Heart of American Darkness

""A scarifying, blood-soaked portrait of savagery on the early frontier—much of it committed by European settlers.… [S]uperb."" -- Kirkus Reviews, starred review ""The Heart of American Darkness traces the struggle to control the trans-Appalachian west, as European empires and later the American Republic fought to wrest control of this region from its Indigenous inhabitants. Chronicling the violence and chaos that defined this contest over the ‘back country,’ Robert Parkinson provides a bold new interpretation of the founding history of the United States."" -- Michael J. Witgen, author of the Pulitzer Prize–finalist Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America ""The title of Robert Parkinson’s Heart of American Darkness invokes Joseph Conrad, but I also hear strong echoes of Herman Melville and Cormac McCarthy in this searing account of the American frontier. Parkinson’s anti-epic is at once detailed and sweeping, a much-needed new national origins story, a tale where the bloody chaos of the past matches the bloody chaos of the present. An indispensable book."" -- Greg Grandin, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning The End of Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America ""Robert Parkinson’s gripping and memorable Heart of American Darkness provides a haunting portrait of the chaos, confusion, and shifting allegiances that swirled around the complex series of events that we now call the American Revolution."" -- Karl Jacoby, author of Shadows at Dawn: An Apache Massacre and the Violence of History