Book cover of Ranald MacDonald

Book description

rare and collectible biography of Ranald Macdonald's life. book has been reprinted, but this is the original

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1 author picked Ranald MacDonald as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

At the start of the 1990s, I discovered a dusty, original edition of this book at my local library. Published in 1923 and reprinted in 1990, it tells the story of Ranald MacDonald (1824-1894)—a half Chinook and half Scot from today’s Astoria, Oregon—who may be the first North American to go to Japan alone, of his own volition. Heavily edited and annotated from his original manuscript, it is a complex story, partly because many of his words were posthumously re-written by a friend. This created a twelve-year obsession for me—to research and untangle the true story as it…

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