Blood and thunder : an epic of the American West Cover Image

Book

Blood and thunder : an epic of the American West / Hampton Sides.

Summary:

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.

Record details

ISBN: 0385507771
ISBN: 9780385507776
Physical Description: xi, 460 pages, 16 pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm
Edition: 1st edition
Publisher: New York : Doubleday, 2006.

Content descriptions

General Note:	Maps on endpapers.
Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references (p. [427]-440) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Prologue: Hoofbeats -- THE NEW MEN: Jumping off -- The glittering world -- The army of the West -- Singing grass -- Blue Bead Mountain -- Who is James K. Polk? -- What a wild life! -- The ruling hand of providence -- The pathfinder -- When the land is sick -- The un-Alamo -- We will correct all this -- Narbona Pass -- The uninvaded silence -- On the altar of the country -- A perfect butchery -- The fire of Montezuma -- Your duty, Mr. Carson -- Daggers in every look -- Men with ears down to their ankles -- The hall of final ruin -- A BROKEN COUNTRY: The grim metronome -- Lords of the mountains -- The devil's turnpike -- Our red children -- Cold steel -- El Crepusculo -- American mercury -- Time at last sets all things even -- The finest head I ever saw -- The death knot -- Men without eyes -- Blood and thunder -- MONSTER SLAYER: The fearing time -- People of the single star -- The sons of some dear mother -- The round forest -- Children of the mist -- General orders no. 15 -- Fortress rock -- The long walk -- Adobe walls -- The condition of the tribes -- Crossing purgatory -- Epilogue: In beauty we walk.
Awards Note:	Mountains & Plains Book Award, 2007.