Eric Jay Dolin. (2011). Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America. W. W. Norton & Company.

Eric Jay Dolin. 2011. Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America. W. W. Norton & Company.

Eric Jay Dolin, Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America. W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.

Eric Jay Dolin. Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America. W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.

OverDrive Product Record

images

• cover:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0044-1/{EFB77A0E-0711-4ECE-BE56-B27187B188CC}Img100.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• thumbnail:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0044-1/{EFB77A0E-0711-4ECE-BE56-B27187B188CC}Img200.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover150Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0044-1/EFB/77A/0E/{EFB77A0E-0711-4ECE-BE56-B27187B188CC}Img150.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover300Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0044-1/EFB/77A/0E/{EFB77A0E-0711-4ECE-BE56-B27187B188CC}Img400.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg

formats

1. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9780393079241
   • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
   • id: ebook-epub-adobe
2. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ASIN
        • value: B003ZSHUFW
   • name: Kindle Book
   • id: ebook-kindle
3. • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9780393079241
   • name: OverDrive Read
   • id: ebook-overdrive

mediaType

eBook

primaryCreator

• role: Author
• name: Eric Jay Dolin

title

Fur, Fortune, and Empire

dateAdded

2015-09-29T14:34:24.347-04:00

contentDetails

1. • href: https://link.overdrive.com/?websiteID=141&titleID=2307571
   • type: text/html
   • account:
     • name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
     • id: 1151

sortTitle

Fur Fortune and Empire The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America

crossRefId

2307571

subtitle

The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America

id

efb77a0e-0711-4ece-be56-b27187b188cc

starRating

3

OverDrive MetaData

isPublicDomain

False

formats

1. • fileName: FurFortuneandEmpire_9780393079241_2307571
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 2604874
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9780393079241
   • rights:
     1. • type: Copying
        • value: 0
     2. • type: Printing
        • value: 0
     3. • type: Lending
        • value: 0
     4. • type: ReadAloud
        • value: 0
     5. • type: ExpirationRights
        • value: 0
   • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: ebook-epub-adobe
   • onSaleDate: 7/5/2011
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=efb77a0e-0711-4ece-be56-b27187b188cc&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
2. • fileName: FurFortuneandEmpire_9780393079241_2307571
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 0
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9780393079241
     2. • type: ASIN
        • value: B003ZSHUFW
   • name: Kindle Book
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: ebook-kindle
   • onSaleDate: 7/5/2011
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=efb77a0e-0711-4ece-be56-b27187b188cc&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
3. • fileName: FurFortuneandEmpire_9780393079241_2307571
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 2604883
   • identifiers:
     1. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9780393079241
   • name: OverDrive Read
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: ebook-overdrive
   • onSaleDate: 7/5/2011
   • samples:
     1. • source: From the book
        • formatType: ebook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=efb77a0e-0711-4ece-be56-b27187b188cc&.epub-sample.overdrive.com

creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Dolin, Eric Jay
   • bioText: Eric Jay Dolin is the best-selling and award-winning author of numerous works in maritime history, including Leviathan, Rebels at Sea, and Black Flags, Blue Waters. He lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts.
   • name: Eric Jay Dolin

publishDate

2011-07-05T00:00:00-04:00

isOwnedByCollections

True

title

Fur, Fortune, and Empire

fullDescription

A Seattle Times selection for one of Best Non-Fiction Books of 2010
Winner of the New England Historial Association's 2010 James P. Hanlan Award
Winner of the Outdoor Writers Association of America 2011 Excellence in Craft Award, Book Division, First Place

"A compelling and well-annotated tale of greed, slaughter and geopolitics." —Los Angeles Times

As Henry Hudson sailed up the broad river that would one day bear his name, he grew concerned that his Dutch patrons would be disappointed in his failure to find the fabled route to the Orient. What became immediately apparent, however, from the Indians clad in deer skins and "good furs" was that Hudson had discovered something just as tantalizing.

The news of Hudson's 1609 voyage to America ignited a fierce competition to lay claim to this uncharted continent, teeming with untapped natural resources. The result was the creation of an American fur trade, which fostered economic rivalries and fueled wars among the European powers, and later between the United States and Great Britain, as North America became a battleground for colonization and imperial aspirations.

