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Rating: 
Summary: Compelling, brilliant, a great addition to the literature
Review: Landon Jones can write! and he has turned his considerable skills at description to a big story. William Clark had an astounding career as a soldier, an explorer, and a pioneering government official in a time when commerce and government were inseparable. As a tasty appetizer, Jones provides vivid, often hideous, descriptions of Clark's older brother George Rogers Clark's campaigns in the old Northwest and a particularly spellbinding recitation of St. Clair's defeat. Jones makes no apologies for the subject of his biography, pointing out clearly and simply how Americans of his era conquered and occupied the lands we now call the Heartland. It's a great book. Every person interested in the Lewis and Clark epic should allow Jones to show them what came before the Corps of Discovery and what the results were in the three decades that followed, when Clark was the leading man of the West.
Rating: 
Summary: Fast Paced, Well Written.......But
Review: Landon Jones is a talented writer whose style of short sentences and concise detailing must have served him well in his former work with tabloid journalism in People Magazine. This much needed biography is easy to read and has a cryptic flow to its story.
What becomes a problem is the same wrestling match into which many modern day historians are continually being thrust. In order to placate political correctness, but finding the historic achivements of the subject to powerful to ignore, they tend toward taking the subject's human rights shortcomings out of the tenure of the times in which they occured.
The result is a rather negative summary of this great ameican's unarguable accomplishments.
Jones becomes obcessed with pointing out Clark's human rights questions and in the process becomes petty and snide.
One wonders about Jones' position of high rank in The Lewis and Clark Centennial Celebration. With friends like this, L&C sure don't need enemies.
Rating:
Summary: Great View of a little known Subject
Review: Many people can tell you a little about the Lewis and Clark, but how many really know about the backbone of the expedition? The author postulates that without William Clark, there would have been MANY more deaths and they may not have made it to the Pacific. It truly is a remarkable book full of imaginative insight into the life of one of America's greatest heroes.
Rating:
Summary: Superb history
Review: This is a fascinating book- a gripping narrative of a life hitherto known for a single oft-told episode - and of Clark's central role in the in the teeming, tragic years in the West between Jefferson and Jackson. Jones is a great storyteller and an evenhanded, toughminded historian. He clearly delineates complex issues and events and creates a rich portrait of a heroic, flawed public servant and a nation whose heedless growth demanded the removal of its indigenous peoples.
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