Land
How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World
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Land
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Narrated by:
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Simon Winchester
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By:
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Simon Winchester
About this listen
“In many ways, Land combines bits and pieces of many of Winchester’s previous books into a satisfying, globe-trotting whole.... Winchester is, once again, a consummate guide.” (Boston Globe)
The author of The Professor and the Madman, The Map That Changed the World, and The Perfectionists explores the notion of property - bought, earned, or received; in Europe, Africa, North America, or the South Pacific - through human history, how it has shaped us and what it will mean for our future.
Land - whether meadow or mountainside, desert or peat bog, parkland or pasture, suburb or city - is central to our existence. It quite literally underlies and underpins everything. Employing the keen intellect, insatiable curiosity, and narrative verve that are the foundations of his previous bestselling works, Simon Winchester examines what we human beings are doing - and have done - with the billions of acres that together make up the solid surface of our planet.
Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World examines in depth how we acquire land, how we steward it, how and why we fight over it, and finally, how we can, and on occasion do, come to share it. Ultimately, Winchester confronts the essential question: who actually owns the world’s land - and why does it matter?
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
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Just couldn't stand the paternalism
- By Matthew on 04-02-14
By: Geoffrey Blainey
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Ramp Hollow
- The Ordeal of Appalachia
- By: Steven Stoll
- Narrated by: Brian Sutherland
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 91
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Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 80
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Story4 out of 5 stars 79
Appalachia - among the most storied and yet least understood regions in America - has long been associated with poverty and backwardness. But how did this image arise, and what exactly does it mean? In Ramp Hollow, Steven Stoll launches an original investigation into the history of Appalachia and its place in US history, with a special emphasis on how generations of its inhabitants lived, worked, survived, and depended on natural resources held in common.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Almost unlistenable
- By Golf Fan on 09-13-18
By: Steven Stoll
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The Men Who United the States
- America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics, and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,178
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,074
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,068
How did America become “one nation, indivisible”? What unified a growing number of disparate states into the modern country we recognize today? To answer these questions, Winchester follows in the footsteps of America’s most essential explorers, thinkers, and innovators. Introducing the fascinating people who played a pivotal role in creating today’s United States, he ponders whether the historic work of uniting the States has succeeded, and to what degree.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Sarcastic
- By Cynthia Hartman on 06-16-16
By: Simon Winchester
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How Iceland Changed the World
- The Big History of a Small Island
- By: Egill Bjarnason
- Narrated by: Einar Gunn
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 302
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 265
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 263
The history of Iceland began 1,200 years ago, when a frustrated Viking captain and his useless navigator ran aground in the middle of the North Atlantic. Suddenly, the island was no longer just a layover for the Arctic tern. Instead, it became a nation whose diplomats and musicians, sailors and soldiers, volcanoes and flowers, quietly altered the globe forever. How Iceland Changed the World takes readers on a tour of history, showing them how Iceland played a pivotal role in events as diverse as the French Revolution, the Moon Landing, and the foundation of Israel.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Brilliant
- By Ian D. Jones on 06-01-21
By: Egill Bjarnason
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Collapse
- How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
- By: Jared Diamond
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 27 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,708
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,473
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,465
In Jared Diamond’s follow-up to the Pulitzer-Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel, the author explores how climate change, the population explosion, and political discord create the conditions for the collapse of civilization. Environmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of societies around the world, but some found solutions and persisted.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Jared Diamond Downs You in Explanation
- By Rob on 07-20-18
By: Jared Diamond
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Pilgrims and Puritans: 1620-1676
- Drama of American History
- By: James Lincoln Collier, Christopher Collier
- Narrated by: Jim Manchester
- Length: 1 hr and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 379
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 345
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 344
In Pilgrims and Puritans, the authors begin in the year 1620 in England and end in New England in the year 1676. The book recounts the religious, political, and social history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and its influence on our lives today. The narrative follows various groups of settlers from their departure from England through arrival in the New World and their often violent conflicts with the native peoples of the Americas. The authors examine a number of issues that arose in the new society that was founded and the rise and fall of the "city on a hill."
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5 out of 5 stars
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We need a Puritan revival
- By pat hanley on 08-10-21
By: James Lincoln Collier, and others
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The Inconvenient Indian
- A Curious Account of Native People in North America
- By: Thomas King
- Narrated by: Lorne Cardinal
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 209
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 180
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 177
The Inconvenient Indian is at once a “history” and the complete subversion of a history - in short, a critical and personal meditation that the remarkable Thomas King has conducted over the past 50 years about what it means to be “Indian” in North America. Rich with dark and light, pain and magic, this book distills the insights gleaned from that meditation, weaving the curiously circular tale of the relationship between non-Natives and Natives in the centuries since the two first encountered each other.
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2 out of 5 stars
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I Thought I'd Enjoy This More
- By Kristy Grainger on 08-11-18
By: Thomas King
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1491
- New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
- By: Charles C. Mann
- Narrated by: Darrell Dennis
- Length: 16 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,751
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,226
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3,213
Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus' landing had crossed the Bering Strait 12,000 years ago; existed mainly in small nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land that the Americas were, for all practical purposes, still a vast wilderness. But as Charles C. Mann now makes clear, archaeologists and anthropologists have spent the last 30 years proving these and many other long-held assumptions wrong.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Exposes Non-Academic Audience to The Debate Between Ideas of Pre-Colombian America's
- By Christopher on 01-19-17
By: Charles C. Mann
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What Is America
- A Short History of the New World Order
- By: Ronald Wright
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 29
Ranging with dazzling expertise through anthropology, history, and literature, Wright reconfigures our self-perception, arguing that the "essence" of America can be traced to the foundations of our history--literally to the collision of worlds that began in 1492, as one civilization subsumed another--and exploring how these currents continue to shape our world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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insightful overview
- By rm3154 on 04-19-12
By: Ronald Wright
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The Republic of Nature: An Environmental History of the United States
- By: Mark Fiege
- Narrated by: William Bahl
- Length: 19 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 101
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 100
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 100
In the dramatic narratives that comprise The Republic of Nature, Mark Fiege reframes the canonical account of American history based on the simple but radical premise that nothing in the nation's past can be considered apart from the natural circumstances in which it occurred. Revisiting historical icons so familiar that schoolchildren learn to take them for granted, he makes surprising connections that enable readers to see old stories in a new light.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Will surely listen to it many times over.