In Fur, Fortune, and Empire, best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin chronicles the rise and fall of the fur trade of old, when the rallying cry was "get the furs while they last." Beavers, sea otters, and buffalos were slaughtered, used for their precious pelts that were tailored into extravagant hats, coats, and sleigh blankets. To read Fur, Fortune, and Empire then is to understand how North America was explored, exploited, and settled, while its native Indians were alternately enriched and exploited by the trade. As Dolin demonstrates, fur, both an economic elixir and an agent of destruction, became inextricably linked to many key events in American history, including the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812, as well as to the relentless pull of Manifest Destiny and the opening of the West.

This work provides an international cast beyond the scope of any Hollywood epic, including Thomas Morton, the rabble-rouser who infuriated the Pilgrims by trading guns with the Indians; British explorer Captain James Cook, whose discovery in the Pacific Northwest helped launch America's China trade; Thomas Jefferson who dreamed of expanding the fur trade beyond the Mississippi; America's first multimillionaire John Jacob Astor, who built a fortune on a foundation of fur; and intrepid mountain men such as Kit Carson and Jedediah Smith, who sliced their way through an awe inspiring and unforgiving landscape, leaving behind a mythic legacy still resonates today.

Concluding with the virtual extinction of the buffalo in the late 1800s, Fur, Fortune, and Empire is an epic history that brings to vivid life three hundred years of the American experience, conclusively demonstrating that the fur trade played a seminal role in creating the nation we are today.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Kirkus Reviews
   • content: Starred Review. The fascinating story of the fur trade, full of heroism, greed, violence and political conflict. . . . riveting narrative . . . A delightful history, reminding readers that while noble ideals led to the settling of the United States, the fur trade paid the bills.
2. • premium: False
   • source: Anna Mundow;Boston Globe
   • content: Eric Jay Dolin, author of Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America, now turns his keen eye on another fabled extractive enterprise in Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America. With impressive erudition and lively wit, Dolin charts the astonishing development and impact of this fashion-driven trade from its inception in the early 17th century to the late 1880s, by which time it had created legends and fortunes, fueled imperial expansion, irrevocably altered Native American existence and devastated entire species.
3. • premium: False
   • source: Kirk David Swinehart;Washington Post
   • content: In Fur, Fortune, and Empire, Eric Jay Dolin ranges far and wide over land and sea, searching for the beating heart of a gargantuan industry touched by almost every aspect of human society and human nature: war, power, money, faith, desire and ambition. . . . As in Leviathan, his highly praised book on U.S. whaling, he restores what most of us regard as an American institution to its rightful place on the international stage. The result is easily the finest tale of the trade in recent memory, a crisply written tale unburdened by excessive detail or homespun provincialism.
4. • premium: False
   • source: Christian Science Monitor
   • content: [A] comprehensive, well-researched, and chronological account.... a compelling historical case study.
5. • premium: False
   • source: Associated Press
   • content: [M]eticulous and fascinating.
6. • premium: False
   • source: Bruce Barcott;Audubon Magazine
   • content: In his previous book, Leviathan, Dolin traced the evolution of American whalers from shoreside hunters to global sailors, as each generation was forced to travel farther and farther from Nantucket to find whales. His latest saga follows a similar drain-the-resource arc: When trappers wiped out the beaver in one region, they simply pushed west and exhausted the next. But Fur, Fortune, and Empire is no melancholy affair. The book bursts with colorful characters, venal corporations, and violent confrontations, all presented with sharp-eyed clarity in a narrative that clips right along.
7. • premium: False
   • source: Steve Raymond;Seattle Times
   • content: This is the story of the skinning of a continent. . . . [Dolin] explains how the fur trade shaped the exploration, settlement and development of North America. . . . interesting, well-researched book.
8. • premium: False
   • source: Dale Springer;St. Louis Post-Dispatch
   • content: [A] comprehensive study . . . One of the biggest services Dolin provides in Fur, Fortune, and Empire is giving the fur trade its proper due, establishing how important it was to the nation as a whole and to the gateway to the West in particular.
9. • premium: False
   • source: Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Rice University, author of The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America
   • content: Nobody writes about the link between American history and natural history with the scholarly grace of Eric Jay Dolin. Fur, Fortune, and Empire is a landmark study filled with a cast of eccentric Western-type characters....Not since the days of Francis Parkman has a historian analyzed the fur trade industry with such brilliance. Highly recommended!
10. • premium: False
    • source: Ric Burns, documentary filmmaker
    • content: Eric Jay Dolin has crafted a stunning companion to his recent history of the American whaling industry, one that situates the sprawling pageant of American history—from the founding of Plymouth Colony to the conquest of the Pacific Northwest and the Great Plains—squarely within the saga of the North American fur trade. Focusing on the three-century chase for wealth in fur, this lively, balanced, and carefully researched account evokes an epic clash of empires from one end of the continent to the other. The book charts the rise and expansion of the American republic on the back of fur-bearing mammals and chronicles, along the way, a rogues' gallery of astonishingly vivid characters, from Henry Hudson himself and John Jacob Astor, down through Jedediah Smith, Joseph Walker, and Kit Carson. A wonderful and timely rendering of a heedless and bloody minded age.
11. • premium: False
    • source: Peter Drummey, Stephen T. Riley Librarian, Massachusetts Historical Society
    • content: Great story telling that weaves the commercial, environmental, and political threads of the history of the...
12. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      Starred review from May 24, 2010
      Who'd think you could write a history of the U.S. centered on three centuries of the trade in furs? Dolin has done so in this spirited tale, although you won't find presidents, treaties, and wars. Instead, the main characters are the Indians, Dutch, French, British, Russians, and Americans who sought wealth and a living in the pelts of fur-bearing animals—beavers especially, but also sea otters, fur seals, and buffalo. Beneath this absorbing story lies the relentless drive (a "lethal wave" in Dolin's words) across the continent. In Dolin's telling, westward expansion wasn't fueled by "manifest destiny" or the thirst for empire but by the chase after animals. People as varied as Peter Stuyvesant, John Jacob Astor, Kit Carson, and the roughhewn "mountain men" play their parts over lands as dispersed as New England and Oregon. By the time animals are driven to near-extinction in the late 19th century, the U.S. is filled in. Neither would have happened without the other. Dolin, author of the acclaimed Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America, offers another good history well told. 16 pages of color and 16 pages of b&w illus.; map.

