Citizen Explorer

The Life of Zebulon Pike

Nonfiction, History, Americas, United States, 19th Century
Cover of the book Citizen Explorer by Jared Orsi, Oxford University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Jared Orsi ISBN: 9780199314553
Publisher: Oxford University Press Publication: December 1, 2013
Imprint: Oxford University Press Language: English
Author: Jared Orsi
ISBN: 9780199314553
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication: December 1, 2013
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Language: English

It was November 1806. The explorers had gone without food for one day, then two. Their leader, not yet thirty, drove on, determined to ascend the great mountain. Waist deep in snow, he reluctantly turned back. But Zebulon Pike had not been defeated. His name remained on the unclimbed peak-and new adventures lay ahead of him and his republic. In Citizen Explorer, historian Jared Orsi provides the first modern biography of this soldier and explorer, who rivaled contemporaries Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Born in 1779, Pike joined the army and served in frontier posts in the Ohio River valley before embarking on a series of astonishing expeditions. He sought the headwaters of the Mississippi and later the sources of the Arkansas and Red Rivers, which led him to Pike's Peak and capture by Spanish forces. Along the way, he met Aaron Burr and General James Wilkinson; Auguste and Pierre Couteau, patriarchs of St. Louis's most powerful fur-trading family, who sought to make themselves indispensible to Jefferson's administration; as well as British fur-traders, Native Americans, and officers of the Spanish empire, all of whom resisted the expansion of the United States. Through Pike's life, Orsi examines how American nationalism thinned as it stretched west, from the Jeffersonian idealism on the Atlantic to a practical, materialist sensibility on the frontier. Surveying and gathering data, Pike sought to incorporate these distant territories into the republic, to overlay the west with the American map grid; yet he became increasingly dependent for survival on people who had no attachment to the nation he served. He eventually died in that service, in a victorious battle in the War of 1812. Written from an environmental perspective, rich in cultural and political context, Citizen Explorer is a state-of-the-art biography of a remarkable man.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

It was November 1806. The explorers had gone without food for one day, then two. Their leader, not yet thirty, drove on, determined to ascend the great mountain. Waist deep in snow, he reluctantly turned back. But Zebulon Pike had not been defeated. His name remained on the unclimbed peak-and new adventures lay ahead of him and his republic. In Citizen Explorer, historian Jared Orsi provides the first modern biography of this soldier and explorer, who rivaled contemporaries Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Born in 1779, Pike joined the army and served in frontier posts in the Ohio River valley before embarking on a series of astonishing expeditions. He sought the headwaters of the Mississippi and later the sources of the Arkansas and Red Rivers, which led him to Pike's Peak and capture by Spanish forces. Along the way, he met Aaron Burr and General James Wilkinson; Auguste and Pierre Couteau, patriarchs of St. Louis's most powerful fur-trading family, who sought to make themselves indispensible to Jefferson's administration; as well as British fur-traders, Native Americans, and officers of the Spanish empire, all of whom resisted the expansion of the United States. Through Pike's life, Orsi examines how American nationalism thinned as it stretched west, from the Jeffersonian idealism on the Atlantic to a practical, materialist sensibility on the frontier. Surveying and gathering data, Pike sought to incorporate these distant territories into the republic, to overlay the west with the American map grid; yet he became increasingly dependent for survival on people who had no attachment to the nation he served. He eventually died in that service, in a victorious battle in the War of 1812. Written from an environmental perspective, rich in cultural and political context, Citizen Explorer is a state-of-the-art biography of a remarkable man.

More books from Oxford University Press

Cover of the book Demosthenes of Athens and the Fall of Classical Greece by Jared Orsi
Cover of the book Beethoven's 32 Piano Sonatas by Jared Orsi
Cover of the book The American Leonardo by Jared Orsi
Cover of the book Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men by Jared Orsi
Cover of the book Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature by Jared Orsi
Cover of the book Food Webs and the Dynamics of Marine Reefs by Jared Orsi
Cover of the book Tramps Like Us by Jared Orsi
Cover of the book Mozart by Jared Orsi
Cover of the book Clinical Guide to Obsessive Compulsive and Related Disorders by Jared Orsi
Cover of the book Movement Disorders by Jared Orsi
Cover of the book Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code:A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine by Jared Orsi
Cover of the book A Case-Based Approach to Public Psychiatry by Jared Orsi
Cover of the book John Brown (The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois) by Jared Orsi
Cover of the book Aging Our Way: Independent Elders, Interdependent Lives by Jared Orsi
Cover of the book Groundbreakers by Jared Orsi
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy