Rating: 
Summary: Exciting, but Flawed, Historical Account
Review: If author Edward Dolnick had been content to provide a straightforwrd account of John Wesley Powell's historic exploration of the Grand Canyon, then "Down the Great Unknown" would be a timeless adventure classic. Dolnick is a gifted writer with a great flair for enticing details. Unfortunately, he continually gets sidetracked with stories having little or nothing to do with expedition, and often goes, if you'll pardon the pun, overboard with his cutesy metaphors. The end result is an informative book that is almost as exhausting to read as the expedition itself was to endure.The tale of the Powell expedition hardly needs embellishing. He set out with nine men down the Green and Colorado rivers through what at the time was virtually unknown territory in wooden boats battling some of the most forbidding whitewater in the world. That his party survied at all is remarkable. That they did so without any deaths or serious injury (at least from accident or mishap), is astounding. Dolnick's problem as a narrator presents itself early on when he detours from the trip for two full chapters describing Powell's losing his arm at the Battle of Shiloh. Certainly, the injury is an important part of Powell's story, but a complete retelling of the history of battle itself is unnecessary. As the book progresses, Dolnick gets distracted with other Grand Canyon anecdotes, and often spends time describing in the second person what it is like to go rafting in the area today. One or two such descriptions would have sufficed, but the author keeps going back to them again and again. Overall, "Down the Great Unknown" covers a fascinating subject, but is a widely uneven reading experience.
Rating: 
Summary: whitewater rapids
Review: If you enjoy adventure and American history you are in for a treat. My knowledge of John Wesley Powell and his cohorts 1869 trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon was nonexistent so anything I read was new to me. In addition to literally riding the rapids with Powell's group through their three months trip we are also given a history lesson on Powell and the Battle of Shiloh during the Civil War in which a number of interesting facts are given to illustrate the horror of the Civil War. Powell was extremely interested in geology and he was thrilled with what he was experiencing on the trip through the Grand Canyon and oblivious to the fact that his mates were experiencing frustration at his leisure pace while starvation loomed due to inadequate provisions. One individual of the ten men crew left the group after the first narrow escape and three others left only one day before exiting the canyon and were eventually murdered under mysterious circumstances. Powell made a second trip a few years later but aborted the trip when halfway through the canyon. What became of the remaining six members of the ten man group who made the 1869 trip is also provided in addition to interesting facts about the Grand Canyon that will most likely be new to you. You shouldn't hesitate to give this book a try. I'm sure you will not be disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: This Book is Definitely Worth Your Time
Review: If you enjoy adventure and American history you are in for a treat. My knowledge of John Wesley Powell and his cohorts 1869 trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon was nonexistent so anything I read was new to me. In addition to literally riding the rapids with Powell's group through their three months trip we are also given a history lesson on Powell and the Battle of Shiloh during the Civil War in which a number of interesting facts are given to illustrate the horror of the Civil War. Powell was extremely interested in geology and he was thrilled with what he was experiencing on the trip through the Grand Canyon and oblivious to the fact that his mates were experiencing frustration at his leisure pace while starvation loomed due to inadequate provisions. One individual of the ten men crew left the group after the first narrow escape and three others left only one day before exiting the canyon and were eventually murdered under mysterious circumstances. Powell made a second trip a few years later but aborted the trip when halfway through the canyon. What became of the remaining six members of the ten man group who made the 1869 trip is also provided in addition to interesting facts about the Grand Canyon that will most likely be new to you. You shouldn't hesitate to give this book a try. I'm sure you will not be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: A thrilling tale of adventure and adversity
Review: The history of exploration in America is vast, and most people don't know much about lots of it. This book gives the general reader an intimate and well-written look at the first complete traversing of the Grand Canyon. The writing style is quite breezy, and it makes reading this work easy on the reader. Using diaries and mementos from the participants, the author skillfully weaves an engrossing tale of travail and triumph. He also gives us modern prespectives on river running, to underscore just how difficult this task was, particularly for people unprepared for the hardships and difficulties they were eventually to face. Reading this book lifts the spirit about the couage of those men who braved the unknown in search of something new.
Rating:
Summary: whitewater rapids
Review: The principal focus of this history is the whitewater rapids, at least 20 of which are described in some detail. It helps to have some knowledge of whitewater rafting, I'm sure. This was also the most problematic part of the expedition. But all of Powell's associates and adventures are described in some detail. Powell chose his men for their experience and courage--several of them had accompanied him on a previous Rocky Mountain expedition. Many previous and more recent trips on the Green and Colorado round out the narrative,and frequent mention is made of Powell's autocratic personality, which may mean that he put more personal energy into the venture than did his companions. He was always climbing cliffs and doing measurements. He, however, having only one arm and an officer's personality, developed in the Civil War, did not do a majority of the dirty work, which included frequent "lining and portaging"; he left that to the others. But he wrote a more complete journal than any of the others, which is frequently
quoted by Dolnick. Powell waxed rhapsodic over the visual pleasures of the Grand Canyon, which he saw with the eyes of a trained geologist. The boats were mostly inadequate for the task, and the food, which seems pretty bad by modern standards, was a constant concern, and nearly ran out.
Rating:
Summary: The True Story Behind the Powell Expedition
Review: There are several epic sagas of exploration in the present-day "lower 48" United States. Chronologically, the first was Cabeza de Vaca's 1527-35 trek from Florida through the American Southwest and into Mexico. Then there was the journey of Lewis and Clark in 1803. Finally, there was that insane one-armed army major who with nine companions floated down the unmapped Green and Colorado rivers. Having read and enjoyed John Wesley Powell's own book about his 1869 expedition, I was shocked to hear that is was written decades after the events had taken place. Time had added an optimistic, even roseate glow to what was actually one hundred days of hell on earth with a crew that was grumbling and even mutinous at times. Instead of basing his book exclusively on Powell's book, he used the actual diaries written by Powell, Bradley, and others at the time to round out his tale. No doubt, you know that thousands of people of floated down the Colorado in recent years. But Powell and his men used keeled rowboats in which the men with their oars faced the rapids with their BACKS. In other words, they were facing the wrong direction most of the time. When they undertook the journey, they had no way of knowing whether there were waterfalls that would plunge them to their deaths. (There is one such waterfall on the Little Colorado, which feeds into the Colorado proper south of Lee's Ferry.) As it was, irrespective of how much they grumbled, Powell saw all his men landed safely, except for the three who abandoned the party at Sepration Canyon and were mysteriously murdered by Indians or (possibly) paranoid Mormons who disbelieved their story of running the Colorado. Dolnick's descriptions of the perils of white-water running rival Krakauer's descriptions of climbing Everest in INTO THIN AIR or the tempest in Sebastian Junger's THE PERFECT STORM. The author's attention to detail and apparent knowledge of his subject made DOWN THE GREAT UNKNOWN a joy to read. My only real complaint is that Dolnick interrupts the journey with a multi-chapter flashback of Powell's experiences at the battle of Shiloh, where he lost his arm. The matter, however interesting in itself, should have been introduced earlier, along with more background information about his crew, rather than interrupting the main narrative. My only other complaint is that I would have preferred standard superscripted numerical endnotes to the phrase cues he uses; and I would have preferred a better map of the entire expedition that appears on the endpapers of the hardback version. Still and all, this is a superlative page-turner that I would recommend to anyone with an interest in American history or even tales of adventure.
