Turns out, the world didn’t stop, breathless, while the Founding Fathers met on the Atlantic seaboard to foment a revolution.
West of the Revolution gives us a glimpse of what else was happening on this continent out West in 1776.
Author Claudio Saunt frames eight vignettes of history unfolding in the Aleutians, the California missions, the Colorado plateau, Havana, and the Black Hills of North Dakota.
Of particular interest to me were stories of the sophistication of Native American societies and their complex interactions with each other and with Europeans.
Horrifying were the accounts of the violence Spanish missionaries inflicted on California natives.
Well worth the time and its organization in free standing chapters allowed me to pick it up and put it down and still get the full experience.