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The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West
The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West
The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West
Audiobook10 hours

The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West

Written by David McCullough

Narrated by John Bedford Lloyd

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

The #1 New York Times bestseller 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.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateMay 7, 2019
ISBN9781508279099
Author

David McCullough

David McCullough (1933–2022) twice received the Pulitzer Prize, for Truman and John Adams, and twice received the National Book Award, for The Path Between the Seas and Mornings on Horseback. His other acclaimed books include The Johnstown Flood, The Great Bridge, Brave Companions, 1776, The Greater Journey, The American Spirit, The Wright Brothers, and The Pioneers. He was the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. Visit DavidMcCullough.com.

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Reviews for The Pioneers

Rating: 4.030710157389636 out of 5 stars
4/5

521 ratings49 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I was disappointed with this work as it is the least appealing of the author's many books.Unlike others such as "1776", the storyline wasn't captivating - at times I found my interest to be waning. This is unfortunate, because the pioneer era in the Northwest Territory has not been fully explored.I recommend this book to those with a particular interest in the subject at hand as there is value. Nonetheless, for those with limited time I would pursue other works by the author.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    What more can you say, WM is a brilliant historian. He not only gives you details of the people, places, along with facts of the times. His words makes you feel like you’re there with these very brave people.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Authors research resulted in a new insights on this topic
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Good exposition of the settlement of Marietta, Ohio, as the first town established in the Northwest Territory and the Abolitionist Congregationalists who founded the city, Ohio University, and Marietta’s College. I’d like to have heard more about what happened to the tribes , like the Delawares, who first inhabited the area.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I went to Ohio University in the 1970. Loved the landscape and people.
    Only a anti war riot made me leave .
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Wonderfully researched and told story of early Ohio. Makes me want to visit and witness first hand these historic places.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Another gem by David McCullough. This is the story of the settling of the Northwest Territory, the wilderness northwest of the Ohio River beginning in 1788. A Massachusetts minister, Manasseh Cutler led the first group of Revolutionary War veterans on the 700 mile journey from New England to what became Ohio. The book is written from a treasure trove of sources including diaries, articles, and letters, most of which are housed at Marietta College, where McCullough camped out for weeks working on the research. The story focuses on five individuals: Cutler, his son Ephraim, General Rufus Putnam, and two other men, one a carpenter turned architect and the other a doctor who became a prominent pioneer scientist. The book is written as all of McCullough’s books are written by teaching history through the stories of real people who lived during trying and challenging times.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Fantastic book , found myself taking notes . Outstanding reader
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Not an easy one to listen to but still quite interesting. It gets better towards the end. You will find a slightly amount of humor.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    So much information, Will be reading it again very soon...
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Excellent. Highly readable. Great detail. An expansive, while always warm account. Big contribution to the context of early American expansion westwards.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I like the information given, but the history feels scrubbed and overly shiny. Not that a very dark side was what I was looking for, but it would be helpful to have more of the humanity of these pioneers shown as well.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I wasn’t aware of the deep, rich history of the Ohio settlement. Mr McCullough’s riveting story of the men & women who created this settlement is a lesson of the virtues & industry of these people who are also our forefathers of our democracy. This should be required reading in our schools today.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    At over 80 years of age, McCullough is still at the top of his game with this, his latest exciting historical narrative.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Covers essential War of 1812 in like 3 pages.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Like the history quite a bit. The narrative was a little antiquated even though I love David McCullough and many of the other books he has written.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    This should be renamed "diary readings of a bunch of people that lived around Marietta Ohio". Marginally interesting at best, and narrated in an overly dramatic fashion, it reads more like an abridged version.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Insights into the northwest ordinance and anti slavery takes by some leaders
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    David McCullough is a unique author. He finds known areas of history about which little is written. The biographies of John Adams and Harry Truman have elevated the regard in which those Presidents are held. Both existed in the shadows of their predecessors; the great George Washington and the diabolical and infamous, though well-regarded Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

    This book continues that tradition, harking back to the earlier Wright Brothers, also largely centered around the State of Ohio. The first part of the book, focusing on the New England origins of Ohio's founders as a state, drags a little. Thus the four rather than five stars. The book wound up with my wanting to wave a seventeen or so star flag around (I think Ohio was the 17th state, admitted after Vermont, Kentucky and Tennessee).

