This fascinating history of the attempt to establish American dominance of the global fur trade around 1810 is a very interesting read. Many members of my book club said it was the best book of the year. I'm not sure about that, only because Caste by Isabelle Wilkerson was also in the running, and that book hits all the marks for me. But at a minimum, Astoria was a very close runner-up. It is worth the read.
This book by Peter Stark took me into an era of American history I know little about. I studied the revolution and the making of the Constitution, and I have read biographies of Jefferson, as well as some of the other original patriots. But I had never heard of this adventure—or rather, misadventure. It is the story not of Lewis and Clark on their first exploration of the Missouri River and their trip to the west coast, but rather, you could consider it the second great exploration of the West supported by Jefferson. It happened around 1810, six years after Lewis and Clark returned, and ran into the outbreak of the War of 1812.
John Jacob Astor was one of the wealthiest men of his day, and he had the vision to establish a fur trading empire on the Pacific coast. To do so, he funded two teams to establish routes and a trading center at the mouth of the Columbia River—one to get there by sea (and sailing around Cape Horn), and the other to go overland (largely following Lewis and Clark). The story is about both adventures.
But it is also about geopolitics, how war can affect big dreams and big projects, and the tenacity of men in the face of adversity. It is about the cultural clash between Europeans and Native Americans. And, as the cover declares, it is about the human condition.
I'm not going to go into the details with spoilers because this well-researched book reads like an adventure story. It has the page-turning qualities of a good novel but is based on research, and the author lets the reader know in unobtrusive ways when he is speculating rather than recording the truth. Many historical biographies forget to make this distinction in favor of the story, so the alert reader finds himself thinking: How do you know? Not so in this book, which is one reason I consider it masterful.
Stark makes you feel like you are there in his storytelling, and that's due in no small part to the fact that he was there. He sailed on tall ships, climbed the rigging in a storm, and hiked the Grand Tetons and Snake River gorge to understand the experience of these adventurers. All of this research comes out through the story. The writing is crisp, clean, and easy to read.
If you like history with an emphasis on the story, I highly recommend this read.