Rating: 
Summary: A National Treasure
Review: The introduction to this book, written by Stephen Ambrose, states that the Journals of Lewis and Clark are an American treasure. At first this seemed like hyperbole, but while reading the Journals, it became clearer why this statement was made. For in the Journals the reader sees in the mind's eye the vast prairies, indominitable mountains, wide, powerful rivers, and vast Pacific Ocean as Lewis and Clark saw them. Through the Journals the reader encounters Indian tribes, both friendly and fierce. At other times, the puzzling descriptions of previously unknown species of animals and plants give insight as to what discovery and exploration mean. This is what makes the Journals a national treasure. Reading the Journals gives the contemporary reader a sense of what it was like to look at the American West for the first time. In an era when there are precious few corners of the earth that have not been mapped, the Journals convey reader to a time when exploration was not only commonplace, but a necessity for national survival. The Journals of Lewis and Clark are not particularly easy to read at times if you are not accustomed to the reading genre of travel diaries. Also, at times, the terse writing style of William Clark made the Journal difficult to "plow" through. Merriweather Lewis' entries were much more readable, but his entries do not appear until after the first quarter or so of this edition. If you are a person who likes maps, the number of maps is low and and the detail they provide is small. There may be other versions of the Journals out there that provide better maps. The commentaries provided before certain chapters that summarize the events that the Journals are about to relate are very helpful in understanding the narratives that follow. For the reader not well versed in the Corps of Discovery, I am not sure if the Journals of Lewis and Clark is the best book to read first when learning about their expedition. Undaunted Courage or another such book might a be better first choice if you want to build a curriculum on Lewis and Clark. Looking back, I would suggest reading the Journals in tandem with such a book, to get a balance between the two styles: historical narrative and diary. Regardless of how the reader approaches the Journals, either by itself or in conjunction with other works, at some point, the critical reader will consult if not read the Journals of Lewis and Clark for a broader perspective on the secondary histories.
Rating: 
Summary: Come live the journey!
Review: The Journal of Lewis and Clark, by DeVoto, is a wonderful reading adventure from cover to cover. The language used is from the men who spoke it. The emotions conveyed are from the men who felt them. You will feel your heart race as a grizzly bear chases the men into a river, or a buffalo runs through the camp. If your are a hiker, you can sense the frustrations they felt as Lewis thought the Colombia was just over the next ridge. Feel the culture of the Native Americans as the first White men did. See the country as only the Journals of the men who did can present it. Read it first hand.
Rating:
Summary: The Journals of Lewis and Clark
Review: The Journals of Lewis and Clark edited by Bernard DeVoto et.al. is a classic. The book is about the Lewis and Clark expedition setting out to explore the Louisiana Purchase. This book is an account of one of the most unique treks across North America. This land was purchased from France by the United States. Thomas Jefferson wanted Port New Orleans so they would have access to the Mississippi River and the Northwest Territory. Waterways were very important transportation routes in those days and Napolean needed money to fight a war with England. So, the deal was struck and in May 1804 the expidition started. Very few people at that time were allowed into that part of the United States. Before France owned the land Spain who owned it. Spain ceded ownership to France and Jefferson didn't want a foreign power on our Western border. Once the purchase was made plans to explore the area were drawn up and the books adventure starts. I found the book to be fascinating as the explorers endured extreme heat and cold rain and wilderness along with hunting for food. Their accounts of the flora and fauna, the Indian tribes and the natural beauty are breath taking. Taking position readings and drawing maps for the future, enduring the long walks and the canoe trips, then always on the lookout for food. They got as far as the Pacific Ocean and waited 159 days for Winter to leave and it rained for most of that time in Oregon. This is an amazing tale told in their words. So the spelling and the grammer may be a tad different, but you'll know what they are saying. A great book to teach the hardships and perils that accompany a journey of this type to our children. This should be used to teach in our schools. Excellent journal of exploration into the West by a gallant team.
