Dr. Samuel A. Forman
Ill-Fated Frontier: Peril and Possibilities in the Early American West
“Ill-Fated Frontier” is at once a pioneer adventure and a compelling narrative of the frictions that emerged among entrepreneurial pioneers and their sixty enslaved African Americans, Natives fighting to preserve their lands, and Spanish colonials with their own agenda. Here is a turbulent and visceral portrait of the wild American frontier in the Revolutionary era that begins with an optimistic plan and ends with the body of one of the expedition’s leaders returning East pickled in a barrel of rum. North becomes South by choice of some, compulsion of others, over fierce Native resistance, and with the encouragement of Spanish colonials.
[Recorded August 13, 2022.]
Dr. Samuel A. Forman, MD, MBA, MPH, (illfatedfrontier.com, DrJosephWarren.com, @DrSamForman) is Harvard University faculty member and an independent historian of non-fiction, writing compelling stories of national import on a base of authoritative and new scholarship. In 2012, Dr. Forman published the award-winning biography Dr. Joseph Warren: The Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, and the Birth of American Liberty (Pelican) and Twenty One Heroes (Pelican). His most recent book is Ill-Fated Frontier: Peril and Possibilities in the Early American West.
Dr. Forman is a Founding Board Member of The Pursuit of History and is a regular presenter at History Camp Boston.