Who was the real Daniel Boone? Was the pioneer and explorer who wore a coonskin cap in the television show that bears his name historically accurate? I watched the reruns of Daniel Boone when I was a child. History intrigued me, but at the time, I didn’t realize how historically inaccurate the show was. And let’s be honest. At that time, I probably didn’t care.
After reading this explosive true saga of Daniel Boone, I greatly admire the man and the hardships he went through for this nation. What he really did and the things he experienced are much more interesting than any of the myths told about him.
Reading this book puts you right in the middle of all of it, and it makes you understand just how spoiled we are now. Daniel Boone was an amazing hunter and tracker. Starting when he was a teen, he was a long hunter. They would go out for weeks or even months at a time to kill game, and sometimes they would even be gone during the cold winter months. Can you imagine having to sleep outdoors during those months? But I’m not sure if sleeping outside in the brutal cold of winter would have been worse than sleeping outside during the heat of summer. (Read the second favorite sentence below.)
Even though one of his sons was scalped by an Indian in the beginning of the book, he wasn’t always fighting the Indians. He considered many of them friends, but he also had enemies among them. He even took part in the early politics of this nation at a time when politicians didn’t become rich. He was honest and he had integrity.
If you want to learn about the real Daniel Boone, you want to read this book. I wanted to include everything that I learned from this book in my review, but then this review would be a book. Besides, that would take a lot of the joy of reading it away from you. These authors put a lot of research into writing this book, and they are brutally honest. Yes, there was a lot of bloodshed during the founding of this nation. Yes, there was a lot of treachery. But there was also a lot of bravery.
I was sent a copy of this book by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. If you would like to get your own copy of this gripping historical book, I’ve provided an Amazon link for you below.
Amazon Link: Blood and Treasure: Daniel Boone and the Fight for America’s First Frontier
Favorite Sentences:
Daniel Boone was too far away to hear his oldest boy’s screams as the tall Indian tore out the sixteen-year-old’s fingernails one by one.
Stalked by wolves, panthers, and sometimes even bears eager to pounce on their kills, long hunters were also swarmed by blinding black clouds of mosquitoes and blowflies drawn to their blood-caked buckskins.
It was a typical Boone moment—slow to anger, quick to understand, and anxious to see life’s ironies from another’s point of view.
He wore the grin of a man who killed weasels with his teeth.
Some of the newcomers drove before them herds of cattle, passels of hogs, and carried caged chickens and clipped-wing ducks, believed to be the first domesticated fowl to enter Kentucky.
Leading the animal on foot, he had made less than a mile when a shiver in the brittle tree branches, a sixth sense, a numinous whisper running through the forest, cause him to wheel.
New Words Learned:
assiduous – showing great care and perseverance
bateaux – a light flat-bottomed riverboat used in eastern and central North America
chiaroscuro – an effect of contrasted light and shadow created by light falling unevenly or from a particular direction on something
breechclout – loincloth
feckless – lacking in efficiency or vitality
fusilier – a member of any of several British regiments formerly armed with fusils
hagiographer – a writer of the lives of saints
hegemony – leadership of dominance
ignominy – public shame or disgrace
mephitic – foul-smelling; noxious
parabola – a symmetrical open plane curve formed by the intersection of a cone with a plane parallel to its side.
peripatetic – traveling from place to place
polymath – a person of wide-ranging knowledge or learning
scree – a mass of small loose stones that form or cover a slope on a mountain
scrum – a disorderly crowd of people or things
spinney – a small area of trees and bushes
tranche – a portion of something
About the Authors:
Men’s Health Contributing Editor and Military Correspondent Bob Drury has been nominated for three National Magazine Awards and a Pulitzer Prize. He has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Liberia, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, and Darfur among other sites. He is also the author, co-author, or editor of nine nonfiction books, including the New York Times bestselling Halsey’s Typhoon, Last Men Out, and The Last Stand of Fox Company, the recipient of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation’s 2010 General Wallace M. Greene Jr. Award for nonfiction. His Kindle Single, Signature Wound, is available from Amazon, and his latest book, The Heart of Everything That Is—also a New York Times bestseller in hardcover—was released in paperback by Simon & Schuster Publishing in September 2014.
Tom Clavin, whose most recent book is Tombstone, is a bestselling author who has worked as a newspaper and web site editor, magazine writer, TV and radio commentator, and a reporter for The New York Times covering entertainment, sports, and the environment. He has received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, and National Newspaper Association. Four of his books have been New York Times best sellers: The Heart of Everything That Is, Dodge City, Halsey’s Typhoon, and The Last Stand of Fox Company. Other books that have received popular and critical acclaim include the third book in the Frontier Lawmen trilogy, Wild Bill, as well as Valley Forge, All Blood Runs Red, Reckless, The DiMaggios, and Lucky 666. Tom is also a nationally syndicated columnist and “The Overlook” can be found at tomclavin.substack.com. Blood and Treasure: Daniel Boone and the Fight for America’s First Frontier is his latest collaboration with Bob Drury. For more information, go to tomclavin.com
