The Pioneers

December 1, 2018

Two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, McCullough is set to give us another terrific book on U.S. history. He chronicles how the Northwest Territory, comprising the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, was settled largely through the efforts of Massachusetts minister Manasseh Cutler to open the territory to veterans of the Revolutionary War. Events unfold through the founding of what is now Marietta, OH, and the stories of five key individuals, including Cutler. With a 500,000-copy first printing.

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April 22, 2019
Popular historian McCullough (1776) uses his well-crafted writing style and thorough research to highlight the evolution of the “Ohio territory” (now Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin) from late-18th-century settlement to well-regarded American cities (Marietta, Cincinnati) by the 1860s. He follows members of a few optimistic, well-connected families whose impact on the region spanned generations, admiringly portraying their efforts to create a new England on the frontier. Settler leaders Rufus Putnam and Manasseh Cutler veered between Eastern political maneuvering for approval (including that of George Washington) for private purchase of the land they wanted and surviving the pioneer trials of wildlife, starvation, and violence between settlers and native Americans (which is treated as a minor subplot). The swiftly moving narrative also shines light on the territory’s consistent antislavery position beginning with the 1787 Northwest Territory Ordinance and leading to the first black vote in 1802. While some readers may be put off by the near-omission of the native people’s perspective, those seeking a pro-colonial history will find this is a fascinating and well-written look at the Cutler families and the Americanizing of Ohio. Illus. Agent: Mort Janklow, Janklow Nesbit Associates.

A lively history of the Ohio River region in the years between the Revolution and the Civil War. McCullough (The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For, 2015, etc.) isn't writing about the sodbusters and hardscrabblers of the Far West, the people whom the word "pioneers" evokes, but instead their predecessors of generations past who crossed the Appalachians and settled in the fertile country along and north of the Ohio River. Manasseh Cutler, one of his principal figures, "endowed with boundless intellectual curiosity," anticipated the movement of his compatriots across the mountains well before the war had ended, advocating for the Northwest Ordinance to secure a region that, in McCullough's words, "was designed to guarantee what would one day be known as the American way of life"--a place in which slavery was forbidden and public education and religious freedom would be emphasized. "Ohio fever" spread throughout a New England crippled, after the war, by economic depression, but Southerners also moved west, fomenting the conditions that would, at the end of McCullough's vivid narrative, end in regional war three generations later. Characteristically, the author suggests major historical themes without ever arguing them as such. For example, he acknowledges the iniquities of the slave economy simply by contrasting the conditions along the Ohio between the backwaters of Kentucky and the sprightly city of Cincinnati, speaking through such figures as Charles Dickens. Indeed, his narrative abounds with well-recognized figures in American history--John Quincy Adams, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Johnny Appleseed--while highlighting lesser-known players. His account of Aaron Burr--who conspired to overthrow the government of Mexico (and, later, his own country) after killing Alexander Hamilton, recruiting confederates in the Ohio River country--is alone worth the price of admission. There are many other fine moments, as well, including a brief account of the generosity that one farmer in Marietta, Ohio, showed to his starving neighbors and another charting the fortunes of the early Whigs in opposing the "anti-intellectual attitude of the Andrew Jackson administration." Vintage McCullough and a book that students of American history will find captivating.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (Online Review)

April 15, 2019
Drawing on little-known archives, acclaimed popular historian McCullough offers a unique chronicle of the settlement of the Ohio River Valley that emphasizes the courage and tenacity of early pioneers and the precedents they set for further westward expansion. The Northwest Territory was the howling wilderness that extended northwest from Virginia as far as Minnesota, and it was forbidding country, though the land was fertile, luring settlers down the Ohio River. Among them were Manasseh Cutler, a high-energy polymath preacher and botanist whose lobbying secured key congressional support for the pioneers; his son Ephraim, Federalist legislator and educational advocate involved in the founding of the region's first university and an early library system; and Rufus Putnam, the general who led a group of Revolutionary War veterans to found the New England-inspired town of Marietta on the banks of the Muskingum. Their stories form the backbone of McCullough's narrative, though he is equally fascinated by less prominent settlers, who demonstrated remarkable grit under extremely adverse circumstances. This is a compact work, but it often feels epic. And Pittsburgh-born McCullough's personal affection for the region abounds.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Best-selling McCullough's latest vivid take on American history will generate avid interest.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)