"Exciting, fully documented biography of a national hero."--New York Times. "An authoritative biography of one of the most romantic figures of our history, and a contribution to the story of the settlement of the first trans-Appalachian West."--Henry Steele Commager, New York Herald Tribune. "An engrossing and illuminating book...It is unlikely that future writers will find much to add to the record here given."--Allan Nevins, Saturday Review of Literature. "Too much credit can hardly be given the author for the careful, painstaking, and scholarly way in which lie has sought out, checked, and rechecked all the material available ...dealing with the life and times of the old frontiersman."--Atlantic. "A grand and readable tale, the most complete and reliable so far of the beau ideal of the older America, the model of buckskin knight-errantry."--Christian Science Monitor In his introduction to this Bison Books edition of Daniel Boone: Master of the Wilderness, Michael A.Lofaro, a professor of English at the University of Tennessee and the author of The Life and Adventures of Daniel Boone (1986), assesses John Bakeless's achievement: "After fifty years his is still the standard by which all other biographies of the frontiersman are judged. " John Bakeless's Background to Glory is also available as a Bison Book.