    The book had a major contribution on the role of Manassah and Ephraim Cutler and other New England ministers in resisting the spread of slavery into Ohio and the Northwest Territories. Other inspiring stories were the selfless efforts of Samuel Hildreth, an early doctor and nature curator. Finally, it is the story of how many good men made a very great country, the United States of America.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Although I did learn a few interesting facts, I found this book for the most part dry, boring, and disjointed.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Read this in 2019 -- two years before this book was added to the DAR Book club reading list for 2021-22. I had found this an engrossing book about America's beginnings of its westward expansion -- it focuses on the settlement of one area of Ohio in the early days of our nation, and also covers several remarkable people behind it all. McCullough also did a great job evoking the dangers (wild animals, etc) of going into this unknown territory.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Hardly anyone today thinks of the Ohio Valley as "the West." A great many Americans, in fact, regard Ohio as "back East." Yet when the country was very young, those who settled in Ohio were among the very first pioneers, and they are the subject of David McCullough's “The Pioneers” (2019)McCullough writes that the idea for the book came to him when he was the commencement speaker at Ohio University, my own alma mater, in 2004 in tribute to the university's 200th anniversary. He took an interest in the founding of the school in 1804, just a year after Ohio became a state and when it was still mostly wilderness. He was referred to the Legacy Library at nearby Marietta College, which holds an extensive collection of original documents about early Ohio, and also about Ohio University's founder, Manasseh Cutler.It was Manasseh Cutler, a minister, who was most responsible for settling the Northwest Territory in the first place. Those first settlers stopped in what is now Marietta. Yet it is Cutler's son, Ephraim, who takes most of the spotlight in this book. A significant early political leader in the new state, he left his sickbed long enough to cast the deciding vote that prohibited slavery in Ohio. (It was apparently Thomas Jefferson who was responsible for persuading many legislators to vote in favor of slavery.)Such people as Aaron Burr, John Quincy Adams, Tecumseh and Harriet Beecher Stowe play roles in this early Ohio history, which spans the years from 1787 to the Civil War. We read of Indian battles, an earthquake, epidemics and floods. People kept coming, most of them following the Ohio River, and many kept going west from Ohio, becoming pioneers elsewhere.This is hardly the most interesting of McCullough's many books, in part because of its broad focus. Yet it was subject matter ripe for revisiting by a historian, and McCullough is among the best.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I read this book because it's by David McCullough and because my family on my mother's mother's side settled in Ohio as pioneers from New England, as did those on whom this book is based. I learned a lot about the early settling of Ohio, though it turns out none of it was really relevant to my family history. The focus is on the town of Marietta as it was the first town in the Northwest Territory.