popularity

19

links

• self:
  • href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/efb77a0e-0711-4ece-be56-b27187b188cc/metadata
  • type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json

id

efb77a0e-0711-4ece-be56-b27187b188cc

starRating

3.3

images

• cover:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0044-1/{EFB77A0E-0711-4ECE-BE56-B27187B188CC}Img100.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• thumbnail:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0044-1/{EFB77A0E-0711-4ECE-BE56-B27187B188CC}Img200.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover150Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0044-1/EFB/77A/0E/{EFB77A0E-0711-4ECE-BE56-B27187B188CC}Img150.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover300Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0044-1/EFB/77A/0E/{EFB77A0E-0711-4ECE-BE56-B27187B188CC}Img400.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg

isPublicPerformanceAllowed

False

languages

1. • code: en
   • name: English

subjects

1. • value: History
2. • value: Nonfiction

publishDateText

07/05/2011

otherFormatIdentifiers

1. • type: ISBN
   • value: 9780393340020

mediaType

eBook

shortDescription

A Seattle Times selection for one of Best Non-Fiction Books of 2010
Winner of the New England Historial Association's 2010 James P. Hanlan Award
Winner of the Outdoor Writers Association of America 2011 Excellence in Craft Award, Book Division, First Place

"A compelling and well-annotated tale of greed, slaughter and geopolitics." —Los Angeles Times

As Henry Hudson sailed up the broad river that would one day bear his name, he grew concerned that his Dutch patrons would be disappointed in his failure to find the fabled route to the Orient. What became immediately apparent, however, from the Indians clad in deer skins and "good furs" was that Hudson had discovered something just as tantalizing.

The news of Hudson's 1609 voyage to America ignited a fierce competition to lay claim to this uncharted continent, teeming with untapped natural resources. The result was the creation of an American fur trade, which fostered...

sortTitle

Fur Fortune and Empire The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America

crossRefId

2307571

subtitle

The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America

publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

bisacCodes

1. • code: HIS036020
   • description: History / United States / Colonial Period (1600-1775)