A bit dated in the way he writes about things, but an important, fascinating look at the destructive myths that are foundational to white patriarchal American capitalism and the implications those myths and cultural narratives continue to hold on the American psyche and the world.

Fascinating history and a relevant thesis.

Could have been 350 pages shorter. Lots of redundancy.

This whole trilogy is both really quite excellent and hard to recommend. Slotkin is trying to track the birth and use of the frontier mythology as a justification for all sorts of American ventures, from the early displacement of various American Indian nations, to ... later displacements, to wars with Mexico, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Also as the creation of a certain American type, the "man who knows Indians" but also, of course, kills them, who lays the foundations for civilization, but must be somewhat apart from it.

This first book deals with the Pilgrims and early American heroes like Daniel Boone especially, and leans on a kind've heavy Jung/psychoanalysis lens that he'll later abandon. Like all the books, you will be reading a lot of very ugly historical rhetoric, and I'm not sure he knows enough about the nations the Pilgrims and the nascent American nation were opposing to get that viewpoint, but he's very good with the analysis of sermons, reports, literature (and he makes a pretty great case for reading Thoreau and Melville), and I learned a lot.

Very informative and explains a great deal about the types of stories that are still current in American literature and myth. I particularly found the discussion of the Daniel Boone mythos and Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales to be intriguing. Slotkin also explains the relationship of captivity narratives and hunter-hero /frontier hero tales in American mythos and discusses the complex relationship and dynamic of the Puritan experience to the wilderness in both the exorcism/ purification response and the initiation/conversion response. Slotkin is more negative towards the American mythology than I think is actually warranted. Nevertheless, he does lay out well the issues out that American experience and thinking even now deals with in its looking for ways to connect to the hero's quest, to personal development, and to American political society.

Unbelievably brilliant. Love it or hate it, and despite the occasional wtf moment, this book will permanently alter the way you look at American literature and American history.

This is an intellectual analysis in which the author tells the story of the American myth as presented in literature, poetry, and art. Slotkin defines myth as “a narrative formulation of a culture’s world view and self-concept, which draws both on the historical experience of that culture and on sources of feeling, fear, and aspiration deep in the human subconscious and which can be shown to function in that culture as a prescription for historical action and for value judgement.” Wow! The author looks at the origins of the American myth, it’s characteristics, the structure of the myth, the role it played in American History, and the danger of the American myth today. Slotkin focuses on the stories of female captives of Native Americans, the adventures of Daniel Boone, Chief Tecumseh, Crockett, the literature of James F. Cooper, Henry D. Thoreau, and Herman Melville. He says that Thoreau and Melville brought the myth to a new level of consciousness and reality. These stories in literature are compared and analyzed to pagan myths, Indian myths, Christian myths, Greek myths, European myths, and myths already present in classical literature. Slotkin says that the American myth was first found hunter/explorer stories in which the hero is on a quest, usually in the wilderness to free a captive or fight the forces of nature, beasts, and Native Americans. Inherent in these stories is violence in which the hunter takes on the characteristics of the hunted. The hunter achieves kinship over his preferred world and people by destroying them in battle. This is the paradox of the myth, destroying what makes you the hero. Later in the book, Slotkin brings the function and danger of the myth to modern times and how it has been used to justify wars. For example, in the Vietnam War the statement was made by an American officer, “We destroyed the city in order to save it”! The ultimate consummation of the myth. The author probably stretches the concept of the myth a bit by saying that each person goes on a hero’s quest when they leave their parents and strike off on their own. However, destroying this “new wilderness” in order to be a part of it doesn’t seem to be a valid analogy. So the American myth is still with us today and has taken on a new meaning that the author warns is a danger, maybe not on an individual level but as a part of the national psychic. A very interesting read.