Rating:
Summary: The Journals of Lewis and Clark
Review: The Journals of Lewis and Clark edited by Bernard DeVoto et.al. is a classic. The book is about the Lewis and Clark expedition setting out to explore the Louisiana Purchase. This book is an account of one of the most unique treks across North America. This land was purchased from France by the United States. Thomas Jefferson wanted Port New Orleans so they would have access to the Mississippi River and the Northwest Territory. Waterways were very important transportation routes in those days and Napolean needed money to fight a war with England. So, the deal was struck and in May 1804 the expidition started. Very few people at that time were allowed into that part of the United States. Before France owned the land Spain who owned it. Spain ceded ownership to France and Jefferson didn't want a foreign power on our Western border. Once the purchase was made plans to explore the area were drawn up and the books adventure starts. I found the book to be fascinating as the explorers endured extreme heat and cold rain and wilderness along with hunting for food. Their accounts of the flora and fauna, the Indian tribes and the natural beauty are breath taking. Taking position readings and drawing maps for the future, enduring the long walks and the canoe trips, then always on the lookout for food. They got as far as the Pacific Ocean and waited 159 days for Winter to leave and it rained for most of that time in Oregon. This is an amazing tale told in their words. So the spelling and the grammer may be a tad different, but you'll know what they are saying. A great book to teach the hardships and perils that accompany a journey of this type to our children. This should be used to teach in our schools. Excellent journal of exploration into the West by a gallant team.
Rating:
Summary: Now is the time to relive this great American journey.
Review: The Lewis and Clark Expedition ranks among the greatest journeys ever taken. This one-volume condensation of the captains' words makes a fine companion for anyone planning a trip along the trail. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Hard to overpraise
Review: The powerful experience of reading this book leads me to search my memory for comparisons. This was an Event in my literary life, but comparable to what, whom? Canetti's "Crowds and Power," Eliot's "Middlemarch," Shakespeare's plays? All quite different. Least Heat Moon's "Blue Highways?" Unfair to that book to compare. No, this was a singular experience, unlikely to be repeated in its, or any other, genre. I want to say it was the most moving and exhilarating tome by any NON-professional writers in memory. Through the diurnal accounts are discerned a spectacular natural panorama, an early American mind-set, an anthropology of native North Americans, and--as unexpected as they were inadvertent--self-portraits of two temperate, honest and altogether winning protagonists. Their spelling is atrocious (though we are happy the editor left it uncorrected), but as these were, after all, early 19th century gentlemen, they are characteristically eloquent, in the best sense of that word. All the praise for these Journals is deserved. One needn't be a particular student of history to appreciate them--they are rewarding on many, many levels.
Rating:
Summary: Dazzling, legendary
Review: There is not much new that I can add which has not already been said of the Journals. Simply put, fantastic! I have read some excellent books regarding the Lewis and Clark Expedition, but reading the actual journals themselves makes one feel as though they are right there alongside them. Names such as John Colter, the Fields brothers, George Drouillard, Peter Cruzatte, Touissant Charbonneau and his wife Sacajawea, John Ordway, George Shannon, and many of the others in the journal become so familiar, it's as if the reader is a "fly on the saddle" (so to speak) during the entire expedition. Every chapter, every leg of the journey, has something relating to the hardships, sacrifices, conjectures, speculations, survival strategies, Indian confrontations and appropriate manners of behavior, along with wonderful descriptions of landforms, Indian culture, animals, plants, climate, etc. A truly gripping, meaningful look at early western U.S. exploration. DeVoto's introduction and editing is extremely well done.
Rating:
Summary: Journals of the men who shaped the face of the nation.
Review: This is an excellent book. It is hard to imagine the hardship these men had to endure on their trip across the nation, but by reading this book you get some kind of idea. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is even slightly intrested in the history of the Lewis and Clark expedition. This book tells it exactly how it happened, from the men who were there. I strongly believe that books like these should be required reading in schools....who knows what this country would be like today had it not been for those brave men.
Rating:
Summary: Great Historical/Adventure Literature
Review: This would be, if I could do it, a two-part review. To the source material itself, the journals, I would award five stars out of five--six out of five, even, spelling errors and all, for it's absolutely superb stuff. I have read a fair bit in the adventure and exploration line of literature, but nothing as good as these journals for conveying what it felt like to be on such an expedition. Often, it is the little detail at the end of a day's entry that works the magic; for example, when you read several dozen times about the mosquitoes and gnats being "verry troublesome," or "exceedingly troublesome," it tells you something. As does Lewis's quiet contentment with a bellyful of fresh meat after a long and weary hike. And, as Stephen Ambrose notes in his moving and evocative foreword to this book, the fact that these are on-the-fly journal entries--not memoirs--means that the reader sees the good and the bad choices, the discovery that went on along the way. You will probably recognize at once, for instance, that not all grizzlies will be as easy to kill as the first one the corps encounters, but they don't know that, and you are there to read of their changing opinion of these bears as they meet more and more of them. So the raw material is first rate.
