Empires, Nations, and Families - by Anne F Hyde (Paperback)

Number of Pages: 640
Genre: History
Sub-Genre: United States
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Ecco Press
Age Range: Adult
Book theme: 19th Century
Author: Anne F Hyde
Language: English

About the Book

This volume documents the broad family associations that crossed national and ethnic lines and that, along with the river systems of the trans-Mississippi West, formed the basis for a global trade in furs that had operated for hundreds of years before the land became part of the United States.

Book Synopsis

"Ingenious. A magnificent scholarly achievement. A sweeping new narrative account of [western] history. A book to ponder and plunder."
--Virginia Scharff, Western Quarterly Review

"Not only well researched and presented but instantly absorbing."
--Adrienne Caughfield, Journal of American History

Pulitzer Prize nominee and winner of the Bancroft Prize--historical writing's most prestigious award--Empires, Nations, and Families is an epic work of American History that fills in the blanks on the map of the American West between 1800 and 1860. Historian Anne F. Hyde--author of An American Vision: Far Western Landscape and National Culture and co-author (with William Deverell) of The West in the History of the Nation--tells a riveting true story of Native Americans, entrepreneurs, fur trappers and fur traders in a vibrant "wilderness" to which Daniel Boone himself was a Johnny-come-lately.

From the Back Cover

Winner of the 2012 Bancroft Prize

The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 doubled the size of the new United States, promising not only land but prosperity for its citizens. But the West was not the virgin wilderness of common myth. Rather, as historian Anne F. Hyde makes clear in her groundbreaking, prizewinning history, America was a newcomer in a place already complicated by vying empires-native and European. Here, for the first time, she traces the network of multiethnic family associations, which, along with the river systems of the trans-Mississippi West, had formed the basis for the global fur trade for centuries. Involved with this trade were trappers, hunters, merchants, bankers, and politicians by the thousands. Dazzling in its breadth and startling in its intimacy, Empires, Nations, and Families provides a new look at Native nations and the economies and societies they built as well as a radically new understanding of the web of families, businesses, and personal empires that organized the North American West before the Civil War and the rise of the American empire.

Review Quotes

"A sharp reframing of the history of the early Western frontier in personal terms. Elegantly written . . . with a vast dramatis personae and stage, Hyde's book sheds considerable light on the 19th-century development of the nation."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"An intricate picture of [the] region. Readable and rich."--Denver Post

"Ingenious. A magnificent scholarly achievement. . . . A sweeping new narrative account of [Western] history. A book to ponder and plunder."--Virginia Scharff, Western Historical Quarterly

"Provocative. A book that is not only well researched and presented but instantly absorbing."--Adrienne Caulfield, Journal of American History

About the Author

Anne F. Hyde is a professor of history at Colorado College. She is the author of "An American Vision: Far Western Landscape and National Culture" and coauthor, with William Deverell, of "The West in the History of the Nation."