Diese Reihe taucht in das pulsierende Herz der amerikanischen Gesellschaft ein und erforscht ihre vielfältigen Strömungen und Gegenströmungen. Jeder Band deckt einzigartige Facetten der amerikanischen Erfahrung auf, von Triumphen bis zu Widrigkeiten, und zeichnet ein lebendiges Bild einer sich ständig wandelnden Nation. Sie bietet einen fesselnden Einblick, was es bedeutet, in verschiedenen Epochen Amerikaner zu sein.
Acclaimed author of biographical and historical fiction Irving Stone turns his magnificent talent to telling America’s most colorful and exciting story—the opening of the Far West. Men to Match My Mountains is a true historical masterpiece, an unforgettable pageant of giants—men like John Sutter, whose dream of paradise was shattered by the California Gold Rush; Brigham Young and the Mormons, who tamed the desert with Bible texts; and the silver kings and the miners, who developed Nevada’s Comstock Lode and settled the Rockies. America called for greatness...and got it. There is nothing in history to match the stories of these men who braved wilderness to bring new nation to the shores of the Pacific.
The book explores the lives and impacts of key industrialists who transformed America through their innovations and business practices. It delves into the stories of influential figures like Vanderbilt, Carnegie, and Rockefeller, highlighting their contributions to various industries and the economy. The narrative examines how these moguls shaped modern America, their rivalries, and the legacies they left behind, offering insights into the dynamics of wealth and power during a pivotal era in American history.
Taking as his motif the poet Sam Foss’s words, “Bring me men to match my mountains,” Irving Stone has created an interwoven pageant of stories of the great westward drive which, in a few rousing decades, settled a continent and gave the United States dimensions of which its founders hardly dreamed. Exploration, sudden wealth, unspeakable hardship, the golden chance to build a new life in a new land - all these are present in this saga of human aspiration. This book is a colorful gallery of characters: heroes and rascals, adventurers and plodders, men who invaded and tamed or were tamed by what the geographers call the true Far West — California, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado. In the cast are Spaniards, Russians, Yankees, Southerners; Sutter, whose dream of an idyllic retreat in the foothills of paradise was shattered by the Gold Rush; John C. Fremont, Mark Twain, Brigham Young, Ralston’s Ring and the Big Four; the Silver Kings, H. A.W. Tabor and Baby Doe, the Rose of Sharon and Eilley Orrum, and scores more. There were the Mormons who tamed the desert with Bible texts, polygamy and co-operation; miners who played wild melodramas in Nevada’s Comstock Lode and Colorado’s awesome Rockies; the tragic Donner Party; gun-toting newspapermen and bankers; and some of the world’s most fascinating women. There were men who went West to fight, to make millions (or lose them), to die famous, infamous, or unknown; men who built colonies, railroads, cities, financial empires, or dreamed and struggled and failed. They were men who were larger than life size, who matched the mountains and shaped a pattern of American history.
