Journals of Lewis and Clark (National Geographic Adventure Classics) [Paperback]

Meriwether Lewis (Author), William Clark (Author), Anthony Brandt (Introduction)

Book Description

Series: National Geographic Adventure Classics | Publication Date: December 1, 2002

At the dawn of the 19th century, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark embarked on an unprecedented journey from St. Louis, Missouri to the Pacific Ocean and back again. Their assignment was to explore the newly acquired Louisiana Territory and record the geography, flora, fauna, and people they encountered along the way. The tale of their incredible journey, meticulously recorded in their journals, has become an American classic.

This single-volume, landmark edition of the famous journals is the first abridgement to be published in at least a decade.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The epic Lewis and Clark Expedition comes to life on a human scale in this engrossing abridgment of the explorers' journals. The travelers spent more than two years traveling up the Missouri, across the Rockies to the Pacific and back, and these accounts leave no doubt that it was a very hard slog. Page after page details the drudgery of paddling and hauling the boats upstream, the maddening mosquitoes and the enervating damp of the Pacific Northwest; virtually every entry includes an anxious tally of the game killed that day to feed the party. But the sober, soldierly tone of the journals often gives way to lyrical descriptions of the terrain and wildlife of the magnificent landscapes through which the expedition passed (hair-raising encounters with grizzlies are a persistent refrain). Particularly intriguing are the portraits of the Indian peoples the explorers encountered, with whom they maintained mostly friendly relations. Although burdened by the prejudices of the age, Lewis and Clark recognized the complexity of the attitudes and motivations of the Indians, who wavered between wariness of white men and eagerness to trade with them and enlist their support in the convoluted inter-tribal politics of the West. The editor's assiduous untangling of the explorers' notoriously bad spelling, punctuation and grammar, helpful notes and maps and fluent synopses of the duller stretches of the narrative make the journals accessible to a general readership. In the words of Smithsonian Institution curator emeritus Herman J. Viola, who contributes an afterword, these journals are "an American classic in the truest sense."
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: National Geographic (December 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0792269217
• ISBN-13: 978-0792269212
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 1.3 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #393,179 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, the Story as Lewis & Clark would have told it, January 22, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Journals of Lewis and Clark (National Geographic Adventure Classics) (Paperback)

It's no secret that the only narrative available from Lewis and Clark themselves was one they wrote in raw form while on their journey. While this offers a certain "real time" value, it is a value best appreciated by researchers and not your average reader. I was intrigued enough by other books in this series to want to hear about Lewis & Clark's adventures in their own words, but not to read details of every single day of their journey which, by its very nature, can't help but be monotonous.
This book, on the other hand, gave me a true sense of what their journey was like, and what they were like without giving me the details of each morning's breakfast menu.
And that sense, by the way, was conveyed without any sense of abruptness or with any apparent gaps in the narrative. This book was a joy insomuch as it delivered the experience smoothly in their own words without the kind of puzzling pauses which accompany writings in broken English.
In much the same way that this exploration opened the west, this book opened my eyes to this exploration. It is absolutely worth the read.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is the book to read!, January 6, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Journals of Lewis and Clark (National Geographic Adventure Classics) (Paperback)

Brandt's abridgment of these important historical documents will be the one that lasts for years to come. He makes these journals accessible to the everyday historian, who is interested in what the Corps of Discovery actually did, and saves us from having to struggle with quaint and erroneous spelling.

Interestingly, Lewis and Clark themselves never meant the journals to be published just as they wrote them. The editor Brandt has done us a great service by cleaning up the language, making the text flow seamlessly, and leaving out the boring parts.

There are those who will carp over his correction of the spelling (pedants who read Virgil in the original), but the rest of us are grateful. Brandt's talent as a writer shines through the work as he connects the journal sections with elegantly crafted passages.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Thrilling Read!, January 21, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Journals of Lewis and Clark (National Geographic Adventure Classics) (Paperback)

After trying (trying is the operative word here) to slog through the journals in the original spelling and with little or no punctuation, it was a real joy to read this version edited by Anthony Brandt. The stories of their encounters with natives tribes, grizzley bears and of their day-to-day lives make for a compelling adventure story. And unlike the previous editions, Brandt summarizes those sections that are not included in well-crafted prose that keep the story flowing. This reads like the true adventure story it was and is destined to be a classic in the American history literature.