The descriptions of what this part of America looked like to these first European American settlers with huge old growth forests makes you appreciate how hard it was to clear the land as well as long for the huge trees to still be there. McCullough also is able to cover the immense changes in the lifetimes of these first settlers as they go from using sailboats to the first steam boats that made transportation easier. Of course, as in all of American history, the people who were already 'settlers' there, the native Americans, lost out as European Americans started their first push west. Most of them are men of character as well - they lived long lives and they were instrumental in making the Ohio territory a place that people wanted to come to as well as insisting that the Ohio territory would be a place where slaves were not allowed. Unlike his wonderful stories of American icons such as Truman and John Adams, his main characters are for the most part unknown to us although they live on in state and town history. I knew that the Ohio territory was the first 'west' that Americans went flocking to but no other details and I even ended up hauling out an atlas so I could figure out where exactly these first pioneers settled.
I've always learned from his books but this one was on a subject that I was not at all acquainted with: the first American settlements in the Ohio territory. David McCullough always writes appealing books and this one (read from an eARC provided by Edelweiss) does not disappoint.
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