Hunting and the American Imagination

Rating:
Summary: For the Thoughtful Hunter
Review: Herman has written a fascinating book that examines how Americans have thought about hunting over the centuries. He shows that colonial Americans were ambivalent about hunting; that Revolutionary patriots celebrated hunters as defenders of natural rights; and that popular writers made hunter heroes into paragons of both modernity and tradition during the nineteenth-century market revolution. Herman (like historian John Reiger) also shows that hunters loved land and animals long before the word "environmentalism" was ever heard.

As someone who has given some thought to hunting's history, I would add a few things that Herman left out: for one, Herman might have discussed the attitudes of Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln toward hunting. Both men deplored it. I'm not sure that I buy Herman's argument that the nineteenth-century popularity of sport hunting and the eagerness for the Civil War were related, given the attitudes of Davis and Lincoln.

Herman also should have given more information on settlers' tendency to kill off or drive away game from Indian hunting grounds. Thomas Jefferson commented on this, as did Tocqueville, William Henry Harrison, Philip Schuyler, and numerous others. More info on this would have strengthened Herman's arguments.

Those are small flaws. My judgment is: if you are a hunter or a history buff, you should read this book. It's well-researched, nicely written, and philosophical.

Rating:
Summary: First-rate Cultural History
Review: Herman is not so much interested in hunting itself as in ideas about hunting. He traces the path by which Americans--especially Theodore Roosevelt and others of the Progressive Era--came to think of themselves as a people who had been made great through hunting. Herman deftly draws on critical theory and on a vast repertoire of secondary literature yet he grounds his story (or, more properly, his series of stories) firmly in history rather than in literary criticism. The result is scholarship at its best.

Rating:
Summary: First-rate Cultural History
Review: Herman is not so much interested in hunting itself as in ideas about hunting. He traces the path by which Americans--especially Theodore Roosevelt and others of the Progressive Era--came to think of themselves as a people who had been made great through hunting. Herman deftly draws on critical theory and on a vast repertoire of secondary literature yet he grounds his story (or, more properly, his series of stories) firmly in history rather than in literary criticism. The result is scholarship at its best.

Rating:
Summary: Intelligent, Even-Handed Book on Hunting
Review: I liked this book a lot. It's well researched and engaging. I also appreciated Herman's balanced view of hunting. Though the book tilts toward political correctness in places, Herman, unlike the PETA crowd, doesn't posture about the evils of hunting.

There are some problems in Herman's book. For one thing, it's unfortunate that Herman cites Michael Bellesiles' Arming America two or three times. Herman seems to have bought Bellesiles' arguments about how scarce guns were in early American history (maybe Herman sent his book to press before Clayton Cramer shot down Bellesiles' "facts" in American Rifleman).

On the other hand, I was convinced by Herman's arguments that early Americans had mixed attitudes about hunting. Colonists thought that white men who became full-time hunters were too much like Indians, especially since farming, for colonists, justified the acquisition of Indian hunting grounds. Herman's argument that Enlightenment philosophers and statesmen often regarded hunting as uncivilized and/or cruel also has merit (here's a little fact that Herman could have used: Thomas Jefferson kept a deer park but never hunted the deer!).

More importantly, Herman's central theme - that in the nineteenth century hunters became indigenous American heroes, or as Herman says, "American Natives" - is on the mark. The best chapters in the book are about Lewis and Clark and Daniel Boone as "American Natives." The chapter on the first promoter of sport hunting in America, Henry William Herbert, is also fascinating, as is Herman's discussion of women hunters in chapter 16.

If you like history, Hunting and the American Imagination is provocative and well worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: A rich legacy of imagery and lore
Review: In Hunting And The American Imagination, Daniel Herman (assistant professor of history, Central Washington University) reveals that American hunting traditions are not based colonial or frontier cultures. In fact, the colonists and frontiersmen defined themselves as farmers and bringers of civilization to the wilds. Hunting was an integral part of frontier life, but was primarily viewed as a matter of subsistence rather than identity. It was in a post frontier era that the mythos of hunting was seized upon in the popular imagination and such democratic legends as those of Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Meriwether Lewis, and Native American cultures as the basis for America's sports hunters assuming a mantle of hunting oriented stewardships over the land and the wildlife. From John Smith to Theodore Roosevelt, what emerged in the 20th Century was a rich legacy of imagery and lore that gave rise to today's widely held, middle-class ideas about American hunting rights, privileges, and mores.

Rating:
Summary: Gift from my Wife
Review: My wife gave me this book because I was a deer hunter before I retired. I read the book and enjoyed it, although I had to look up a word now and then. This is a scholarly work. Some chapters are more readable than others. Herman certainly knows about the history of gun hunting, but I wish he had discussed the history of archery, which is how I hunted. Regardless, this book was a good addition to my library. The illustrations are great and the writing is accessible.

Rating:
Summary: Gift from my Wife
Review: My wife gave me this book because I was a deer hunter before I retired. I read the book and enjoyed it, although I had to look up a word now and then. This is a scholarly work. Some chapters are more readable than others. Herman certainly knows about the history of gun hunting, but I wish he had discussed the history of archery, which is how I hunted. Regardless, this book was a good addition to my library. The illustrations are great and the writing is accessible.

Rating:
Summary: Hunting and the American Imagination
Review: Simply marvelous. Well researched and adroitly argued.