Daniel Boone: An American Life.

Daniel Boone: An American Life. By Michael A. Lofaro. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, c. 2003. Pp. xvi, 216. $25.00, ISBN 0-8131-2278-3.)

For more than a quarter century, Michael A. Lofaro has tracked Daniel Boone. Beginning with his 1975 dissertation and in a series of subsequent articles, Lofaro has explored the literary image of Boone. Lofaro has also explored the life of Boone, first in a 1978 biography and then in a revised edition published eight years later. Daniel Boone: An American Life, then, marks Lofaro's third shot at a Boone biography. And in this case, the third time is a charm, for this brief and balanced book effectively distills what we know about Boone's life story into a crisply paced narrative.

There is considerable overlap between Lofaro's latest biography and his previous ones. Here, as in his earlier works, Lofaro emphasizes the ironies and ambiguities that defined his protagonist's lifelong "inner conflict between [the] civilization" that he ushered and the pull of the hunters' wilderness that he cherished (p. ix). This theme, of course, has been a staple of Boone biographies from the time that John Filson first immortalized Kentucky's "discoverer."

But Lofaro still manages to add some fresh twists to a familiar script. Although Lofaro makes no claim to have uncovered any new sources, he takes good advantage of some evidence that has recently become more accessible. In particular, Ted Franklin Belue's copiously edited versions of the works of Lyman Draper and Peter Houston provide Lofaro with much material, from which he quotes at considerable length.

Scholarly readers will surely compare Lofaro's treatment to John Mack Faragher's Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer (New York, 1992). For the most part, Lofaro and Faragher agree on the details of Boone's life. But at just over 180 pages of text, Lofaro's book is only half as long as Faragher's. In general, Lofaro sticks much closer to what we know about Boone's deeds. By contrast, Faragher's broader vision, as Lofaro acknowledges, is especially "helpful in establishing the contexts of Boone's life," using speculations, controversies, and shifting lore to offer insights into the backcountry culture that nurtured Boone and the intercultural frontier mixings that shaped him (p. 198). Indeed, where Faragher's Boone inhabits a middle ground between white and Indian worlds, Lofaro's Boone occupies the more traditional terrain between civilization and wilderness.

Lofaro's portrait is also one that Boone would likely have embraced. In the matter of Boone's land troubles, for example, Lofaro puts the blame, as Boone did, on venal engrossers and duplicitous lawyers. No doubt, Boone's version had much truth to it. Yet Lofaro almost wholly exonerates Boone, ignoring the extent to which the pioneer was himself engaged in land profiteering.

In the end, there are still many things we do not know about Daniel Boone. Thanks, though, to Michael Lofaro's quarter-century pursuit, we know a great deal.

University of California, Los Angeles Autry National Center 

STEPHEN ARON