Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West

by Hampton Sides

John Quincy Adams said that Polk “has no wit, no literature, no gracefulness of delivery, no elegance of language, no philosophy, no pathos, no felicitous impromptus.”

Carson to carry out his dirty work, and Carson needed Fremont, apparently, to tell him what to do. Modern psychiatry might call these two men codependents. Together they were far more lethal than when apart. Unwilling to disappoint a superior, Carson seemed incapable of resisting an order he personally disagreed with. When given a command, he was the good

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