2024 the best non fiction books of all time review

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The number one New York Times best seller by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough rediscovers an important chapter in the American story that's "as resonant today as ever" (The Wall Street Journal) - the settling of the Northwest Territory by courageous pioneers who overcame incredible hardships to build a community based on ideals that would define our country.

As part of the Treaty of Paris, in which Great Britain recognized the new United States of America, Britain ceded the land that comprised the immense Northwest Territory, a wilderness empire northwest of the Ohio River containing the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. A Massachusetts minister named Manasseh Cutler was instrumental in opening this vast territory to veterans of the Revolutionary War and their families for settlement. Included in the Northwest Ordinance were three remarkable conditions: freedom of religion, free universal education, and most importantly, the prohibition of slavery.

In 1788 the first band of pioneers set out from New England for the Northwest Territory under the leadership of Revolutionary War veteran General Rufus Putnam. They settled in what is now Marietta on the banks of the Ohio River. McCullough tells the story through five major characters: Cutler and Putnam; Cutler's son Ephraim; and two other men, one a carpenter turned architect, and the other a physician who became a prominent pioneer in American science.

"With clarity and incisiveness, [McCullough] details the experience of a brave and broad-minded band of people who crossed raging rivers, chopped down forests, plowed miles of land, suffered incalculable hardships, and braved a lonely frontier to forge a new American ideal" (The Providence Journal).

Drawn in great part from a rare and all-but-unknown collection of diaries and letters by the key figures, The Pioneers is a uniquely American story of people whose ambition and courage led them to remarkable accomplishments. "A tale of uplift" (The New York Times Book Review), this is a quintessentially American story, written with David McCullough's signature narrative energy.

Reviewer: John P Miller
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: One small town in the wilderness leads to great changes for the entire country
Review: This is my first McCullough book but it will not be my last. With careful detail and obviously deep research from source material the author tells a story of the movement Westward and the expansion of the burgeoning, post Revolution United States. He focuses granularly on Marietta Ohio and surrounding area for good reason. If not for Rufus Putnam and the Ohio company and Marietta Ohio, none of the western expansion might have happened for quite some time. The importance of this area in our nation's history cannot be overstated. I find it typical but still disappointing the number of reviewers that have chosen to focus on the native Americans fate. If one is to read the book one will see that the settlers intention was to work with the local inhabitants as much as possible (though it did not always turn out this way.) Those choosing to focus on the plight of the supposed perfect indigenous people ignore the fact that the charter of Ohio forbade slavery and that the very settlers of Marietta were instrumental in keeping those measures in the new States Constitution as it was written. These were men and women of good heart. Our modern culture tends to glorify anyting the natives did as "pure" and "close to the Earth" when in fact they warred viciously with each other as well as the white inhabitants. It should also be noted that unless they were direct descendants of the prehistoric peoples "the Hopewell" from 2000 years ago they too were Invaders. The book is fantastic and should inspire everyone who reads it to learn their own local history in more depth and perhaps make a pioneering pilgrimage of their own to the sites in this book.

Reviewer: HPX97
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A flawed, albeit compelling and entertaining book
Review: 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.

Reviewer: Sotto voce
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A fine history
Review: I read this books review in the WSJ some months ago, liked the historical premise and put it in my wishlist. I finally read down my list to open the Pioneers.David McCullough is a reliable go-to historical writer with an eye for specialized, focused histories. He’s batted a thousand with his tightly written narratives. There have been several years that I thought he had written a top 5 of the year. He’s not an author for the history deep diver to pass over lightly.The story begins in the overcrowded and bankrupt MA colony. Too many people competing for too little money for too long created a restless population. An idea grows to become the Northwest Ordinance circa 1787. The Ohio River was the jewel all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.West Virginia was governed by VA property law, sold-out but unclaimed and vastly unsettled. VA was a slave state of no appeal to the one generation removed Puritan settlers of New England. On the other side of the river from Wheeling WV, was Ohio and south by river flow grew a squatter domain of huddled settlements surrounded by variously British and French-inspired Indian mercenaries needing little motivation to stand against the white man invasion.Marietta, named after the ostensible French royal hero of the Revolution Marie Antoinette. Established on the banks of the navigable Ohio and Muskingum Rivers it was the heart of the first Confederation Congress land grant into the 'unknown'.This is a story of endurance. It’s a tale of highly educated and established social status families re-purposed to make their way into the primordial wilderness.McCullough’s history comes from the historical and personal written legacies tidied away in shoeboxes from descendants.I know Marietta. The Indian mound cemetery is still there. The streets remain named as the settlement. The modern era shrinking village revels in its bygone Federalist architecture. Here be ghosts and shadows of giants.

Reviewer: Amazon Customer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: If you like history, this book is worth reading. Learn things they didn’t teach in school. Well written. Fast reading.

Reviewer: Martin Suter
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: 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.

Reviewer: Barbara
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: 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.

Reviewer: Christian Nugue
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Le Far West pour les contemporains de Benjamin Franklin se situait de l'autre côté des Appalaches. D'où la création à la fin du XVIIIème siècle d'une Société de l'Ohio pour coloniser notamment les territoires situés au confluent de cette rivière et de son tributaire. La petite communauté, qui s'établit à Marietta en Géorgie, s'est dotée d'idéaux très élevés: pas d'esclavage, pas de traitement injuste des Indiens. La réalité, fortement adoucie par l'auteur, sera tout autre.

Reviewer: Quebec Customer
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: As with all of David McCullough's work, I truly enjoyed the rich tapestry of characters and the settings found in this book. He has woven together a cast of characters connected through the settling of a community in Ohio and its development over the decades that followed. I think was fascinated me most was the sheer number of characters in this book who were completely unfamiliar to me (and I dare say to most of those who are well-acquainted with American history) but who came alive through their connected stories. And, even though we are often amazed at the pace of change in our modern lives, I was equally amazed at the pace of change following the settlement of communities in the Northwest territories - though the difficult circumstances they lived through at a personal level was so much more complicated (and deadly) than what we might experience these days. I have no hesitation in recommending this book very highly.