- Arts & Humanities
- Online Resources
- Grove Music Online
- Grove Art Online
- Oxford Research Encyclopedias
- Oxford Scholarship Online
- View All
- Resources
- Close
- Dictionaries & Reference
-
- Geographical Reference
- Bilingual Dictionaries
- Encyclopedias
- English Dictionaries
- Language Reference
- Public Speaking Guides
- Quotations
- Thesauri
- Online Resources
- Resources
- Close
-
- Law
-
- Antitrust Law
- Arbitration
- Civil Law
- Comparative Law
- Constitutional & Administrative Law
- Construction Law
- Contract Law
- Corporate Law
- Criminal Law
- Employment & Labor Law
- Environment & Energy Law
- European Union Law
- Family Law
- Financial Law
- History of Law
- Human Rights & Immigration
- Intellectual Property Law
- International Law
- IT & Communications Law
- Jurisprudence & Philosophy of Law
- Law & Politics
- Law & Society
- Legal System & Practice
- Medical & Healthcare Law
- Philosophy of Law
- Policing
- Property Law
- Study & Revision
- Terrorism & National Security Law
- Tort Law
- Online Resources
- Blackstone's Police Manuals Online
- Oxford International Organizations
- Oxford Competition Law
- Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law
- View All
- Resources
- Close
-
- Medicine & Health
-
- Allied Health Professions
- Anesthesiology
- Clinical Medicine
- Clinical Neuroscience
- Critical Care
- Dentistry
- Emergency Medicine
- Family Practice
- Forensic Medicine
- Hematology
- History of Medicine
- Medical Dentistry
- Medical Ethics
- Medical Skills
- Online Resources
- ESC CardioMed
- Oxford Bibliographies Online
- Oxford Medicine Online
- Oxford Scholarship Online
- View All
- Resources
- Close
-
- Science & Mathematics
-
- Biological Sciences
- Chemistry
- Computer Science
- Computing
- Earth Sciences & Geography
- Engineering & Technology
- Environmental Science
- History of Science & Technology
- Materials Science
- Mathematics
- Neuroscience
- Physics
- Psychology
- Online Resources
- Oxford Research Encyclopedias: Psychology
- Oxford Clinical Psychology
- Oxford Scholarship Online
- Very Short Introductions
- View All
- Resources
- Close
-
- Social Sciences
- Online Resources
- Encyclopedia of Social Work
- Oxford Handbooks Online
- Oxford Scholarship Online
- SIPRI Yearbook Online
- View All
- Resources
- Close
Desperate Passage
The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West
Ethan Rarick
Drawing on fresh archaeological evidence, recent research on topics ranging from survival rates to snowfall totals, and heartbreaking letters and diaries made public by descendants a century-and-a-half after the tragedy, Ethan Rarick offers an intimate portrait of the Donner party and their unimaginable ordeal: a mother who must divide her family, a little girl who shines with courage, a devoted wife who refuses to abandon her husband, a man who risks his life merely to keep his word. But Rarick resists both the gruesomely sensationalist accounts of the Donner party as well as later attempts to turn the survivors into archetypal pioneer heroes. "The Donner Party," Rarick writes, "is a story of hard decisions that were neither heroic nor villainous. Often, the emigrants displayed a more realistic and typically human mixture of generosity and selfishness, an alloy born of necessity."