Robert Morgan selected as finalist for LA Times Literary Award in biography category.
View press releases at the LA Times Book Prizes website.
A limited edition of Boone, designed by award-winning book designer Jonathan Greene (Gnomon Press) and featuring cover art by Kentucky weaver and photographer Dobree Adams, is now available!
Click here to view the book info at ABE Books.
Click here to view more Robert Morgan books available at the Captain's Bookshelf.
Boone has been selected as the 2008 title for Together We Read, the annual community-based reading project of Western North Carolina, covering 100 event locations. Events will run from June through December, 2008.
At Home in Paradise, by Madison Smartt Bell
New York Review of Books December 20, 2007 (pages 73-75)
"The governing insight of this biography is that as much as Boone loved to be a solitary wanderer in a paradisal wild (then not at all abstract but wholly real), he wanted almost or just as much to have the company of his family, his ten siblings, his wife Rebecca, and their ten children. That the one wish was doomed to wreck the other would not have been obvious to Boone at the time; thus Morgan’s version of his story becomes a study in unintended consequences. The self-description which Filson put in his mouth – "an instrument ordained to settle the wilderness" – takes on a double edge. It is Boone’s peculiar tragedy (shared with the expanding people he led) not to be able to grasp his heart’s desire without destroying it."
Boone is a top 10 selection in: A critic's favorite books of 2007, by Jonathan Yardley
Washington Post, December 2, 2007
View the article here
"...Robert Morgan carefully separates legend from reality in the life of the country's most famous frontiersman."
Award:
The North Carolina Literary and Historical Association, at its annual meeting in Asheville on November 10, 2007, for which Robert Morgan was the keynote speaker, honored him with the R. Hunt Parker Award "for Significant Contributions to the Literature of North Carolina."
BookPage, December
"[An] impressive new biography of the American legend. 'Forget the coonskin cap,' he writes in the very first sentence, 'he never wore one.'That’s just the first of many myths that Morgan dispels in his meticulously researched and elegantly told book. . . .Morgan seeks to demythologize Boone, bringing him down to human scale, and he sets to this task with an exacting attention to detail. . . .Written with admiration and great care, Boone is a book for those who like their biography told with leisurely erudition, readers interested in taking the countless side trips that fill out the story and place it within a larger context. The narrative teems with fascinating asides. . ..Oh, and if you’re wondering, Boone's real hat of choice was beaver felt."
Bookforum, December / January
"One of the biographer’s tasks is to explain why their chosen subject is important to the scope and shape of history and, further, to argue that that person remains significant in the present age. Robert Morgan’s Boone succeeds admirably on both counts. Morgan’s skills as a novelist and poet help in making this the most detailed and compelling life of Daniel Boone to date. . . . This is a work of genuine scholarship."
St. Louis Dispatch, 11/28
"[Morgan] brings to this new biography his novelist's instinct for drama, an eye for telling details and valuable insight into human nature. . . . The flesh-and-blood Boone who emerges is vivid and rare, a far cry from the enigmatic icon. This is historical biography at its best."
Richmond Style Weekly, 11/26, book and event in "Recently Read"
New Jersey Star-Ledger, 11/25
The State (SC), 11/25
"[Morgan] has done a phenomenal research job. . . . [BOONE] is far better than one could or should expect about a character who lived two centuries ago."
The Chicago Tribune, 11/24
"[An] intriguing new biography."
Kansas City Star, 11/18
BOONE chosen as one of 100 Noteworthy Books of 2007
Louisville Courier-Journal, 11/17
"A model of its genre-both thoroughly researched and powerfully written."
Richmond Times Dispatch, 11/11
"[A] beautifully written study of Boone."
Durham Herald-Sun, 11/4
Island Packet, 11/4
Charlotte Observer, 11/2
An Interview with … Robert Morgan by D.G. Martin
Our State Magazine November 2007
Boone by Josh Rottenberg
Entertainment Weekly October 26, 2007
"…[a] long, passionate, and authoritative bio…"
Morgan's writing draws from local roots by Julie Ball
Asheville Citizen-Times October 25, 2007
"…he takes on some of the myths surrounding the legendary frontiersman including the idea that Boone wore a coonskin cap."
The real Daniel Boone by D.G. Martin
The Chapel Hill News October 24, 2007
"Using his skills as a scholar and teacher of literature and writing, Morgan …. explains how and why Boone, rather than someone else, became an icon for the rugged, independent American frontiersman."
'Boone' opens portals to ‘the first West’ and its settler by Michael Kenney
The Boston Globe October 16, 2007
"…it was Boone’s exploits that became the stuff of legend, and Morgan narrates them with well-sourced attention to historical accuracy and a keen sense of how Boone operated in the wilderness where ‘skill and guile’ were necessary for survival."
Kansas City Star, 10/14, Q&A w/author and event mention
Daniel Boone was a man. Yes, a big man. by Jonathan Yardley
The Washington Post October 14, 2007
"The story of Daniel Boone, Robert Morgan writes in this comprehensive and deeply sympathetic biography, ‘is the story of America,’ and he's right."
Beyond the myth, a flawed but admirable hero by Steve Weinberg
The Raleigh News and Observer October 14, 2007
"Robert Morgan, primarily a poet and novelist, as an entrant in the Boone biographical sweepstakes. The result is stunning, and perhaps determinative in settling the frontiersman's reputation."