GOOD EVENING: The show begins in the Ohio River Valley where an ambush by Maryland colonists leads to mass murder, including infants, and a cycle of revenge murders along the frontier.



CBS EYE ON THE WORLD WITH JOHN BATCHELOR



1883 Ohio River



FIRST HOUR



9-915

1/8: Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier Hardcover – May 28, 2024 by  Robert G. Parkinson  (Author)



https://www.amazon.com/Heart-American-Darkness-Bewilderment-Frontier/dp/1324091770

We are divided over the history of the United States, and one of the central dividing lines is the frontier. Was it a site of heroism? Or was it where the full force of an all-powerful empire was brought to bear on Native peoples? In this startingly original work, historian Robert Parkinson presents a new account of ever-shifting encounters between white colonists and Native Americans. Drawing skillfully on Joseph Conrad’s famous novella, Heart of Darkness, he demonstrates that imperialism in North America was neither heroic nor a perfectly planned conquest. It was, rather, as bewildering, violent, and haphazard as the European colonization of Africa, which Conrad knew firsthand and fictionalized in his masterwork.



At the center of Parkinson’s story are two families whose entwined histories ended in tragedy. The family of Shickellamy, one of the most renowned Indigenous leaders of the eighteenth century, were Iroquois diplomats laboring to create a world where settlers and Native people could coexist. The Cresaps were frontiersmen who became famous throughout the colonies for their bravado, scheming, and land greed. Together, the families helped determine the fate of the British and French empires, which were battling for control of the Ohio River Valley. From the Seven Years’ War to the protests over the Stamp Act to the start of the Revolutionary War, Parkinson recounts the major turning points of the era from a vantage that allows us to see them anew, and to perceive how bewildering they were to people at the time.



For the Shickellamy family, it all came to an end on April 30, 1774, when most of the clan were brutally murdered by white settlers associated with the Cresaps at a place called Yellow Creek. That horrific event became news all over the continent, and it led to war in the interior, at the very moment the First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia. Meanwhile, Michael Cresap, at first blamed for the massacre at Yellow Creek, would be transformed by the Revolution into a hero alongside George Washington. In death, he helped cement the pioneer myth at the heart of the new republic.



Parkinson argues that American history is, in fact, tied to the frontier, just not in the ways we are often told. Altering our understanding of the past, he also shows what this new understanding should mean for us today.



42 illustrations



915-930

2/8: Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier Hardcover – May 28, 2024 by  Robert G. Parkinson  (Author)



930-945

3/8: Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier Hardcover – May 28, 2024 by  Robert G. Parkinson  (Author)



945-1000

4/8: Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier Hardcover – May 28, 2024 by  Robert G. Parkinson  (Author)









SECOND HOUR



10-1015

5/8: Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier Hardcover – May 28, 2024 by  Robert G. Parkinson  (Author)



https://www.amazon.com/Heart-American-Darkness-Bewilderment-Frontier/dp/1324091770

We are divided over the history of the United States, and one of the central dividing lines is the frontier. Was it a site of heroism? Or was it where the full force of an all-powerful empire was brought to bear on Native peoples? In this startingly original work, historian Robert Parkinson presents a new account of ever-shifting encounters between white colonists and Native Americans. Drawing skillfully on Joseph Conrad’s famous novella, Heart of Darkness, he demonstrates that imperialism in North America was neither heroic nor a perfectly planned conquest. It was, rather, as bewildering, violent, and haphazard as the European colonization of Africa, which Conrad knew firsthand and fictionalized in his masterwork.

At the center of Parkinson’s story are two families whose entwined histories ended in tragedy. The family of Shickellamy, one of the most renowned Indigenous leaders of the eighteenth century, were Iroquois diplomats laboring to create a world where settlers and Native people could coexist. The Cresaps were frontiersmen who became famous throughout the colonies for their bravado, scheming, and land greed. Together, the families helped determine the fate of the British and French empires, which were battling for control of the Ohio River Valley. From the Seven Years’ War to the protests over the Stamp Act to the start of the Revolutionary War, Parkinson recounts the major turning points of the era from a vantage that allows us to see them anew, and to perceive how bewildering they were to people at the time.

For the Shickellamy family, it all came to an end on April 30, 1774, when most of the clan were brutally murdered by white settlers associated with the Cresaps at a place called Yellow Creek. That horrific event became news all over the continent, and it led to war in the interior, at the very moment the First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia. Meanwhile, Michael Cresap, at first blamed for the massacre at Yellow Creek, would be transformed by the Revolution into a hero alongside George Washington. In death, he helped cement the pioneer myth at the heart of the new republic.

Parkinson argues that American history is, in fact, tied to the frontier, just not in the ways we are often told. Altering our understanding of the past, he also shows what this new understanding should mean for us today.42 illustrations



1015-1030

6/8  Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier Hardcover – May 28, 2024 by  Robert G. Parkinson  (Author)



1030-1045

7/8: Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier Hardcover – May 28, 2024 by  Robert G. Parkinson  (Author)



1045-1100

8/8: Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier Hardcover – May 28, 2024 by  Robert G. Parkinson  (Author)











THIRD HOUR



1100-1115

1/8: Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York Hardcover – March 12, 2024 by  Tyler Anbinder  (Author)



https://www.amazon.com/Plentiful-Country-Potato-Famine-Making/dp/031656480X/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=



In 1845, a fungus began to destroy Ireland’s potato crop, triggering a famine that would kill one million Irish men, women, and children—and drive over one million more to flee for America. Ten years later, the United States had been transformed by this stupendous migration, nowhere more than New York: by 1855, roughly a third of all adults living in Manhattan were immigrants who had escaped the hunger in Ireland. These so-called “Famine Irish” were the forebears of four U.S. presidents (including Joe Biden) yet when they arrived in America they were consigned to the lowest-paying jobs and subjected to discrimination and ridicule by their new countrymen. Even today, the popular perception of these immigrants is one of destitution and despair. But when we let the Famine Irish narrate their own stories, they paint a far different picture.



In this magisterial work of storytelling and scholarship, acclaimed historian Tyler Anbinder presents for the first time the Famine generation’s individual and collective tales of struggle, perseverance, and triumph. Drawing on newly available records and a ten-year research initiative, Anbinder reclaims the narratives of the refugees who settled in New York City and helped reshape the entire nation. Plentiful Country is a tour de force—a book that rescues the Famine immigrants from the margins of history and restores them to their rightful place at the center of the American story.



1115-1130

2/8: Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York Hardcover – March 12, 2024 by  Tyler Anbinder  (Author)

https://www.amazon.com/Plentiful-Country-Potato-Famine-Making/dp/031656480X/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=



1130-1145

3/8: Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York Hardcover – March 12, 2024 by  Tyler Anbinder  (Author)

https://www.amazon.com/Plentiful-Country-Potato-Famine-Making/dp/031656480X/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=



1145-1200

4/8: Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York Hardcover – March 12, 2024 by  Tyler Anbinder  (Author)



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