Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: A Life Wild and Perilous

Subtitle: Mountain Men and the Paths to the Pacific

Author: Robert M. Utley

Narrator: Richard Davidson

Format: Unabridged

Length: 14 hrs and 2 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-01-11

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 159 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

If you have ever wondered what is was like to be an explorer in the unspoiled American West of the early 1800s, then this is the audiobook for you. Not only a groundbreaking work of American history by critically acclaimed author Robert M. Utley, A Life Wild and Perilous is also a dramatic story of innovation and survival. Here is your chance to live in the very heart of the American wilderness with legendary trappers and mountain men like Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Tom Fitzpatrick, and Jedediah Smith. You will also see how these men played a major role in pushing our national frontier from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, and fulfilling our nations ideal of Manifest Destiny. Breathtaking in scope, yet filled with the seemingly small decisions that changed the course of a nation, A Life Wild and Perilous is a compelling and fascinating piece of Americana. Travelogue buffs and historians alike will delight in Richard M. Davidsons inspired telling of how the West was really won.

Members Reviews:

Excellent book (read with a map)

Very much enjoyed the stories. Having an understanding of the geography of the west is helpful in listening to the book.

A lot of good history and quite a story too.

This book fills in a lot of history that has been generally skipped over in favor of the Civil War and other high volume catagories. I listen to audible or read a book to learn. I did that and then some. Hard men, rough time, the building of a nation, the shrinking of nations, fortunes won, fortunes lost, the rise of the U.S. the decline of Mexico, the making of American heroes, the end of the Red man, its all in there. Very well read. Very well written. A bit sad in places. Non fiction tends to be that way sometimes.

It's alright.

I found the title and publisher's summary a little misleading: "If you have ever wondered what is was like to be an explorer in the unspoiled American West of the early 1800s, then this is the audiobook for you."

There isn't really much detail about "what is (sic) was like", rather it is a summary of the historical record.

It isn't bad, just not as intriguing to me as later accounts of what life was really like on the ground out West such as "The Oregon Trail" by Francis Parkman, and "A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains" by Isabella Lucy Bird.

Just the facts

Not much of a story just dry facts too boring to finish. I think this is a good subject presented in a dull drab way. I never connected with the story. What was the purpose of writing this?

The narrator tries my patience.

What made the experience of listening to A Life Wild and Perilous the most enjoyable?

I am fascinated by the individual characters highlighted, such as Hugh Glass, Jedediah Smith, Kit Carson, and Joseph Walker, to mention just a few of the ones who stand out. They are colorful elements of a short period of our American history, and of our geography. I liked reading about the western territories, the rivers and deserts, the Indians and all the rugged humans who peopled the land and lived lives so different from ours.