One aspect of frontier life that was pretty fascinating was the foolhardy choices that were made out of pride in order not to appear cowardly. This got a lot of Kentuckians unnecessarily killed. Another was the fact that the land-grab was so quick and intense, that overlapping boundaries and disputes over surveys wound up in courts for over a century. A lot of people lost money this way. At the end of his life, Boone and other pioneers lamented that lawyers now carved up everything that had been theirs.

While there is some dispute, the historical facts seem fairly clear that when Boone left Kentucky for modern-day Missouri he never looked back. He hated the politics in Kentucky that had spurned him and probably would have never given permission for his bones to be re-interred in Kentucky, much less in Frankfort.

My only real Boone memory growing up was a family trip to Boonesborough where we watched a dramatized reenactment of a battle between Boone's company and a band of Shawnee led by Chief Blackfish. I was pretty scared of Blackfish when I was 5. What I don't remember learning then was that Blackfish was essentially Boone's adopted brother at one point in his captivity. Natives believed that by adopting a captive, their body would be inhabited by the soul of a deceased relative. Boone had apparently grown close to his Shawnee family in captivity, but how close remains in dispute as he led an escape and later had to kill some of them in battle.

I finished this book on my long subway rides in Ankara, which paints quite the contrast from frontier America. I give this book 4 stars out of 5. If you want to know everything there is to know about Daniel Boone, buy this book. show less