Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
-19% $16.29$16.29
Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com
$9.95$9.95
Ships from: Amazon Sold by: Martistore
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
OK
Through a Howling Wilderness: Benedict Arnold's March to Quebec, 1775 Paperback – Illustrated, November 13, 2007
Purchase options and add-ons
A great military history about the early days of the American Revolution, Thomas A. Desjardin's Through a Howling Wilderness is also a timeless adventure narrative that tells of heroic acts, men pitted against nature's fury, and a fledgling nation's fight against a tyrannical oppressor.
Before Benedict Arnold was branded a traitor, he was one of the colonies' most valuable leaders. In September 1775, eleven hundred soldiers boarded ships in Massachusetts, bound for the Maine wilderness. They had volunteered for a secret mission, under Arnold's command to march and paddle nearly two hundred miles and seize British Quebec. Before they reached the Canadian border, hundreds died, a hurricane destroyed canoes and equipment and many deserted. In the midst of a howling blizzard, the remaining troops attacked Quebec and almost took Canada from the British simultaneously weakening the British hand against Washington.
With the enigmatic Benedict Arnold at its center, Desjardin has written one of the great American adventure stories.
- Print length256 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateNovember 13, 2007
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.58 x 8.5 inches
- ISBN-100312339054
- ISBN-13978-0312339050
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
Frequently bought together
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Desjardin is able to portray fascinating, vivid characters, more human and more credible than the leaders who organized the expedition.” ―Associated Press
“[A] stirring account...Desjardin has salted his account with great bits of regional history.” ―The Boston Globe
“In an age of bloated, overstuffed history books...Desjardin has pulled off this feat in just 240 pages of terse, well-hewn prose.” ―The Bangor Daily News
“Thoroughly researched and well written, this is likely to be the standard history of the campaign for some time to come.” ―Booklist
“Desjardin recounts the march in descriptive, detailed prose studded with visceral imagery . . . A vivid narrative of a vital American event.'” ―Kirkus Reviews
“[A] highly readable book.” ―The Journal Star
“One of the great adventure sagas in American history . . . This is a story that helped shape the American Revolution, dramatically told in this highly readable new book.” ―James Kirby Martin, author of the award-winning Benedict Arnold, Revolutionary Hero: An American Warrior Reconsidered
“A model of accessible, vigorous narrative history, Through a Howling Wilderness re-creates an important but largely forgotten episode in early American history and tells a fascinating story in the bargain.” ―Jackson Lears, Board of Governors Professor of History, Rutgers University
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : St. Martin's Griffin; First Edition (November 13, 2007)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 256 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0312339054
- ISBN-13 : 978-0312339050
- Item Weight : 12 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.58 x 8.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,582,285 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #209 in Canadian Historical Biographies
- #1,142 in American Revolution Biographies (Books)
- #3,343 in U.S. Revolution & Founding History
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Having just been through Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire along part of the route the army took, I'm amazed that they even attempted it. It was probably the most daring expedition that could have been conceived..
The more I read about Benedict Arnold's trek to Quebec, the more interesting it becomes. Desjardin is one of the few authors that bothers to explain why the invasion of Canada was important and what its long-term impact on the American Revolution may have been.
I especially liked Desjardin's comparison of this trek to that of Hannibal's ancient march. The sufferings and the stoicism of Arnold's men were both terrible and fascinating and should be better known.
This is a very readable book. Although it is aimed at the general market and quite similar to Kenneth Robert's classic novel, "Arundel," it is well worth reading. It would be a good book to give as a gift to a young adult reader.
"Through a Howling Wilderness" has an extensive section of notes at the end, making it useful to scholars and historians. This is both good history and a great adventure story.
This would be an excellent choice for a high school or History 101 book report.
Kim Burdick
Stanton, Delaware
In short, this book is a weaving of those journals into a narrative, complete with the inaccuracies and exaggerations in those journals. Most of the references listed are peripheral to the journals, even the primary sources, and the chapter on "America'a Hannibal" is superfluous in that it deals with Arnold in other campaigns. The reader is cautioned that this light read lacks the depth of analysis and discussion normally expected in a historical work. One could read the journals contained in Roberts's book and perhaps come away with a better appreciation of the travails and experiences of this campaign.
The march itself was probably best handled in an unreferenced work of 1903 by Justin Smith, "Arnold's March From Cambridge To Quebec." John Codman's 1901 work, "Arnold's Expedition to Quebec" also covers the ground well, although it contains information that has been impossible to verify from other sources or critical analysis. The battle is covered relatively poorly in primary sources, with the usual contradictory accounts, especially with respect to Arnold's attack on the lower town. Morgan's actions at the barricades fall more properly into the realm of myth-making, although clearly the riflemen fought as well as they could. The saga of the captured Americans, (of which my Great-great-great-grandfather James Dougherty of Smith's Lancaster Riflemen and who then violated his parole and fought in Washington's army until 1783 was one), is covered at any length only in Henry's journal, a page of two in others including several British sources, and a few letters and other documents such as those by James Dougherty. That Quebec would never have become the 14th colony to rebel and the capture of Quebec would have cost the patriots more than they would gain is also a fairly common opinion among historians.
In short, I recommend other works concerning Arnold's expedition for the casual historian of the Revolutionary period such as Roberts for the journals, Smith for a critical analysis of the march, and Arthur Lefkowitz's "Benedict Arnold's Army" for the overall invasion. But Desjardin's book is what it is, a composite of the stories as recorded by the participants.