    I have to agree with many others who reviewed this book that it reads with a point of view from the ninteenth century rather than something from 2019. McCullough based this book on diaries from a number of the early pioneers. The personal insights from the diaries lends much to the story, and their worldview comes through as you might expect. What's missing is any interpretation or context from the 21st century. I've read many town or county histories from the late 1800s while doing family research and this book reads like one of them. I was disappointed that McCullough did not add more context to the book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Based on records kept by individuals associated with the Ohio Company, who established Marietta, the first significant American-founded settlement in the Old Northwest Territory, I can't say that this is particularly satisfactory work. On one hand, it's not really lively enough to be popular history. On the other, it doesn't have enough of a critical or analytic backbone to really appeal to a scholar. The overall flavor is one of antiquarian fustiness. This is too bad, as I have personal and professional interests in early Ohio history, and I really do expect better from David McCullough.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    For me, David McCullough is an acquired taste. His accounts of American history and its players don't immediately do justice to this book's subtitle, "The Heroic Story of Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West." I think it's the use, or misuse, of the word "heroic." These figures aren't Lincolns or Washingtons. They're more like John Adams but much, much less well known. They're heroic, yes, but not larger-than-life legends.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I was delighted to see the maestro of American history had turned his genius toward places where I've lived and studied. The Pioneers focuses on the early visionaries (and speculators) who campaigned to form the inroads that led to the forming of Ohio, the Northwest Territory and ultimately the entire westward expansion. In the course of covering a hundred years from the end of the Revolution to the turn of the 20th century, McCullough explains the Burr-Blennerhassett conspiracy, the founding of Ohio University, the rise of steamboats, and the end of native peoples. Marietta, Ohio is at the center of it all. McCullough portrays the personal charm and political perseverance of its residents, the Cutlers, Putnams, and Hildreths who were all so central to this time and place in America's history.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Engaging, informative, interesting - a good read. This is really the story of the history of the Territory of Ohio. In 1787, the Northwest Ordinance championed by a man named Manasset Cutler opened up the territory for settlement. Cutler's oldest son was one of those settlers along with a number of other families who stayed and became the backbone of government on the frontier.The early chapters deal with the hardships the settlers faced not only in getting there, but after having settled. Native tribes at one time friendly turned violent. One of the memorable stories is of a very inept General who set out to fight the natives but was horribly defeated due to his own arrogance and gout. Weather played a huge part: sometimes floods, other times hot and drought.The second part from 1979 to 1814 deals with Ephraim Cutler, and four other men who were early leaders: Joseph Barker was a carpenter turned architect; Samuel Hildreth was a physician who was also an early American scientist, and General Rufus Putnam, a Revolutionary War veteran.The city of Marietta on the banks of the Ohio River is the main focus of the story as it was the first carefully laid out settlement. Aaron Burr shows up after he has killed Hamilton with his own revolutionary idea of splitting the territory from the US. There are two colorful characters, Harman and his niece/wife Margaret Blennerhassett who arrive and build a huge mansion on an island in the Ohio River. They become involved with Burr and the story seems to strange to be true. When Manasset Cutler wrote the Constitution for the territory, slavery was not allowed. His son, Ephram also worked to keep Ohio free of slavery and promoted free education. Ohio later became one of the main routes for the Underground Railroad.A lot of history of one particular part of the country which was one of the first frontiers after the establishment of our country.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Popular historian McCullough’s latest book examines the lives and times of the New England pioneers who formed the Ohio Company of Associates and settled in Marietta, Ohio, at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum rivers. This book had its origins in McCullough’s 2004 commencement address at Ohio University. His research into the history of the university led him to Manasseh Cutler and the Ohio Company. It didn’t hurt that McCullough was already very familiar with John Adams and his family, who make appearances in this book. The bibliography provides evidence of both wide and thorough research. The execution feels a little awkward, though, especially the rather abrupt ending. Since it’s a group biography of people of different generations, the last to die were living in a different era at the end of their lives.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was a nice history of the town of Marietta, Ohio. Drawn from a great amount of letters, diaries and earlier works about the founders and their families, this is very personal and very detailed. I learned quite a bit about early Ohio from 1788 - about 1820. This covers a brief period of time with just a small amount of history from the mid-1800's as it follows the founders and their children. A good work on early frontier life.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Author David McCullough stands securely as one of our nation’s great historians. His prior well-received works have focused upon American military and political history. This exposition tells how the American ideal settled into what was then known as the Northwest Territory. McCullough does so by sharing the work of five sizable figures in early Ohio history.The five played varied roles in life: A pastor/educator, a military man, the farmer-son of the pastor/educator, an architect, and a physician/scientist. McCullough treats them as heroes in contrast with his critique of Vice-President-turned-rebel Aaron Burr’s role in Ohio state history. He captures interesting history about a state which comes to the fore every four years in electoral politics. He also demonstrates Ohio’s dedication to education epitomized in Manasseh Cutler’s Puritan ethic and its pride in a stand against slavery in its state constitution.Those looking for a critical and analytical history will probably be disappointed as McCullough essentially tells “hero” stories about white males and as settlers’ xenophobia manifested in wars with the Native Americans. This book is told by an American who is proud of his country’s history even when it seems morally questionable. His sensitivity falls a bit short concerning the paranoia the pioneers showed towards Native American attacks. While the narrative about Ohio’s stand against slavery is admirable, the narrative about constant butchering from one side or the other between the settlers and the natives is simply tragic. In this work, McCullough could have shown more compassion towards those being invaded and moral honesty about white oppression.Despite these shortcomings, this well-told tale should be treasured by many for years to come. The world rarely presents itself in morally clear categories. Such is the case here. The American move west required ingenuity, steadfast labor, and hardiness. This was shown by both the men and the women who for sharing these values. This work captures that ethic in relatively clairvoyant form. Such is our common national history, and those interested in understanding what it means to be an “American” (or even an “Ohioan”) should spend some time reading McCullough’s entertaining exposition.