February 2014: Across the Wide Missouri
DiscussãoMissouri Readers
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1tloeffler
Our selection for February 2014 is Across the Wide Missouri by Bernard DeVoto. We will begin our discussion on February 10, which gives us three full weeks to find & read it. Across the Wide Missouri won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for History books, so Enjoy!
2sjmccreary
got an email today - my copy is ready to pick up at the library - looking forward to it
3labwriter
I read 3 or 4 books by or about DeVoto last year. He's really wonderful, and I'm sure this will be a good one. However, I just can't dive into another DeVoto this soon. He's very readable--I hope you like him.
Apropos of nothing, except that I hugely love Julia Child: DeVoto's wife was a very good friend of Julia Child, and their letters were published not long ago: As Always, Julia: The letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto--a 5-star book. I loved it! Some might call Avis a whack-job. Ha.
Apropos of nothing, except that I hugely love Julia Child: DeVoto's wife was a very good friend of Julia Child, and their letters were published not long ago: As Always, Julia: The letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto--a 5-star book. I loved it! Some might call Avis a whack-job. Ha.
4Donna828
February has come…and almost gone. My copy of Across the Wide Missouri has to go back to the library. I read 122 pages and could only see more history of fur trading in the western United States ahead. I'll share a quote before I turn the book in that kind of sums things up -- at least as far as I read.
It was a good life for those fitted to it. To be a mountain man you had to be something of a savage but you had to be something of a hero too…(pg. 46).
5tloeffler
Wow. I was worried because I was late finishing the book and then I got swept away with my Economics class. Was I the only one who read it? I found the subject matter mostly uninteresting, but I really did enjoy his writing style!
6bjellis
I think the nature of this book -- very dense writing with copious notes -- has put me behind the curve. My day-job got overly demanding this month so I am only on page 85. Pretty embarrassing. But this kind of book is best read a few pages at a time to avoid the swallowing-from-a-fire-hose effect. My copy is due back at the library but I have a used Amazon copy on order. I do intend to finish, and to pass it to a brother-in-law who is interested in that historical period.
This is great writing, and great research. I like how it is immersed in the historical period; although it makes no attempt to be 'politically correct' from a contemporary viewpoint, it does give such a vivid sense of what life in that moment would have been like. I already have a much better understanding of how alliances between trappers, Indians (all the different tribes), and other westward explorers and conquestors might have played out. DeVoto is quite attracted to and interested in how empires are built and the book is definitely from that point of view. For that critical time and place, fur trading was what the railroad and then oil industries were, forming the geography and calling out winners and losers. Without the fur trade, westward expansion would have been a very different story. (Not better or worse, just different.)
I appreciate how DeVoto does portray the motivations of each company/group of fur traders very differently, and especially how he distinguishes the various Indian tribes and their clashes with each other, and their different motivations for allying or not with the explorers and fur traders who would eventually overtake them.
Some of the asides -- either in the text or the footnotes -- about the inventory and cost of a fur trading group's supplies or the use of one type of rifle vs another in a particular situation -- are fascinating, even if you thought you wouldn't give a hooey about such a topic.
I am struck by how much the definition of this country was literally on the backs of millions of animals slaughtered for fur (and probably not at all for food). The details of how a bison dies, and why the hunt was such a "sportsman's" unbeatable fantasy, are difficult to read but essential in order to understand some of the motivations. This was, in a way, like reading an archaeological study of the Neanderthal period, where certain kinds of intelligence are required for survival and it's not always the most attractive talents that win their place in the DNA pool. But there are still signs lingering in all of us. It will be hard to approach this summer's backyard BBQs without remembering DeVoto's stories about those ten-pound meat dinners, and eating nothing but buffalo for maybe months on end.
This was an excellent pick, although I admit (unless my work schedule lets up a bit) it may take me another month or two to finish the thing. And I doubt I'll ever be able to innocently enjoy a bison burger again. :-(
This is great writing, and great research. I like how it is immersed in the historical period; although it makes no attempt to be 'politically correct' from a contemporary viewpoint, it does give such a vivid sense of what life in that moment would have been like. I already have a much better understanding of how alliances between trappers, Indians (all the different tribes), and other westward explorers and conquestors might have played out. DeVoto is quite attracted to and interested in how empires are built and the book is definitely from that point of view. For that critical time and place, fur trading was what the railroad and then oil industries were, forming the geography and calling out winners and losers. Without the fur trade, westward expansion would have been a very different story. (Not better or worse, just different.)
I appreciate how DeVoto does portray the motivations of each company/group of fur traders very differently, and especially how he distinguishes the various Indian tribes and their clashes with each other, and their different motivations for allying or not with the explorers and fur traders who would eventually overtake them.
Some of the asides -- either in the text or the footnotes -- about the inventory and cost of a fur trading group's supplies or the use of one type of rifle vs another in a particular situation -- are fascinating, even if you thought you wouldn't give a hooey about such a topic.
I am struck by how much the definition of this country was literally on the backs of millions of animals slaughtered for fur (and probably not at all for food). The details of how a bison dies, and why the hunt was such a "sportsman's" unbeatable fantasy, are difficult to read but essential in order to understand some of the motivations. This was, in a way, like reading an archaeological study of the Neanderthal period, where certain kinds of intelligence are required for survival and it's not always the most attractive talents that win their place in the DNA pool. But there are still signs lingering in all of us. It will be hard to approach this summer's backyard BBQs without remembering DeVoto's stories about those ten-pound meat dinners, and eating nothing but buffalo for maybe months on end.
This was an excellent pick, although I admit (unless my work schedule lets up a bit) it may take me another month or two to finish the thing. And I doubt I'll ever be able to innocently enjoy a bison burger again. :-(
7tloeffler
Great analysis, Becky! I wonder if I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't been reading at a breakneck pace. I did enjoy his writing, and some of his stories, but don't come from a hunting family, and reading this book, I wondered (as you seem to have done), "What was done with the rest of it after they got the fur?" And the numbers were mind-boggling. Hard to imagine that many beavers even exist. It's a wonder they aren't extinct.
