The Cumberland Road

Archer Butler HulbertProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.5

Word count: 196K words
Chapters: 20

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Cumberland Road by Archer Butler HulbertAuthor: Hulbert, Archer Butler, 1873-1933,Language: English, Class: HE: Social sciences: Transportation and communications, Release Date: Oct 13, 2012

Editor's review

This book is historian Archer Butler Hulbert's thematic study of the Cumberland Road, a classic short work at the intersection of transportation history and the early westward expansion of the United States. Hulbert excelled at narrating a road's construction background, engineering difficulties, and the rise and fall of towns along it through documentary research combined with on-site fieldwork; his writing is solid without being dull. The book presents a single road as the artery of the nation's westward expansion, letting readers see how transportation infrastructure shaped migration routes, postal service, and commerce. For Chinese readers, it offers a micro-level window onto early American nation-building; it is not long, suitable as supplementary material for thematic reading in American history, and also suitable for casual browsing by readers interested in road history and frontier history. The English original is somewhat academic in vocabulary, but the narrative thread is clear; reading with maps and notes works better.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Researchers and enthusiasts of early American and frontier history
Readers concerned with the relationship between transportation infrastructure and regional development
History students needing English historical sources for thematic reading
General readers who enjoy approaching macro-history through specific cases

Not a good fit for

Beginner readers hoping for a complete general narrative of American history
Readers who struggle with English and are unwilling to check terminology
Readers who prefer literary narrative to documentary-style writing

Reading tips

Read the introduction and conclusion first to grasp the author's overall judgment of the road's historical significance
Read alongside a map of the eastern United States, marking towns and terrain nodes along the route
Excerpt passages from primary sources cited in the book separately as practice in reading historical documents
Read alternately with works on the history of westward migration in the United States to cross-verify

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book suitable for readers without a foundation in American history?

Not very suitable for readers starting from zero. The book assumes some background knowledge of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American westward development and interstate transportation; without a general-history foundation, it is easy to see only details and miss the overall thread. It is advisable to read a general introduction to early American history first, then return to this book, which will go much more smoothly.

Is this a complete work or an excerpt?

This is a public-domain e-book released by Project Gutenberg; its content is Hulbert's thematic writing on the Cumberland Road. It is not long—a research booklet rather than a monumental work. It is suitable as thematic material, not as an encyclopedic reference on the Cumberland Road.

How difficult is the English, and what reading tools are needed?

The original is academic English with rather long sentences and contains historical proper names and documentary citations; it is roughly at the upper end of college English reading level. It is advisable to use a reader with word-selection translation and to prepare a reference table of maps and personal and place names, which noticeably lowers the cost of comprehension.

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Archer Butler Hulbert Author · American · 1873–1933

Archer Butler Hulbert (1873–1933) was an American historical geographer and writer who served as professor of history at Colorado College. He devoted himself to the study of early roads, river transport, and westward pioneering, edited the sixteen-volume "Historic Highways of America," and wrote extensively on the history of transportation and the frontier. His works center on the opening of overland and water routes, examining specific roads such as the Cumberland Road and Washington's early road, as well as the paths of the mound-building Indians and great game animals, and the role of the Ohio River and its tributaries in westward expansion. He combined close attention to roads and rivers with travelers' firsthand accounts, blending archival research with narrative verve to produce solid, readable records of America's early transportation networks and western development. Public information about his life is limited, and his influence rests chiefly on these transportation histories.