DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

The Making of John Ledyard

Empire and Ambition in the Life of an Early American Traveler

Edward G Gray author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Yale University Press

Published:29th Jun '07

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The Making of John Ledyard cover

During the course of his short but extraordinary life, John Ledyard (1751–1789) came in contact with some of the most remarkable figures of his era: the British explorer Captain James Cook, American financier Robert Morris, Revolutionary naval commander John Paul Jones, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and others. Ledyard lived and traveled in remarkable places as well, journeying from the New England backcountry to Tahiti, Hawaii, the American Northwest coast, Alaska, and the Russian Far East. In this engaging biography, the historian Edward Gray offers not only a full account of Ledyard’s eventful life but also an illuminating view of the late eighteenth-century world in which he lived.
Ledyard was both a product of empire and an agent in its creation, Gray shows, and through this adventurer’s life it is possible to discern the many ways empire shaped the lives of nations, peoples, and individuals in the era of the American Revolution, the world’s first modern revolt against empire.

"Daring, ambitious, and theatrical, John Ledyard seems to step out of a great eighteenth-century novel into this vivid and revealing history. Following Ledyard's clues, Edward Gray draws readers through a compelling and global story of ambition, adventure, and empire."—Alan Taylor, author of The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution

-- Alan Taylor

“Ledyard’s career opens up the entire world, in the most literal sense. His is a really grand story, one that transcends all sorts of conventional boundaries.”—Edward Countryman, Southern Methodist University

-- Edward Countryman
"This book will be of particular interest to scholars in the fields of early American history and North Atlantic studies, but it deserves a wider readership."—Daniel Clayton, Oregon Historical Society -- Daniel Clayton * Oregon Historical Socie

ISBN: 9780300110555

Dimensions: 235mm x 156mm x 17mm

Weight: 549g

240 pages