Daniel Boone (Thwaites)

Before the myth, there was the man. Reuben Gold Thwaites, the distinguished Wisconsin historian, strips away the legend to reveal Daniel Boone in his full, extraordinary complexity: the backwoods farmer who became Kentucky's greatest explorer, the Indian fighter who counted Shawnee chiefs among his closest friends, the surveyor who mapped a wilderness that would transform a nation. Born in Pennsylvania in 1734, Boone spent his life walking the knife-edge between civilization and the untamed frontier, twice captured by Native Americans and twice adopting their ways. Thwaites draws on decades of archival research to recreate Boone's legendary hunts, his desperate defense of Boonesborough, and his long retreat westward as settlement pressed ever closer. This is biography at its finest: rigorous, sympathetic, and unafraid to show its subject as both hero and complicated human being. For anyone who wants to understand the real man behind the folk hero, this is the place to start.