Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize. Across the Wide Missouri tells the compelling story of the climax and decline of the Rocky Mountain fur trade during the 1830s. More than a history, it portrays the mountain fur trade as a way of business and a way of life, vividly illustrating how it shaped the expansion of the American West.

In 1803, when the United States purchased Louisiana from France, the great expanse of this new American territory was a blank -- not only on the map but in our knowledge. President Thomas Jefferson keenly understood that the course of the nation's destiny lay westward and that a national "Voyage of Discovery" must be mounted to determine the nature and accessibility of the frontier. He commissioned his young secretary, Meriwether Lewis, to lead an intelligence-gathering expedition from the Missouri River to the northern Pacific coast and back. From 1804 to 1806, Lewis, accompanied by co-captain William Clark, the Shoshone guide Sacajawea, and thirty-two men, made the first trek across the Louisiana Purchase, mapping the rivers as he went, tracing the principal waterways to the sea, and establishing the American claim to the territories of Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. together the captains kept a journal, a richly detailed record of the flora and fauna they sighted, the Indian tribes they encountered, and the awe-inspiring landscape they traversed, from their base camp near present-day St. Louis to the mouth of the Columbia River. In keeping this record they made an incomparable contribution to the literature of exploration and the writing of natural history. The Journals of Lewis and Clark, writes Bernard DeVoto, was "the first report on the West, on the United States over the hill and beyond the sunset, on the province of the American future. There has never been another so excellent or so influential...It satisfied desire and created desire: the desire of the westering nation."

This is a new release of the original 1943 edition.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1909 Edition.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1909 Edition.

This is a new release of the original 1943 edition.

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone

THIS 44 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: The Taming of the Frontier, by Bernard De Voto. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 0766194485.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

THIS 44 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: The Taming of the Frontier, by Bernard De Voto. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 0766194485.

THIS 44 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: The Taming of the Frontier, by Bernard De Voto. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 0766194485.

1909. Introduction by Theodore Spencer. From the Preface: This book is not a novel, but the recollections of scenes and episodes of my early life in Illinois and Missouri, the writing of which has been a labour of love. A cosmopolitan life in the different capitals of Europe during a period of forty years has not sufficed to alienate the romance and memory of those wonderful times. In looking back I have come to the conclusion that the power displayed by the most influential preachers and politicians of the ante-bellum days in Illinois was a power emanating from the spiritual side of life, and I have done my best to depict the silences that belonged to the prairies, for out of those silences came the voices of preacher and prophet and a host of workers and heroes in the great War of Secession. In 1863 President Lincoln issued his famous proclamation for the emancipation of the slaves, and with it the old order passed away never to return.

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

1909. Introduction by Theodore Spencer. From the Preface: This book is not a novel, but the recollections of scenes and episodes of my early life in Illinois and Missouri, the writing of which has been a labour of love. A cosmopolitan life in the different capitals of Europe during a period of forty years has not sufficed to alienate the romance and memory of those wonderful times. In looking back I have come to the conclusion that the power displayed by the most influential preachers and politicians of the ante-bellum days in Illinois was a power emanating from the spiritual side of life, and I have done my best to depict the silences that belonged to the prairies, for out of those silences came the voices of preacher and prophet and a host of workers and heroes in the great War of Secession. In 1863 President Lincoln issued his famous proclamation for the emancipation of the slaves, and with it the old order passed away never to return.

"This book is the fascinating record of DeVoto's crusade to save the West from itself. . . . His arguments, insights, and passion are as relevant and urgent today as they were when he first put them on paper."-Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., from the Foreword Bernard DeVoto (1897-1955) was, according to the novelist Wallace Stegner, "a fighter for public causes, for conservation of our natural resources, for freedom of the press and freedom of thought." A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, DeVoto is best remembered for his trilogy, The Year of Decision: 1846, Across the Wide Missouri, and The Course of Empire. He also wrote a column for Harper's Magazine, in which he fulminated about his many concerns, particularly the exploitation and destruction of the American West. This volume brings together ten of DeVoto's acerbic and still timely essays on Western conservation issues, along with his unfinished conservationist manifesto, Western Paradox, which has never before been published. The book also includes a foreword by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., who was a student of DeVoto's at Harvard University, and a substantial introduction by Douglas Brinkley and Patricia Limerick, both of which shed light on DeVoto's work and legacy.

Year of Decision 1846 tells many fascinating stories of the U.S. explorers who began the western march from the Mississippi to the Pacific, from Canada to the annexation of Texas, California, and the southwest lands from Mexico. It is the penultimate book of a trilogy which includes Across the Wide Missouri (for which DeVoto won both the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes) and The Course of Empire. DeVoto's narrative covers the expanding Western frontier, the Mormons, the Donner party, Fremont's exploration, the Army of the West, and takes readers into Native American tribal life.