Johnny Appleseed: The Man, the Myth, the American Story

Finally, the clich is peeled away and the essence of this utterly American character is so revealing.John Chapman comes alive here and it is a thrilling experience to escape the specific gravity of the decades of myth (Ken Burns).

This portrait of Johnny Appleseed restores the flesh-and-blood man beneath the many myths. It captures the boldness of an iconic American and the sadness of his last years, as the frontier marched past him, ever westward. And it shows how death liberated the legend and made of Johnny a barometer of the nations feelings about its own heroic past and the supposed Eden it once had been. Howard Means does for Americas inner frontier what Stephen Ambroses Undaunted Courage did for its western one.