The second part of my review would be for the editing, and I would give that four stars out of five. DeVoto, for all his erudition, does make something of a nuisance of himself from time to time. In the first place, he was clearly writing for the "Manifest Destiny" camp of historians--an outlook now taken with a few grains of salt. Here he is, for example, commenting on the earliest hostile encounter with an Indian tribe, "Indian bluster immediately collapsed and from then on the terrible Tetons were mere beggars. The moral of the episode was that a new breed of white men had come to the Upper Missouri, one that could not be scared or bullied. The moral was flashed along the Indian underground faster than the expedition traveled. It explains why the captains were received with such solicitous respect by the Arikaras," etc (p.34). So there's a bit of that sort of thing to put up with. Also, for reasons I cannot fathom, DeVoto inserts bridging passages, paraphrases, in certain spots rather than using actual journal entries. One of these is the death and burial of the expedition's one fatality. How did the captains and the other men react to this? I would have liked to know that. There's another such paraphrase covering Sacagawea's incredible meeting with her long-lost brother. What did Lewis and Clark think of that amazing coincidence? We're not told by this book.
All in all, however, this is a magnificent read, and my quibbles above don't detract materially from its enjoyment. If I have one suggestion for anyone looking to read this, however, it would be to view Ken Burns's extraordinary PBS documentary on the expedition first; your library should have it.
Rating:
Summary: Great Historical/Adventure Literature
Review: This would be, if I could do it, a two-part review. To the source material itself, the journals, I would award five stars out of five--six out of five, even, spelling errors and all, for it's absolutely superb stuff. I have read a fair bit in the adventure and exploration line of literature, but nothing as good as these journals for conveying what it felt like to be on such an expedition. Often, it is the little detail at the end of a day's entry that works the magic; for example, when you read several dozen times about the mosquitoes and gnats being "verry troublesome," or "exceedingly troublesome," it tells you something. As does Lewis's quiet contentment with a bellyful of fresh meat after a long and weary hike. And, as Stephen Ambrose notes in his moving and evocative foreword to this book, the fact that these are on-the-fly journal entries--not memoirs--means that the reader sees the good and the bad choices, the discovery that went on along the way. You will probably recognize at once, for instance, that not all grizzlies will be as easy to kill as the first one the corps encounters, but they don't know that, and you are there to read of their changing opinion of these bears as they meet more and more of them. So the raw material is first rate.
The second part of my review would be for the editing, and I would give that four stars out of five. DeVoto, for all his erudition, does make something of a nuisance of himself from time to time. In the first place, he was clearly writing for the "Manifest Destiny" camp of historians--an outlook now taken with a few grains of salt. Here he is, for example, commenting on the earliest hostile encounter with an Indian tribe, "Indian bluster immediately collapsed and from then on the terrible Tetons were mere beggars. The moral of the episode was that a new breed of white men had come to the Upper Missouri, one that could not be scared or bullied. The moral was flashed along the Indian underground faster than the expedition traveled. It explains why the captains were received with such solicitous respect by the Arikaras," etc (p.34). So there's a bit of that sort of thing to put up with. Also, for reasons I cannot fathom, DeVoto inserts bridging passages, paraphrases, in certain spots rather than using actual journal entries. One of these is the death and burial of the expedition's one fatality. How did the captains and the other men react to this? I would have liked to know that. There's another such paraphrase covering Sacagawea's incredible meeting with her long-lost brother. What did Lewis and Clark think of that amazing coincidence? We're not told by this book.
All in all, however, this is a magnificent read, and my quibbles above don't detract materially from its enjoyment. If I have one suggestion for anyone looking to read this, however, it would be to view Ken Burns's extraordinary PBS documentary on the expedition first; your library should have it.
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