GREAT RIVER The Rio Grande in North American History [SOLD]

GREAT RIVER The Rio Grande in North American History

Author: Paul Horgan

Publisher: Rinehart & Company, Inc. New York, Toronto

Hardback, first edition, two volumes, 1954, 1020 pages. With Slpcase.

Volume One: Indians and Spain

Volume Two: Mexico and the United States

Condition: Used, both volumes in very good condition. Slipcover shows a wear pattern.

Paul Horgan's monumental two-volume work, Great River: The Rio Grande in North American History, stands as an acknowledged literary masterpiece and an enduring classic in American historical writing.

The book is an epic history covering ten centuries and four distinct civilizations — Native American, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American — that populated the vast region of the American Southwest.

Horgan utilizes the Rio Grande as the central thread and geographic anchor for his narrative, meticulously detailing the river's essential role in human history, the overlapping cultures that flourished along its banks, and the conflicts that arose over the land it traverses.

The immense achievement of Great River was immediately recognized upon its publication in 1954, earning Horgan two of the highest honors in historical literature: Pulitzer Prize for History (1954) and Bancroft Prize in History (1954).

Paul Horgan (1903-1995) was one of the twentieth century's most gifted and prolific authors: Born in Buffalo, New York, in 1903, Horgan's deep connection to the American Southwest began when he moved with his family to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1915. This firsthand experience of the landscape and its complex history provided the foundation for Great River and much of his subsequent work.