Centennial Book Review Essay, Research Paper

Centennial Book Review1. Death plays a large role in Michener s bookbecause it is treated so causally. Michener s book isquite long, covering many years, and many places. Ifeach death were to be described deeply then the bookwould be over twice it s length. Since the book istold over a long period of time, no one person couldlive throughout the whole thing, so death isinevitable. Michener repeats the concept only rockslive forever presenting the reality in the book.Everyone dies at some time, it s just that most of thetime it is just passed casually and then everyone moveson. 2. I believe that Levi Zendt played the mostimportant role in the development of the Centennialcommunity. Centennial was originally knows as Zendt sFarm. Zendt founded and established the wholecommunity. He shared his land and himself with thefarmers, ranchers, shepards and people of differentraces. 3. The dry land farmers gained their enlightenmentfrom the technique developed by Dr. Crevey. Heinvented this technique to farm in areas that receivedvery little rain. This practice included not lettingone drop of rain escape, plowing and planting in thefall, plowing at least 10 inches deep, then disking,then harrowing the soil into a powder. This powdercreated problems with erosion and the dust storm inColorado.4. a) sheepgrowers association The cattlemen didn t happen to think very highlyof sheepgrowers association because they came longafter the cattlemen. They tried to take away thecattlemen s land. During all of this, Seccome evenhired assassins to kill some of the shepards b)homesteaders The cattlemen thought of the homesteaders the sameway they thought of the sheepgrowers. The assassin partwas also the same.

c) beetgrowers The cattlemen felt the same way about thebeetgrowers as they did the homesteaders andsheepgrowers. When Seccom s cattle was threatened bythe severe drought, he made a partnership with HansBrumbaugh, the head of the beetgrowers. In this, Hansand the beetgrowers provided Secomm s cattle with beetsfor food.5. I did not know that cows originated in Mexico.Also, I didn t know that the first horse appeared inColorado. 6. The book count was incredibly controversial becauseinstead of having an actual head count, this was onlyan estimation. Whoever needed to know how many cattlethere were for say, the rancher would estimate, and theother rancher would just believe him because of histrust and honor. If the rancher did not estimate wellenough, or was just plain dishonest, then the exchangecould be off by many thousands and many ranchers wouldbe unhappy.7. 8. Michener treats minorities with respect throughoutmost of his book. For example, he treats Nacho and NatePerson as equals and doesn t think of them asdifferent. He also doesn t think of the Indians asdifferent. But during his book, for example, Sandersonreplies, You goddamned Mexicans couldn t live withoutbeans, could you? This quote shows how Michener can beracist in his book referring to Mexicans.9. My overall impression of the book has many sides.Michener seemed to mix different people at differentpoints in history, and all tie them together at theend. For example, Pasquinel was greatly appreciated bythe Indians in the beginning of the story, then LeviZendt joins in, and all of the other characters are allconnected in some way. This began to get kind ofconfusing at points because there were so manydifferent characters that I had to keep track of. Buton the contrary, the Centennial is a great work ofhistory and opened my eyes to appreciate Americanhistory.