What a great experience this book was!

books:

	• Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West Hampton Sides Random House Audio, 2006 average customer review:based on 136 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

KIT CARSON ACTION HERO

What a dude Christopher (Kit) Carson was! Who would have guessed? A prototypical American hero has remained less well known than Buffalo Bill Cody, Wild Bill Hickock, Davy Crockett and Wyatt Earp yet makes the latter group look like a barbershop quartet. Expert Indian tracker and fighter, soldier, hunter, explorer, scout, crack shot, commander of troops in battle, involved in dozens if not hundreds of derring-do, swashbuckling episodes including narrow brushes with death, at the very least Kit Carson deserves his own action hero toy figure! As a scout and messenger for American forces that executed President Polk's obsessive goal of Manifest Destiny, Kit Carson had as much to do with annexing California and the American Southwest from Mexico as anyone else. Regarded even in his time as small in stature, Kit Carson nevertheless was a killer, an effective leader of men and a survivor who could trek across mountains and deserts, finding water, trails and passes, and avoiding hostile indians. In BLOOD AND THUNDER, Hampton Sides presents a readable, entertaining biography of Kit Carson. Mr. Sides edges his scope out even further to include a kind of history of the Southwest in the 1800's. In particular, he deals with the Navajo tribe and their conflict with the United States. Commanche, Kiowa and Sioux tribes have a repuation for being fierce but Navajos always seemed to me to be peaceful expert blanket weavers. Besides learning about Carson's forgetten life (he was famous in his own time), the big surprise in BLOOD AND THUNDER was to learn that the Navajo were a warlike, powerful, semi-nomadic tribe that were for decades a serious problem to Mexican and American settlers alike and to the Spanish before them and Kit Carson played an important role in subduing them. There are a lot of colorful characters in this book, Navajo and Mexican and American, men and women, and much rich detail. BLOOD AND THUNDER reads like a rip-roaring novel, soon to be a major movie, and makes learning about an important segment of our national history a painless exercise.

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Great book

A great read of early american history. All the players of the time described in detail so as to give you the very feeling of the period. A history of the american west that reads like a story book.

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What a great experience this book was!

I love to read well-written history, but I have had to struggle through a few to learn more about our world. This book taught me a great deal about the history of the West, but it was also an absolute thrill to read.
The author has me dashing out this weekend to pick up everything else he's written.

More than a Western

This is not only a history of the Southwest and a biography of Kit Carson. It is a story of the Navajo culture; a culture that Europeans did not and probably could not understand. It describes the beauty of badlands and of both the whites that claimed it and the indians that were destroyed in it. It's last few pages describe a pilgrimage in which the Navajos return at least to part of their homeland. I have read little that touched me as did these few pages. Mr. Sides does not apologize, does not whine, he just writes non-fiction with incredible clarity and sympathy.

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Thrilling history

Mr Sides has created a history of the West around memorable characters. His development of the famous Indians [Native Americans] and their enemies and friends is most informative.
This is a must read for anyone interested in how the West part of America was settled and developed, the trials and tribulations of the settlers and Natives.
Sides spent years and significant travels throughout the West to get his material, some of which was developed from first hand naration with participants.

reviews: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, page 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20

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