Pioneers was the topic for the March 2022 meeting. The topic was originally "pioneers in their respective fields" but most of the books presented focused on a conventional understanding of pioneers as settlers and explorers. Colonial venture, westward expansion, and space exploration led the topic in works of both fiction and nonfiction.
Colonial Venture and Westward Expansion
Nonfiction
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| Bradford's History "Of Plimoth Plantation" |
Bradford, William.
Bradford's History "Of Plimoth Plantation": From the
Original Manuscript, With a Report of the Proceedings Incident to the Return of
the Manuscript to Massachusetts.
Boston: Wright & Potter Printing Co., 1898. 555 pages.
Originally known as The Log of the Mayflower, Bradford's logs and
accounts of the Mayflower voyage and the early settlement of the Plymouth Colony
were written between 1620 and 1651. The
manuscript vanished from the Old South Meeting House in Boston during the
American Revolutionary War and reappeared at Fulham Palace in the Bishop of
London's library in the 1840s. After a
lengthy custody battle, the manuscript was returned to Massachusetts and
presented to the governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts during a joint
session of the legislature on May 26, 1897.
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| Facsimile page of Bradford's journal (verso) |
Bradford's journal was first published in America in June 1897. This early edition, printed in 1898 by Wright & Potter, the State Printers, predates the "final authorized version of the text" published by the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1912. Bradford's journal documents the story of the Pilgrims beginning in 1608, when they settled in the Dutch Republic, through the 1620 Mayflower voyage to the New World. It includes a log of the Mayflower passengers as well as a brief history of what happened to each of them through the year 1647. Bradford himself served as the 2nd Governor of the Plymouth Colony (as well as its 5th, 7th, 9th, and 11th governor). The editions of Bradford's journal published in the United States include facsimile pages of the journal and Mayflower log as well as a report of the history of the original manuscript and its eventual return to Massachusetts.
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| Facsimile page of the Mayflower log (verso) |
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| The Pioneers |
McCullough, David. The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2019. 352 pages. McCullough recounts the settling of the Northwest Territory through the stories of six men who were part of the first band of pioneers to set out from New England led by Revolutionary War veteran General Rufus Putnam. Settlement in the Northwest Territory—a vast wilderness northwest of the Ohio River (modern day Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin)—was initially offered to veterans of the Revolutionary War who committed to three conditions of the Northwest Ordinance's "American Ideal": freedom of religion, free universal education, and the prohibition of slavery. Much of McCullough's account is drawn from a collection of primary documents including diaries and letters from Putman and the other key figures followed in the book.
Fiction
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| The Pioneers |
Cooper, James Fenimore. The Pioneers, or the Sources of the Susquehanna; a Descriptive Tale. 2 vol. New York: Charles Wiley, 1823. First Edition. Two volumes in early contemporary calf. This is the first of five novels published which became known as the Leatherstocking Tales. In The Pioneers, Cooper explores naturalist ideas and shows his concern for how the first American pioneers are mistreating the new frontier and how one, his protagonist Natty Bumpo, respects the land and wants to coexist with nature using only what he needs for his mere survival. Cooper's tone is highly critical, if not outright mocking, of the carelessness and recklessness towards the wilderness exhibited by the settlers and the notion of established society.
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| Title pages of The Pioneers, Volumes One and Two |
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| My Ántonia |
Cather, Willa. My Ántonia. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1977. 419 pages. First Edition Library facsimile.
Cather, Willa. My
Ántonia. Franklin Center, PA: The
Franklin Library, 1978. 280 pages. Illustrated by Liam Roberts.
In what is considered to be Cather's best work, My Ántonia tells the story of Jim Burden, an orphaned boy from Virginia, and Ántonia Shimerda, the daughter of Bohemian immigrants. They are each brought to Nebraska near the end of the 19th century as children of pioneers. The story is told by Jim, who recounts meeting Ántonia in a place that is new to both of them and the strong impressions formed during their first year there. Cather's original manuscript was rejected multiple times before her magazine editor read it and suggested she rewrite the story from Jim's point of view.
Space Exploration
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| Footprints |
MacKinnon, Douglas and Joseph Baldanza. Footprints: The 12 Men Who Walked on the Moon Reflect on Their Flights, Their Lives, and the Future. Washington, DC: Acropolis Books Ltd., 1989. First Edition. Published on the twentieth anniversary of the first lunar landing in 1969, the authors of Footprints conduct interviews with the twelve astronauts who walked on the lunar surface during the Apollo missions between 1968 and 1972. These astronauts were true pioneers in the exploration of space and in Footprints they reflect on their missions, the space program, and the future of space exploration. This copy is signed by six of the twelve astronauts who walked on the moon, one astronaut from each of the six Apollo moon landings: Buzz Aldrin, David Scott, Eugene Cernan, Alan Bean, Charles Duke, and Edgar Mitchell.
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| Signatures of six of the Apollo astronauts interviewed in Footprints |
