The Oregon Trail : An American Saga

Rating:
Summary: Just the facts
Review: Dary reports in great detail the daily life of settlers heading west. He did a prodigious amount of research. However, the details are tedious and incorrect at times. I yearned for an insightful observation or at least a summary statement. He offered none.

Rating:
Summary: Should have researched better.
Review: In spite of positive reviews from the literary world, I found it impossible to finish reading this book. Yes, there are some interesting facts in it, but on page 53 there is a mistake that, for me, ruined the entire book. The erroneous sentence is, "Late in the fall of 1820, Charles Floyd, who had been a member of Lewis and Clark's expedition, visited his cousin, Dr. John Floyd, a Virginia congressman." To me, this is a huge error, compounded by the fact that it was incredibly easy to research the truth. Anyone who is seriously interested in the Lewis and Clark expedition knows Charles Floyd was the only member of the Corps of Discovery to die during their trip. He died of "bilious collick" in August of 1804. As a result, he couldn't have talked with Dr. John Floyd in 1820. (No, there weren't two Charles Floyds on the trip. That, too, is easily researched.) This error killed Mr. Dary's book for me. After seeing such a bonehead mistake, I found it impossible to trust anything else in the book and I finally gave up reading it after only 60 pages.

Rating:
Summary: Needed more fact checking
Review: This book is aimed at the general reader and, as such, is organized in a clear manner. It covers the trail period well and, in what is unique, also covers the efforts to preserve the trail up to the current Oregon-California Trails Association. That said, the book needed to be edited again for factual errors. There are way too many. They range from trivial: Shoshone Falls is north of the Oregon Trail not south; Idaho was not included in the list of present day states made from the Old Oregon Country; to more important: Jim Bridger did not SELL Fort Bridger to the Mormons in 1853; to a real howler: blaming the 1854 Ward massacre in present day southern Idaho on the Yakama Indians, instead of the Shoshones (and by the way there were two survivors). It's too bad. This could have been a good general history for the non-specialist with a little more care. As it is it is OK as an overview, but be careful with the details.