Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West | 
| Author: Hampton Sides
Publisher: Doubleday
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  127 reviews
Sales Rank: 28329
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 480
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.7
ISBN: 0385507771
Dewey Decimal Number: 978.02
EAN: 9780385507776
ASIN: 0385507771
Publication Date: October 3, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Outstanding condition! I should be reading this as it looks like a good one, but I'm putting it out there for my customers instead! Enjoy!
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Product Description
Praise for Blood and Thunder
“Kit Carson’s role in the conquest of the Navajo during and after the Civil War remains one of the most dramatic and significant episodes in the history of the American West. Hampton Sides portrays Carson in the larger context of the conquest of the entire West, including his frequent and often lethal encounters with hostile Native Americans. Unusually, Sides gives full voice to Indian leaders themselves about their trials and tribulations in their dealings with the whites. Here is a national hero on the level of Daniel Boone, presented with all of his flaws and virtues, in the context of American people’s belief that it was their Manifest Destiny to occupy the entire West.”
—Howard Lamar, Sterling Professor Emeritus of History, Yale University and editor of The New Encyclopedia of the American West
“The story of the American West has seldom been told with such intimacy and immediacy. Legendary figures like Kit Carson leap to life and history moves at a pulse-pounding pace—sweeping the reader along with it. Hampton Sides is a terrific storyteller.”
—Candice Millard, author of The River of Doubt
“Hampton Sides doesn't just write a book, he transports the reader to another time and place. With his keen sense of drama and his crackling writing style, this master storyteller has bequeathed us a majestic history of the Old West.”
—James Bradley, author of Flags of Our Fathers and Flyboys
“Blood and Thunder is a big-hearted book whose subject is as expansive as they come. Hampton Sides tackles it with naked pleasure and narrative cunning: In his telling, the vast saga of America’s westward push has a logical center. The dusty town of Santa Fe becomes the nexus around which swirl the fortunes and strategies of a mixed set of serious overachievers, from Kit Carson, the original mountain man, to James K. Polk, the enigmatic president whose achievements, in the dreaded name of Manifest Destiny, were almost biblical in scope. Sides is alive to the exuberance and alert to the tragedy of the taking of the West.”
—Russell Shorto, author of Island at the Center of the World
“For a huge percentage of us immigrant Americans (those whose ancestors arrived after 1492), Hampton Sides fills a gaping hole in our knowledge of American history—a vivid account of how ‘The New Men’ swept away the thriving civilizations of the Native Americans in their conquest of the West.”
—Tony Hillerman
"BLOOD AND THUNDER is a balanced, thoughtful summary of the American conquistadors in the 19th century Southwest. Hampton Sides has re-created violent events and such inflammatory figures as Kit Carson without bias. Carefully researched, thoroughly enjoyable."
-Evan S. Connell, author of SON OF THE MORNING STAR, CUSTER AND THE LITTLE BIGHORN
A Magnificent History of How the West Was Really Won—a Sweeping Tale of Shame and Glory
In the fall of 1846 the venerable Navajo warrior Narbona, greatest of his people’s chieftains, looked down upon the small town of Santa Fe, the stronghold of the Mexican settlers he had been fighting his whole long life. He had come to see if the rumors were true—if an army of blue-suited soldiers had swept in from the East and utterly defeated his ancestral enemies. As Narbona gazed down on the battlements and cannons of a mighty fort the invaders had built, he realized his foes had been vanquished—but what did the arrival of these “New Men” portend for the Navajo?
Narbona could not have known that “The Army of the West,” in the midst of the longest march in American military history, was merely the vanguard of an inexorable tide fueled by a self-righteous ideology now known as “Manifest Destiny.” For twenty years the Navajo, elusive lords of a huge swath of mountainous desert and pasturelands, would ferociously resist the flood of soldiers and settlers who wished to change their ancient way of life or destroy them.
Hampton Sides’s extraordinary book brings the history of the American conquest of the West to ringing life. It is a tale with many heroes and villains, but as is found in the best history, the same person might be both. At the center of it all stands the remarkable figure of Kit Carson—the legendary trapper, scout, and soldier who embodies all the contradictions and ambiguities of the American experience in the West. Brave and clever, beloved by his contemporaries, Carson was an illiterate mountain man who twice married Indian women and understood and respected the tribes better than any other American alive. Yet he was also a cold-blooded killer who willingly followed orders tantamount to massacre. Carson’s almost unimaginable exploits made him a household name when they were written up in pulp novels known as “blood-and-thunders,” but now that name is a bitter curse for contemporary Navajo, who cannot forget his role in the travails of their ancestors.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 122 more reviews...
