Dateline: 02/28/00
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West is a fantastic introduction to the Lewis and Clark expedition of the Louisiana Purchase and to the Pacific Ocean from 1803 to 1806. Historian Stephen Ambrose (author of numerous histories, including biographies of Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon) has been “obsessed with Lewis and Clark for twenty years.”
This book is Ambrose’s tribute to the expedition and especially to Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson’s protege and co-leader of the expedition to find an all-water route to the Pacific Ocean from the Missouri River. It’s essentially a biography of Lewis’ life, with the greatest detail being emphasized on the expedition but nonetheless, will find an excellent narrative of Lewis’ early life and the aftermath of the expedition, which ultimately led to Lewis’ suicide in 1809.
Ambrose is an excellent writer and a reader of Undaunted Courage will likely feel as though they’re directly part of the Corps of Discovery, as Lewis and Clark affectionately called their crew. It’s a true page-turner, and although it does take some time to get involved in the book, once you are, there’s no extricating yourself. Some have found the book to be too detailed and lengthy (at almost 500 pages) but it seemed the perfect length.
Obviously enamored with his subject, Ambrose follows Lewis through the expedition though the use of carefully selected quotation from Lewis’ journals, the journals of others, the information that can be gleaned by the various academics who have studied the expedition in such great detail, and through Ambrose’s lucid analysis.
The biography of the expedition is an almost day-by-day account and can be compared to an equally fascinating account of the American West, The World Rushed In by J. S. Holliday. Although Holliday relied more extensively on the journals of William Swain to relate the story of the Gold Rush, they’re both fully engaging.
Ambrose has great respect for Clark and his thoughts and deeds yet Ambrose provides the reader with the political context of the expedition and the forces against President Jefferson and the expedition. Additionally, Ambrose tends to subject the explorers to late twentieth century values, creating a strange analysis in the accounts of meetings and actions toward Native Americans.
In all, Undaunted Courage reads like great fiction - Stephen Ambrose has done an excellent service to the history of Meriwether Lewis.
Order Undaunted Courage from Borders.com
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