Throughout this volume are vivid descriptions of the American landscape.

... absorbing.

Certainly, [John Frémont] presents an awkward, and anticlimactic, subject for a biographer—a failure as a Civil War commander, after contesting Lincoln’s 1864 re-election, the balance of his life was a fortune-draining diminuendo of failed business ventures that left him and Jessie destitute. Rather than vilifying or lionizing John, Inskeep smartly situates him in his context. And here he yields his true significance: as a cipher for the forces at large in U.S. society.

... revelatory.

Present are all the things we like in an American tale: frontier adventure, fame and a conflict that’s cast as tragic and romantic. But Inskeep, wise to the lure he has set out, doesn’t give us the story we expect. Failures and near misses are rife.

Mr. Inskeep treads little ground unfamiliar to popular and professional historians. But his absorbing tale of the Frémonts and their marriage will fascinate readers, many of whom know John only as the namesake of a local school or street or even their hometown itself.

One of the virtues of Steve Inskeep’s new book is that it tracks this American phenomenon back to something like a satisfying starting point.

... [a] uniquely American story.

[An] immersive tale.

[Inskeep's] journalist’s eye for detail and nuance serves his readers well. His account of the dumb luck of the Frémonts in becoming insanely wealthy in California — a property that John bought for a ranch proved to sit atop the Mother Lode — makes clear how capricious fortune could be in that singular moment of American history.

... [a] scrupulously researched history.

... the book is highly readable, and the author draws renewed attention to these undeniably important historical personages, who are too often forgotten among the likes of Kit Carson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Horace Greeley. A lively introduction to a pair of flawed yet extraordinary figures in the nation’s movement westward..