 BRILLIANT! July 17, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Hampton Sides has written one of the finest histories of the American West to date. BLOOD and THUNDER is a fascinating adventure of not only Kit Carson, but the many people he was associated with in his incredible travels throughout America's western expansion. The characters come alive, as Sides describes their personalities and motivations. This is a very equitable presentation of the conquest of a land and it's people, with rationales for the participants behaviors, both good and bad. Hampton Sides wonderful writing style allows the history told in BLOOD and THUNDER to translate into the present day, and helps to explain current challenges to the land and people of the United States of America.
 A fresh perspective on the expansion of the American West July 16, 2008
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Subtitled "The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West", this 2006 well-documented saga transported me to a time and a place that I've been hearing about all my life. It's all packed into a mere 497 pages and every page unearthed new facts and figures about the history of America from the 1820s to the late 1860s.
The narrative is tied together by following Kit Carson, a frontiersman from the American southwest, a trapper and soldier who was illiterate, but was able to speak five different Indian languages as well as Spanish. I learned a lot from this book, mostly about the people who were involved in what is sometimes called the "manifest destiny" to expand America from ocean to ocean and conquer all peoples who got in their way. Here we meet a cast of familiar characters from President James K. Polk who instigated the Mexican War, to army explorer John Charles Freemont as well as all the army officers and politicians who played a role in changing the landscape of America forever. We also meet the Indians.
The writer brings a critical eye and a deep understanding to the politics of the time which forced the destruction of the various Indian groups. I learned more than I ever thought I would about Indians, especially the Navajos, who fiercely resisted the American expansion but, in the end, became but a shadow of their former selves.
The book is rich in detail, and every page is full of facts. Kit Carson saw himself becoming a legend in his own time. Mostly, this legend was pure fabrication from the pens of flamboyant writers, but his name is forever linked with those turbulent times which saw him eventually becoming an officer for the Union army and leading battles against the Indians who he certainly respected.
The book is interesting and also a little dense for my taste. I found I was forgetting the names of the battles and the officers and the different tribes of Indians as I was reading. It was one of those books that I read all the words but let the details wash over me as I experienced the bigger picture of how the west was won. It was bloody and it wasn't nice. There was cruelty and injustice but that's just the way things were. We can't whitewash the truth of history.
Blood and Thunder gave me a fresh perspective on what really happened all those years ago that formed the America I know and love today. It is not for a book everyone though. I just happen to love history.
History Clear Eyed July 2, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Fascinating. A few flaws. All minor. Some more odd and interesting than others. The past tense of gainsay is gainsaid. It's Sierra Blanca not Sierra Blanco. Sides states that the Navajo had never encountered "white" men. Yet they had been in intimate contact with the Spanish for over two hundred years and many of them spoke Spanish. Freudian slip? He has judge Carlos Beaubien intoning the death sentence for the Taos patriots for treason, "Muerto," dead man, rather than "muerte," death. Presumably, Beaubien, whose son Narciso had been killed in the uprising, spoke Spanish. This is in the tradition of authors like John Nichols who, in Milagro Beanfield War, says that pendejo means "pubic hair," when if he had deigned to use the great resource right outside his doorstep, he would have readily apprehended that in New Mexico, pendejo means "fool." Sides says that the poorest Navajos (as opposed to the more affluent?) were called "ladrones," thieves, but does not explain. Finally, Sides seems unable to sort out the nomenclature for folks of Iberian descent. Sometimes they are "Spanish" buffalo hunters, sometimes "Mexican" trailhands, sometimes "Hispanic" soldiers or "Hispanic" men from the territory, sometimes "New Mexicans."
With all of this, this is still five-star reading. I couldn't put it down. I read it in record time. Sides is remarkably even handed. His research is obviously deep, his presentation captures and holds you. It is obvious that Sides has been to the majority of places he describes. I'm jealous. He has forced me to rethink Kit Carson. Carson's amazing peregrinations and his serendipitous appearance at every important juncture in U.S. western history forces us to again examine the great man theory and the role of luck in the course of human history. What if San Pasquale had gone the other way? What if Armijo had had some huevos and held the pass at Apache Canyon? Could anything have really stemmed the tide, turned aside a powerful nation bent on raping and pillaging a weaker neighbor? What would Mexico be today if it had not been immorally deprived of its northern territories, Texas, New Mexico and California? But this is like urinating into the wind. We cannot, as some would snidely suggest, choose the century or decade in which we want to live. We can, however, insist on our history clear eyed, unadulterated by hype or prejudice. Sides' narration forces us all to reexamine our pet prejudices. I pay him the ultimate compliment. Sides is a historian.
Blood and Thunder July 1, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a very well researched history. It portrays an important part of our history and does not gloss over the excesses of the middle 19th century.
Good History of the West June 18, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Well done. Shows Kit Carson as an American hero. Book demonstrates why violence was the only recourse in dealing with ignorant, uneducated savages. Highly recommnd book.
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