From Powells.com
This book is a real treat for those who can't get enough of Lewis and Clark. Filmmaker Ken Burns worked with historian Dayton Duncan on the remarkable documentary for PBS and this is the companion book. It is filled with numerous photographs, drawings, paintings, sketches from the journals, and film images from the documentary, as well as essays from author William Least Heat-Moon, historian Stephen E Ambrose and poet Erica Funkhouser. One can plunge into this lushly illustrated volume and instantly become absorbed in the excerpts of their journals, marvel at the hardships they endured, the emotions experienced and see with fresh eyes parts of the country then unexplored.
Ironically, Lewis and Clark and their Corps of Discovery a remarkably diverse group of explorer companions including French Canadian boat men, young soldiers and eventually Sacagawea, a Shoshone woman and her infant son never discovered the mythical Northwest Passage. Purported to be an all-river route through the mountains, the Northwest Passage had been dreamed about by explorers since Columbus. The land they did find, however, and the diversity of Indian Cultures and of new wildlife and flora infinitely changed the history and settlement of America. Elegantly narrated by Duncan and the other essayists and lavishly illustrated, this is a gorgeous book for anyone interested in the beginnings of our country. Georgie Honisett, Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
They called themselves the Corps of Discovery, yet they would fail to discover the primary object of their mission: the Northwest Passage, a mythical all-river route through the mountains. Instead their real discovery would be the land itself and the promises it held. This companion volume to Ken Burns' PBS film,imparts all of the adventure, hardship, and triumph of the infamous Lewis and Clark expedition. 150 illustrations, 100 in color
About the Author
Dayton Duncan, writer and producer of
Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, is the author of five other books, including
Out West: An American Journey along the Lewis and Clark Trail, in which he retraced the route of the expedition. He has been a consultant on many of Ken Burns's documentary films and was the co-writer and consulting producer of the PBS series
The West.
Ken Burns, director and producer of Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, has been making award-winning documentary films for more than twenty years, including the landmark PBS series The Civil War and Baseball, The West, and Thomas Jefferson. The subject of his next biographical film will be Frank Lloyd Wright, and in January 2001 he will premiere his series on the history of jazz.