the oregon trail a new american journey by rinker buck

He was accompanied by three cantankerous mules, his boisterous brother, Nick, and an 'incurably filthy' Jack Russell terrier named Olive Oyl. At once a majestic American journey, a significant work of history, and a personal saga reminiscent of bestsellers by Bill Bryson and Cheryl Strayed, the book tells the story of Buck's 2,000-mile expedition across the plains with tremendous humor and heart. 'The New Yorker 'described his first travel narrative, 'Flight of Passage,' as 'a funny, cocky gem of a book,' and with 'The Oregon Trail 'he seeks to bring the most important road in American history back to life.

Rinker Buck is no stranger to grand adventures. Today, amazingly, the trail is all but forgotten. The trail years also solidified the American character: our plucky determination in the face of adversity, our impetuous cycle of financial bubbles and busts, the fractious clash of ethnic populations competing for the same jobs and space. In the fifteen years before the Civil War, when 400,000 pioneers used it to emigrate West-historians still regard this as the largest land migration of all time-the trail united the coasts, doubled the size of the country, and laid the groundwork for the railroads.

Spanning 2,000 miles and traversing six states from Missouri to the Pacific Ocean, the Oregon Trail is the route that made America. In the bestselling tradition of Bill Bryson and Tony Horwitz, Rinker Buck's 'The Oregon Trail' is a major work of participatory history: an epic account of traveling the 2,000-mile length of the Oregon Trail the old-fashioned way, in a covered wagon with a team of mules-which hasn't been done in a century-that also tells the rich history of the trail, the people who made the migration, and its significance to the country.

The oregon trail a new american journey by rinker buck