Simon & Schuster The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West

David McCullough is a master at researching a subject and telling a story. This is a great look at life in late 18th and early 19th century Ohio. Very readable and interesting with a real flavor for what pioneer life was like.

Well written, researched, entertaining and engaging book. David McCullough delivers again.

Gives us a really good insight into what the lives of the early pioneers was like, with plenty of direct evidence obtained from letters and correspondence of the people who were actually there.

Whilst this is a story which focuses on five prime actors, the breath of what David McCullough describes is staggering. To put some perspective on the narrative, the American War of Independence, also known as the American Revolutionary War, which spanned the period from 19 April 1775, until the Treaty of Paris concluded the war on 3 September 1783, with the defeat of Britain and loss of its thirteen eastern seaboard colonies, together with what was known as the Northwest Territory, which is to say the area west of Pennsylvania, east of the Mississippi River, north of the Ohio River to the border with contemporary British Canada. It was a crushing blow for Britain, which some historians consider to be the end of the first British Empire. The Northwest Territory was a vast, lush wilderness, largely uninhabited land mass of some 260,000 square miles (670,000 square kilometres), home to approximately 45,000 indigenous Indian tribes and around 4,000 traders, the latter a mix of Canadian and British subjects. In the fullness of time this new land mass, almost one-third the total area of America would become the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. However, before all of that could take place, it would be the actions of a Massachusetts minister, Reverend Manasseh Cutler, co-founder of the Ohio Company of Associates who would, with Rufus Putnam, Ephraim Cutler (Manasseh oldest son), Joseph Barker House and Samuel Prescott Hildreth encourage a small group of intrepid pioneers to fulfil the intentions of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 by making the long and perilous journey up the Ohio River to found the first settlement on the river, which they named Marietta. The story David McCullough so skilfully tells is one of adventure, daring, sadness and injustice, certainly from the standpoint of the indigenous Americans. Notwithstanding the moral issues - and they are significant - this is a narrative that adds new understanding of how Americans populated the Northwest Territory, how the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 banned slavery within the territory, advanced public school education and perhaps above all else was a difficult but nonetheless great endeavour. This is a book which can engender a feeling of being part of this movement west. This is a highly recommended read.

Only 258 pages, David McCullough's latest book called "The Pioneers" is a well-written, captivating book... with a catch. "The Pioneers" tells the story not of the swaths of pioneers to the Northwest territories in the late 1700s and early to mid 1800s (it provides 20 or so pages of context to the Northwest Ordinance, but not much else), but of a few families -- mainly the Cutler family -- who traveled to Marietta, Ohio. In that sense, the book covers the pioneers who ventured out west. However, its focus isn't as wide as its title and subtitle would suggest. Because of that, McCullough's book is a dissapointment, but by no means bad. I only wish the book were longer. At 258 pages, it is on the short side. The first 3/4ths of the book are really well fleshed out, but much of the rest of the book felt rushed and underdeveloped. Still, "The Pioneers" is a fantastic read with a compelling narrative, lively and entertaining writing, and some very well-chosen letters, diary entries, and other primary sources. The Verdict: Although it was mismarketed (which I did not take into account in my rating of the book as bad marketing is not the authors fault) and too short and at times underdeveloped, "The Pioneers" is a must-buy both for fans of McCullough and those who enjoy late 18th and 19th century United States History.