Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

Fall 8-1-2019

Publication Title

Journal of Anthropological Research

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Volume

75

Issue

3

First page number:

414

Last page number:

416

Abstract

This book offers a different look at how to think about the starvation and death that hounded emigrants attempting to get to California and Oregon in the early years of nineteenth-century US expansion. Specifically, the Donner party and two lesser-known Mormon handcart groups are scrutinized for what the patterns of age at death by sex can reveal. In the subtitle The Biology of Three American Tragedies, “biology” here means solely demographic data on sex and age at death. These are really the only biological variables examined, so the title Sex and Death on the Western Emigrant Trail is more accurate as to the subject matter; the subtitle promises more of a biological account than is actually delivered.

Disciplines

American Literature | United States History

File Format

pdf

File Size

50 KB

Language

English

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