Overview

We have long been divided over how exceptional the United States is, and that debate has often revolved around the frontier. In Heart of American Darkness, acclaimed historian Robert G. Parkinson presents a startling narrative of the ever-shifting encounters between white colonists and Native Americans. He reveals that the colonization of the interior was not a rational process or heroic deed-nor the act by which American democracy was forged. Rather, it was as bewildering, violent, and haphazard as European colonization of Africa. Bringing a Conradian lens to the central episodes of the early American frontier from the 1730s through the Revolutionary War, Parkinson follows the intertwined histories of two prominent families, one colonial and the other Native, who helped determine the fate of the empires battling for control of the Ohio River Valley. And in reclaiming the true nature and costs of imperialism, he offers nothing less than a new story of the making of the United States.

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9781324091776

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Reviews

"A scarifying, blood-soaked portrait of savagery on the early frontier--much of it committed by European settlers... Parkinson's story extends to include dozens of people drawn into the fight, from Thomas Jefferson and George Washington to British generals Thomas Gage and Edward Braddock. The author also uncovers little-known moments in colonial history: a proto-civil war, for instance, between residents of Maryland & Pennsylvania... superb.-- ""Kirkus Reviews (starred)"" In the American imagination, the idea of the frontier looms large as the prime shaper of our nation's character. But what actually happened on the frontier, and what does it say about the substance of American character? Robert G. Parkinson's Heart of American Darkness is a brilliant meditation on those questions. The book presents the often-brutal reality of life on the frontier through the eyes of Indigenous people and the Europeans whom they encountered in the forests and on the rivers of the Ohio River Valley region, the early frontier. This book is a vital contribution to our understanding of our country's beginnings and who we are.--Annette Gordon-Reed, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of On Juneteenth Robert Parkinson's gripping and memorable Heart of American Darkness provides a haunting portrait of the chaos, confusion, and shifting allegiances that swirled around the complex series of events that we now call the American Revolution.--Karl Jacoby, author of Shadows at Dawn: An Apache Massacre and the Violence of History The Heart of American Darkness traces the struggle to control the trans-Appalachian west, as European empires and later the American Republic fought to wrest control of this region from its Indigenous inhabitants. Chronicling the violence and chaos that defined this contest over the 'back country, ' Robert Parkinson provides a bold new interpretation of the founding history of the United States.--Michael J. Witgen, author of the Pulitzer Prize-finalist Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America The title of Robert Parkinson's Heart of American Darkness invokes Joseph Conrad, but I also hear strong echoes of Herman Melville and Cormac McCarthy in this searing account of the American frontier. Parkinson's anti-epic is at once detailed and sweeping, a much-needed new national origins story, a tale where the bloody chaos of the past matches the bloody chaos of the present. An indispensable book.--Greg Grandin, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The End of Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America"

In the American imagination, the idea of the frontier looms large as the prime shaper of our nation's character. But what actually happened on the frontier, and what does it say about the substance of American character? Robert G. Parkinson's Heart of American Darkness is a brilliant meditation on those questions. The book presents the often-brutal reality of life on the frontier through the eyes of Indigenous people and the Europeans whom they encountered in the forests and on the rivers of the Ohio River Valley region, the early frontier. This book is a vital contribution to our understanding of our country's beginnings and who we are.--Annette Gordon-Reed, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of On Juneteenth Robert Parkinson's gripping and memorable Heart of American Darkness provides a haunting portrait of the chaos, confusion, and shifting allegiances that swirled around the complex series of events that we now call the American Revolution.--Karl Jacoby, author of Shadows at Dawn: An Apache Massacre and the Violence of History The Heart of American Darkness traces the struggle to control the trans-Appalachian west, as European empires and later the American Republic fought to wrest control of this region from its Indigenous inhabitants. Chronicling the violence and chaos that defined this contest over the 'back country, ' Robert Parkinson provides a bold new interpretation of the founding history of the United States.--Michael J. Witgen, author of the Pulitzer Prize-finalist Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America The title of Robert Parkinson's Heart of American Darkness invokes Joseph Conrad, but I also hear strong echoes of Herman Melville and Cormac McCarthy in this searing account of the American frontier. Parkinson's anti-epic is at once detailed and sweeping, a much-needed new national origins story, a tale where the bloody chaos of the past matches the bloody chaos of the present. An indispensable book.--Greg Grandin, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The End of Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America

Author Information

Robert G. Parkinson is associate professor of history at Binghamton University and the author of The Common Cause and Thirteen Clocks. He lives in Charles Town, West Virginia.

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