![]() Its success shows how big the gap between critical history and the 'popular history' that makes it to best-seller lists, Costco, and Target remains. When it comes to representing 'pioneers' as isolated and hardworking idealists fighting off 'threats' from residents of the land they are taking, this book is a true throwback. Rather than wrestle with the moral complexities of western settlement, McCullough simplifies that civic lesson into a tale of inexorable triumph. He cannot bring himself to say that those whom the settlers dislodged had rights to their lands in Ohio. To McCullough, the natives were little more than impediments to progress. ![]() McCullough’s treatment of the Native Americans whom settlers encountered in Ohio is equally blinkered. McCullough glides over these unpleasantries and focuses instead on Cutler’s role in lobbying to exclude slavery from the Northwest Territory. casting the Ohio Company as a vehicle of higher ideals is a feat too difficult even for a writer as skilled as McCullough. The heroes are so upstanding that, somewhat unexpectedly for a McCullough book, the villains are more compelling. ![]() ![]() His most recent book.is very much in that upbeat tradition. The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough is a master of triumphal tales that celebrate Americans’ personal fortitude and achievements. ![]()
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