The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisiana Purchase to Today - Hardcover

Two widely known historians buddied up to ascend Old Man River and produce this profusely illustrated album. Inspired by the bicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase, Ambrose and Brinkley offer innumerable insights about the river's significance--socially, militarily, economically, and culturally--in American history. Their work is not history of the river per se; it is akin to a homes-and-haunts tour, not for novice tourists such as Natchez offers but for history-aware readers curious about signal people who lived along the river. Between James Eads, who made navigable the mouth of the Mississippi, and Henry Schoolcraft, who discovered its true source in Lake Itasca, Ambrose and Brinkley present a gallery of figures, introducing each as they reach the town with which the person is associated. Not all are famous: one expects regaling about Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans, but a bonus is Jordan Bankston Noble, a 14-year-old free black drummer in the battle. Indeed, black history is prominent much of the authors' way northward as they visit stations on the Underground Railroad, Civil War battlefields, or places where Louis Armstrong, Leadbelly, or Richard Wright grew up. Variegated and ruminative about the Mississippi's physical and literary centrality to American history, Ambrose and Brinkley's exploration will justly attract great attention. Gilbert Taylor
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"The Mississippi River alone represents more than 2,350 miles of America's lifeblood," write Ambrose and Brinkley of the waterway known as Old Man River and America's River. This lively narrative is built around the authors' trip up the Mississippi from New Orleans to Minnesota on the 19th-century steamboat Delta Queen in celebration of the Lewis and Clark bicentennial. Ambrose, bestselling author of Nothing Like It in the World, and noted historian Brinkley (The Unfinished Presidency), weave regional history with their personal account of the sights, from the intersection of Highways 61 and 49 near Clarksdale, Miss., where legend has it that musician Robert Johnson "sold his... soul to the devil to play the meanest blues guitar in the region," to their encounter with a domesticated bald eagle at a sanctuary near the Twin Cities. They stress the economic and cultural importance of the river valley to the nation, recount quirky regional "firsts" (such as the debut of peanut butter at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair) and focus above all on the machinations that led to Jefferson's 1803 purchase of the territory from France. Combining an impressively broad overview of the region with a detailed account of the Louisiana Purchase, this absorbing book should please any lay enthusiast of American history. 150 pages of photos and maps.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.