Rating:
Summary: The True Story Behind the Powell Expedition
Review: There are several epic sagas of exploration in the present-day "lower 48" United States. Chronologically, the first was Cabeza de Vaca's 1527-35 trek from Florida through the American Southwest and into Mexico. Then there was the journey of Lewis and Clark in 1803. Finally, there was that insane one-armed army major who with nine companions floated down the unmapped Green and Colorado rivers. Having read and enjoyed John Wesley Powell's own book about his 1869 expedition, I was shocked to hear that is was written decades after the events had taken place. Time had added an optimistic, even roseate glow to what was actually one hundred days of hell on earth with a crew that was grumbling and even mutinous at times. Instead of basing his book exclusively on Powell's book, he used the actual diaries written by Powell, Bradley, and others at the time to round out his tale. No doubt, you know that thousands of people of floated down the Colorado in recent years. But Powell and his men used keeled rowboats in which the men with their oars faced the rapids with their BACKS. In other words, they were facing the wrong direction most of the time. When they undertook the journey, they had no way of knowing whether there were waterfalls that would plunge them to their deaths. (There is one such waterfall on the Little Colorado, which feeds into the Colorado proper south of Lee's Ferry.) As it was, irrespective of how much they grumbled, Powell saw all his men landed safely, except for the three who abandoned the party at Sepration Canyon and were mysteriously murdered by Indians or (possibly) paranoid Mormons who disbelieved their story of running the Colorado. Dolnick's descriptions of the perils of white-water running rival Krakauer's descriptions of climbing Everest in INTO THIN AIR or the tempest in Sebastian Junger's THE PERFECT STORM. The author's attention to detail and apparent knowledge of his subject made DOWN THE GREAT UNKNOWN a joy to read. My only real complaint is that Dolnick interrupts the journey with a multi-chapter flashback of Powell's experiences at the battle of Shiloh, where he lost his arm. The matter, however interesting in itself, should have been introduced earlier, along with more background information about his crew, rather than interrupting the main narrative. My only other complaint is that I would have preferred standard superscripted numerical endnotes to the phrase cues he uses; and I would have preferred a better map of the entire expedition that appears on the endpapers of the hardback version. Still and all, this is a superlative page-turner that I would recommend to anyone with an interest in American history or even tales of adventure.
Rating:
Summary: By far the best JWP book I have bought
Review: This excellent book is a combination of facts, suspense, humor, and social and political background that will keep you interested throughout the book and hoping it will not end. The author has the ability to keep your interest and bring the entire journey to life. I found reading it along with the photos of "In the Footsteps of JWP: An Album of Comparative Photographs" helped me experience the beauty as well as the dangers of Wesley's adventure. I have only two regrets-First that Edward Dolnick has not written more books and Second that books like this were not around when I snoozed my way through my history and life science courses in high school!
Rating:
Summary: new historical account
Review: This is a new history of a famous exploration first written about by Wallace Stegner and by Powell himself in his long journals written several years after the journey in 1869. Long passages are devoted to descriptions of the 4 inadequate boats traversing the whitewater rapids. As is repeatedly pointed out,the boats have been notably improved since 1869. Dolnick repeatedly refers to more recent journeys down the Colorado and the reasons for their greater success. Frequent mention is also made of the provisions that often had to be carried around the rapids,with great personal strength and effort, and that finally nearly ran out. Fortunately, Powell chose his men for their courage, and all made it through, except for 3 who quit near the end and were killed, according to history, by Indians. Powell is noteworthy for his intellectual curiosity which results in numerous episodes of fossil-hunting and cliff climbing. He was more intensely involved in this venture than the others, which resulted in great personal danger; another result was that his men considered him to be something of an autocrat. He paid them inadequately or not at all. He apparently recognized that what he was doing was an important geologic and exploratory expedition.
Rating:
Summary: new historical account
Review: This is a new history of a famous exploration first written about by Wallace Stegner and by Powell himself in his long journals written several years after the journey in 1869. Long passages are devoted to descriptions of the 4 inadequate boats traversing the whitewater rapids. As is repeatedly pointed out,the boats have been notably improved since 1869. Dolnick repeatedly refers to more recent journeys down the Colorado and the reasons for their greater success. Frequent mention is also made of the provisions that often had to be carried around the rapids,with great personal strength and effort, and that finally nearly ran out. Fortunately, Powell chose his men for their courage, and all made it through, except for 3 who quit near the end and were killed, according to history, by Indians. Powell is noteworthy for his intellectual curiosity which results in numerous episodes of fossil-hunting and cliff climbing. He was more intensely involved in this venture than the others, which resulted in great personal danger; another result was that his men considered him to be something of an autocrat. He paid them inadequately or not at all. He apparently recognized that what he was doing was an important geologic and exploratory expedition.
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