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The Oregon Trail: An American Saga. By David Dary. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. xiv + 414 pp. Maps, photographs, illustrations, appendixes, glossary, notes, bibliography, index. $35.00 cloth, $18.95 paper..
David Dary's The Oregon Trail is a pleasant excursion on a well-traveled road. His book is not a trail-blazing work of the stature of such classics as Francis Parkman's The California and Oregon Trail (1849) and Bernard De Voto's The Year of Decision, 1846 (1943), nor is it as erudite as John D. Unruh's The Plains Across (1979) nor as encyclopedic as Merrill J. Matte's Piatte River Road...