- By Thomas Lopez on 01-24-20
By: Mark Fiege
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Earning the Rockies
- How Geography Shapes America's Role in the World
- By: Robert D. Kaplan
- Narrated by: William Dufris
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 230
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 198
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Story4 out of 5 stars 198
As a boy, Robert D. Kaplan listened to his truck-driver father's evocative stories about traveling across America as a young man, travels in which he learned to understand the country from a ground-level perspective. In Earning the Rockies, Kaplan undertakes his own cross-country journey to recapture an appreciation and understanding of American geography that is often lost in the jet age.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Magnificent book that found a great narrator!
- By BotakTree on 03-09-17
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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Ghosts of Gold Mountain
- The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad
- By: Gordon H. Chang
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 125
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 112
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 112
From across the sea, they came by the thousands, escaping war and poverty in southern China to seek their fortunes in America. Converging on the enormous western worksite of the Transcontinental Railroad, the migrants spent years dynamiting tunnels through the snow-packed cliffs of the Sierra Nevada and laying tracks across the burning Utah desert. Their sweat and blood fueled the ascent of an interlinked, industrial United States. But those of them who survived this perilous effort would be pushed to the margins of American life and then to the fringes of public memory.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very inspiring, educational, and enlightening!
- By Amazon Customer on 06-25-19
By: Gordon H. Chang
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1493
- Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
- By: Charles C. Mann
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 17 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,120
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,770
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,769
More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. When Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas, he ended that separation at a stroke. Driven by the economic goal of establishing trade with China, he accidentally set off an ecological convulsion as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating Mindbending History.
- By Betsy Powel on 12-19-11
By: Charles C. Mann
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The Discovery of France
- A Historical Geography
- By: Graham Robb
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 44
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 42
A narrative of exploration - full of strange landscapes and even stranger inhabitants - that explains the enduring fascination of France. While Gustave Eiffel was changing the skyline of Paris, large parts of France were still terra incognita. Even in the age of railways and newspapers, France was a land of ancient tribal divisions, prehistoric communication networks, and pre-Christian beliefs. French itself was a minority language.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great history of the cultural formation of France
- By Scotty on 07-31-21
By: Graham Robb
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Making Haste from Babylon
- The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World: A New History
- By: Nick Bunker
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 18 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 87
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 70
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 69
At the end of 1618, a blazing green star soared across the night sky over the northern hemisphere. From the Philippines to the Arctic, the comet became a sensation and a symbol, a warning of doom or a promise of salvation. Two years later, as the Pilgrims prepared to sail across the Atlantic on board the Mayflower, the atmosphere remained charged with fear and expectation. Men and women readied themselves for war, pestilence, or divine retribution. Against this background, and amid deep economic depression, the Pilgrims conceived their enterprise of exile.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent, detailed and eye-opening
- By David on 09-20-15
By: Nick Bunker
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Dreams of El Dorado
- A History of the American West
- By: H. W. Brands
- Narrated by: Matt Kugler
- Length: 17 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 411
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 353
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 354
In Dreams of El Dorado, H. W. Brands tells the thrilling, panoramic story of the settling of the American West. He takes us from John Jacob Astor's fur trading outpost in Oregon to the Texas Revolution, from the California gold rush to the Oklahoma land rush. He shows how the migrants' dreams drove them to feats of courage and perseverance that put their stay-at-home cousins to shame - and how those same dreams also drove them to outrageous acts of violence against indigenous peoples and one another. El Dorado was at least as elusive in the West as it ever was in the East.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Dreadful narration
- By Fredmo on 12-09-19
By: H. W. Brands
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This Land Is Their Land
- The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving
- By: David J. Silverman
- Narrated by: William Roberts
- Length: 14 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 92
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 78
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 78
In March 1621, when Plymouth’s survival was hanging in the balance, the Wampanoag sachem (or chief), Ousamequin (Massasoit), and Plymouth’s governor, John Carver, declared their people’s friendship for each other and a commitment to mutual defense. Later that autumn, the English gathered their first successful harvest and lifted the specter of starvation. Ousamequin and 90 of his men then visited Plymouth for the 'First Thanksgiving'. The treaty remained operative until King Philip’s War in 1675, when 50 years of uneasy peace between the two parties would come to an end.
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5 out of 5 stars
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This factual presentation is lasting
- By marwalk on 04-10-20
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Unworthy Republic
- The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory
- By: Claudio Saunt
- Narrated by: Stephen Bowlby
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 117
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 96
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Story5 out of 5 stars 95
In May 1830, the United States formally launched a policy to expel Native Americans from the East to territories west of the Mississippi River. Justified as a humanitarian enterprise, the undertaking was to be systematic and rational, overseen by Washington's small but growing bureaucracy. But as the policy unfolded over the next decade, thousands of Native Americans died under the federal government's auspices, and thousands of others lost their possessions and homelands in an orgy of fraud, intimidation, and violence.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Slow Burn
- By Hervé DuThé on 04-20-20
By: Claudio Saunt
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