Picked this book up at the local library as a random "I'll give it a shot" sort of book. As it turns out, Hampton Sides produced a truly entertaining and readable history of Kit Carson in the same well written way as Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin.
If I did not know that the material was indeed nonfiction, I would have thought I were reading a tall tale that originated from some campfire that proceeded to get bigger and bigger as time went along. A fishing story, if you will. But it is nonfiction, and Carson's exploits are truly jaw dropping, heightened only much more so by his reluctance to tell the stories for any sort of monetary gain when he was living.
Take, for instance, his methodology of survival in the desert when water was no where to be found- he cuts the ears of the mule train and drinks the blood of the mules to stay alive. Saved the party he was guiding by doing so. Another time he was going to get military help and walked barefoot for more than 30 miles in the cactus filled desert to get the reinforcements.
It was a incredible life that he lived.
Hampton Sides matches the life with a book that is worthy of the man he documented.
This is my Book of the Year in the non theology category.
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