Author Robert Morgan is thorough in the delivery of his comprehensive biographical work “Lions of the West: Heroes and Villains of the Westward Expansion.” He begins by providing readers with a list of maps, a chronology of the westward expansion era, and a list of all the pre-Civil War presidents that had something to do with the growth of America’s territories.
He also explains that the book title was extracted from an 1831 play, performed in New York City about Davy Crockett and other frontier legends.
However weighty the information, which is divided into nine chapters titled for the historic individuals who impacted the expansion, Morgan presents it captivatingly. Primarily a fiction writer and poet, he has a straightforward storytelling style like Henry David Thoreau’s that evokes a sense of place.
After reading a chapter–each on a separate figure–we know that individual’s character, motives, and passions. In fact, each chapter’s opening sentence hooks readers. He starts Chapter 4 on Crockett with: “It is something of a mystery to modern readers why the figure of the backwoods humorist and comedian became so popular in the mid-nineteenth century.”
The next chapter begins: “Most of Sam Houston’s life was a kind of dance between calamity and triumph.” And, in the epilogue, which actually spotlights John Quincy Adams, Morgan provides food for thought in the opening sentence: “To understand almost any controversial issue, it is necessary to study the opposing points of view.”
For homeschooling families and private schools, which often have more leeway in their book selection, “Lions of the West” ties together the good and the bad, the dynamics and the downfalls involved in the exploration, confiscation, and habitation of areas already long-occupied by native tribes and animals.
The book does not gloss over the darker shades of American history. Morgan describes when Civil War soldier and guide Kit Carson retaliated against a native tribe for the death of three friends. “As the villagers ran into the woods or swam out into the lake, Carson and his men killed twenty-one of them.”
But Morgan emphasizes that all history, regardless of time periods or places, exposes the positive and the negative deeds, the dark and the light. History is a tapestry, and “Lions of the West” delivers this in its interwoven, biographical fibers.
As Morgan noted in the prologue:
“Those who study history often come to feel that it is a living organism, with a will and energy, a whim and persistence, all its own, beyond explanation, beyond logic. The turns and surprises, the lulls and lunges, remain mysterious, following rules we can only speculate about, codes we try to decipher.”
‘Lions of the West: Heroes and Villains of the Westward Expansion’
By Robert Morgan
A Shannon Ravenel Book: Aug. 21, 2012
Paperback, 528 pages
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