Discovering Lewis & Clark from the Air || A different point of view...
Written: Jan 12 '08
Product Rating:
Pros: Clear, interesting, high-quality pictures. Wonderfully descriptive and engaging text.
Cons: Text a bit confusing when discussing 'out-n-back' portions of the trip in same section.
The Bottom Line: If you are a 'Lewis and Clark' fan (or an American history fan) at all, I highly recommend this book. If not, this one just might convert you.
sleeper54's Full Review: Jim Wark et al - Discovering Lewis & Clark from th...
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There are road trips:
'Hon, lets pack the kids up and go see Grandma this weekend '
...and there are _road_trips_:
"The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri river & such principal stream of it, as, by it's course and communication with the waters of the Pacific ocean ...may offer the most direct and practicable water communication across this continent for the purposes of commerce."
The early years of the nineteenth century found a young United States continuing its first steps into the future. The nascent Union had contested and survived the 'passing forward' of the powers of the Presidency not once but twice; even as the gunfire and cannon shots of the Revolutionary War still echoed in living memory of fathers and grandfathers.
While the coining of the phrase 'Manifest Destiny' was still decades away, the urge to claim, occupy, and subjugate land, game, and any native peoples that might interfere with these goals was already ingrained in the American character and practice.
It is not surprising that President Jefferson would charge his trusted personal secretary to lead an expedition to explore, map, and stake an American claim to the Louisiana Purchase and other lands of the western continent.
A journey up the Missouri River to its near-meeting with the headwaters of the Columbia River and on to the Pacific Ocean was the task charged to Captains Meriwether Lewis, William Clark and the Corps of Discovery they commanded.
Discovering Lewis and Clark from the Air offers a unique viewpoint in retracing the journey of the Corps of Discovery. Photographer Jim Wark spent months planning a route that would afford him a vantage point that Captains Lewis and Clark surely must have wished for many times.
Seven days of low-level flights, over-night camping stops, and aerial photography resulted in a 2500 mile (one-way) trip that yielded over 3000 images of the land traversed by Lewis and Clark. Prominent landmarks, river points, broad vistas, and towering mountain ranges are all presented in full color.
Discovering Lewis and Clark from the Air traces the route of exploration from the stately mansion of Jefferson's Monticello, down the Ohio River, up the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers and across the mountains to the Pacific Ocean.
Divided into several sections for this book, each leg of the journey has an overview map which fixes (by matching numbers) the location of each aerial view in that section. This makes it easy to follow the route of the expedition and fix each photograph and accompanying description in context of the overall journey. Over a hundred aerial photographs draw the reader into time and place.
Photographer Wark and author Joseph Mussulman do a great job of marrying picture and description. Text taken from original journals of the expedition is woven into the descriptions, bringing both the history and the current day appearance of the land to life. Many details of the explorers' and their men's lives and the dangers they all faced each day are provided.
We also see the changes wrought on the landscape by 200 years of development and 'American civilization'. Not only do we get a 'view' of the expedition probably never seen before but we also get a real taste of what the journey must have been like 'then and there' and what it would look like today.
The Bottom Line
I really found this to be a unique look at the journey of Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery. Discovering Lewis and Clark from the Air literally brought this trip and this time to life for me. Not just in reading and imagining but in actually seeing some of the same sites and the same obstacles these intrepid explorers met and overcame over two hundred years ago.
If you are a 'Lewis and Clark' fan at all, I highly recommend this book. If you are not, this one just might convert you.
ANNOTATION: In Discovering Lewis and Clark from the Air, aerial photographer Jim Wark and Lewis and Clark scholar Joseph A. Mussulman offer a fascinat...More at Alibris
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