Desperate Passage
The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West
- Publisher's listprice GBP 29.99
-
13 540 Ft (12 895 Ft + 5% VAT)
The price is estimated because at the time of ordering we do not know what conversion rates will apply to HUF / product currency when the book arrives. In case HUF is weaker, the price increases slightly, in case HUF is stronger, the price goes lower slightly.
- Discount 10% (cc. 1 354 Ft off)
- Discounted price 12 186 Ft (11 606 Ft + 5% VAT)
Subcribe now and take benefit of a favourable price.
Subscribe
13 540 Ft
Availability
printed on demand
Why don't you give exact delivery time?
Delivery time is estimated on our previous experiences. We give estimations only, because we order from outside Hungary, and the delivery time mainly depends on how quickly the publisher supplies the book. Faster or slower deliveries both happen, but we do our best to supply as quickly as possible.
Product details:
- Edition number and title heart-wrenching
- Publisher OUP USA
- Date of Publication 21 February 2008
- ISBN 9780195305029
- Binding Hardback
- No. of pages304 pages
- Size 236x168x28 mm
- Weight 626 g
- Language English
- Illustrations 15 halftones 0
Categories
Short description:
Drawing on fresh archaeological evidence, recent research on topics ranging from survival rates to snowfall totals, and heartbreaking letters and diaries made public by descendants a century-and-a-half after the tragedy, Ethan Rarick offers an intimate portrait of the Donner party and their unimaginable ordeal: a mother who must divide her family, a little girl who shines with courage, a devoted wife who refuses to abandon her husband, a man who risks his life merely to keep his word. But Rarick resists both the gruesomely sensationalist accounts of the Donner party as well as later attempts to turn the survivors into archetypal pioneer heroes. "The Donner Party," Rarick writes, "is a story of hard decisions that were neither heroic nor villainous. Often, the emigrants displayed a more realistic and typically human mixture of generosity and selfishness, an alloy born of necessity."
MoreLong description:
In late October 1846, the last wagon train of that year's westward migration stopped overnight before resuming its arduous climb over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, unaware that a fearsome storm was gathering force. After months of grueling travel, the 81 men, women and children would be trapped for a brutal winter with little food and only primitive shelter. The conclusion is known: by spring of the next year, the Donner Party was synonymous with the most harrowing extremes of human survival. But until now, the full story of what happened, what it tells us about human nature and about America's westward expansion, remained shrouded in myth.
Drawing on fresh archaeological evidence, recent research on topics ranging from survival rates to snowfall totals, and heartbreaking letters and diaries made public by descendants a century-and-a-half after the tragedy, Ethan Rarick offers an intimate portrait of the Donner party and their unimaginable ordeal: a mother who must divide her family, a little girl who shines with courage, a devoted wife who refuses to abandon her husband, a man who risks his life merely to keep his word. But Rarick resists both the gruesomely sensationalist accounts of the Donner party as well as later attempts to turn the survivors into archetypal pioneer heroes. "The Donner Party," Rarick writes, "is a story of hard decisions that were neither heroic nor villainous. Often, the emigrants displayed a more realistic and typically human mixture of generosity and selfishness, an alloy born of necessity."
A fast-paced, heart-wrenching, clear-eyed narrative history, A Desperate Hope casts new light on one of America's most horrific encounters between the dream of a better life and the harsh realities such dreams so often must confront.
Rarick's retelling is solid, shored up with evidence, and complete withthe moral of the story cannibalism buffs look for.
Table of Contents:
Prologue
Jumping off
Catching Up
Vexatiously Slow
Pleasure Trip
Fine Style
The Crucial Decision
Gambling
A New and Interesting Region
Unearthly
One Bad Hill
Abandoned
The Mouth of Hell, The River of Life
A Great Snowy Range
This Prison
The First Death
The Forlorn Hope
A Low Situation
Taking the Field
Our Present Calamity
Fellowbeings
From California, or Heaven?
Threshold of Desperation
Weeping
Gruesome Sights
Terror, Terror
A Broken Promise
Alive Yet
None for Tears
The Last Man
A Beautiful Country
A Day of Renown
Acknowledgments
Author's Note
Notes
Selected Bibliography
