Heart of American Darkness : Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier by Robert G. Parkinson

 A fundamentally new account of the American frontier, showing that it was defined not by hardy pioneers or imperial power, but by sheer mayhem.

"In the American imagination the idea of the frontier looms large as the prime shaper of our nation's character. But what actually happened on the frontier, and what does it say about the substance of American character? Robert G. Parkinson's Heart of American Darkness is a brilliant meditation on those questions. The book presents the often brutal reality of life on the frontier through the eyes of Indigenous people and the Europeans whom they encountered in the forests and on the rivers of the Ohio Valley region, the early frontier. This book is a vital contribution to our understanding of our country's beginnings and who we are."
-Annette Gordon-Reed, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of On Juneteenth

Robert G. Parkinson is associate professor of history at Binghamton University and the author of The Common Cause and Thirteen Clocks. He lives in Charles Town, West Virginia.