Customer Reviews

Seduced by the West: Jefferson's America and the Lure of the Land Beyond the Mississippi (Lewis & Clark Expedition)

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I enjoyed "Seduced by the West," though it's a quick read that is more of a lengthy magazine article than really a book.

The books focuses on various efforts to explore and claim the American West including, but not limited to, Lewis & Clark.

The most interesting aspect of the book is the description of various characters, e.g., General James Wilkinson. Wilkinson was supposed to be representing US interests in the ill-defined Louisiana Territories, but he was also apparently being paid by the Spanish. The Spanish, intriguingly, didn't recognize the Louisiana Purchase as their deal to turn Louisiana over to the French had a codicil that it wasn't to be sold to someone else.

I would have preferred the book if it had been more specifically focused on a character like Wilkinson and therefore would have been less of a historical review.

But, within the context of what "Seduced by the West" is, it's an enjoyable read.

An excellent counterweight to the usual deification of Jefferson but factually incorrect when she says (p.72) "DNA testing in 1998 proved that Jefferson had indeed fathered at least one of Heming's children."

The testing proved only that "a" Jefferson did so as the authors of the study have labored to make clear. There are other more likely candidates.

This is not as good a work as it had the potential of being. At 199 pages it is short, made shorter still by small pages with large type.

Bouncing from topic to topic, it is an uncoordinated effort. It appears to have been rushed. There are so many ibids and multiple referrals to the same source material in the bibliography that you begin to wonder just how much work went into the research behind it. I was sorry I purchased it.