Here are 100 books that The Lewis and Clark Journals fans have personally recommended if you like
The Lewis and Clark Journals.
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I'm a nature writer and poet who lives, writes, and tends his modest grapevines on a small farm in the highlands of northern Michigan. My study and my work delves into the mysterious connections between all living things. I've sailed the world's lakes and oceans and lived on the land from Alaska to California to the Caribbean. The natural world cannot just be described but must be experienced – all the writers on my list have taken this approach – as I've followed the lead of these great writers but in my own unique way. I would enjoy a day on a secluded river with each of them in search of the elusive brook trout.
A classic American story following Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery from Virginia to the Pacific Coast and back again in the very early 1800s.
This book needs to be read not only by those interested in history but by all who would understand the origins of our nation. The complex personalities of Lewis, Clark, and Thomas Jefferson, who envisioned the journey come through in living color.
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I was browsing a bookstore around 1996 when I spotted a book about Lewis and Clark. I took a look, saw a list of the members of the expedition, and realized I hardly knew anything about those individuals. I wondered who they were and what happened to them during and after their trek across the country. I started reading books and articles and making trips to conventions or archives in places like St. Louis and Philadelphia. It has been a great twenty-five years, and my passion for Lewis and Clark has never ebbed. I hope you enjoy the books discussed here as much as I have.
This thoughtful, compelling, 442-page essay by humanities scholar Clay S. Jenkinson is simply my favorite Lewis and Clark book. Clay begins with a quote from Hamlet, and in the next few pages mention everyone from Lewis—“an eccentric, high strung, and sometimes-troubled man” but also “a man of extraordinary intelligence and sensitivity” to John Donne, Buzz Aldrin, and Neil Armstrong, to Lennon and McCartney. This is a highly personal, highly readable, free-ranging volume that offers new and fascinating insights into both Lewis and Clark and their westward trek. I highly recommend it.
Meriwether Lewis commanded the most important exploration mission in the early history of the United States. Clay S. Jenkinson takes a fresh look at Lewis, not to offer a paper cutout hero but to describe and explain a hyperserious young man of great complexity who found the wilderness of Upper Louisiana as exacting as it was exhilarating.
Jenkinson sees Lewis as a troubled soul before he left St. Charles, Missouri, in May 1804. His experiences in lands "upon which the foot of civilized man had never trodden" further fractured his sense of himself. His hiring William Clark as his "partner…
I was browsing a bookstore around 1996 when I spotted a book about Lewis and Clark. I took a look, saw a list of the members of the expedition, and realized I hardly knew anything about those individuals. I wondered who they were and what happened to them during and after their trek across the country. I started reading books and articles and making trips to conventions or archives in places like St. Louis and Philadelphia. It has been a great twenty-five years, and my passion for Lewis and Clark has never ebbed. I hope you enjoy the books discussed here as much as I have.
The versatile Landon Jones is a former editor of People magazine and the author of Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation, but it is his biography of Clark that really thrills me. This book combines solid research with vibrant, engrossing prose that is always a pleasure to read. You get to know the intriguing—and sometimes enigmatic—William Clark before, during, and after the expedition.
Between 1803 and 1806, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark cocaptained the most famous expedition in American history. But while Lewis ended his life just three years after the expedition, Clark, as the highest-ranking federal official in the West, spent three decades overseeing its consequences: Indian removal and the destruction of Native America. In a rare combination of storytelling and scholarship, bestselling author Landon Y. Jones vividly depicts Clark's life and the dark and bloody ground of America's early West, capturing the qualities of character and courage that made Clark an unequaled leader in America's grander enterprise: the shaping of the…
In 1913, a 15-year-old pregnant girl was found dead of apparent suicide. Dr. James Wilson, a new graduate and the first doctor ever to start a practice in this rural town, feels guilty over her death because of his delayed intervention.
I was browsing a bookstore around 1996 when I spotted a book about Lewis and Clark. I took a look, saw a list of the members of the expedition, and realized I hardly knew anything about those individuals. I wondered who they were and what happened to them during and after their trek across the country. I started reading books and articles and making trips to conventions or archives in places like St. Louis and Philadelphia. It has been a great twenty-five years, and my passion for Lewis and Clark has never ebbed. I hope you enjoy the books discussed here as much as I have.
While the early death of Meriwether Lewis is one of the tragic events related to the Expedition, no story is more poignant than that of York, William Clark’s slave, who was one of the twenty-eight men who made the complete journey from St. Louis to the Pacific coast and back. In many ways, this touching book tells the story of slavery itself, covering such topics as York’s fine service on the Expedition, his youth as a slave to the Clark family, his marriage, his falling out with Clark, his demotion from body servant to hired-out slave, his forced separation from his wife, his eventual freedom, and his understandable failure in the freight business—in a world where freed slaves were viewed with considerable suspicion. The sad heritage of slavery thus left its mark on the Expedition, just as it did the entire history of the United States.
The sole African American member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, William Clark's enigmatic body servant York has inspired numerous myths about his character and exploits. He was supposed to be a man of superb physique and stamina, and some believed that he clowned and womanized his way across the continent and made no significant contributions to the outcome of the Expedition. More often than not, reputable historians have assumed that these myths surrounding him were reliable portrayals of the first black man to reach the Pacific Ocean.
First published in 1985, Robert B. Betts' unique account of this long-obscured…
As an author, I love telling stories set on the frontier and populated by pioneers. That has a lot to do with the books I read long ago. My characters tend to have their heads in the clouds, like Ken from Mary O’Hara’s My Friend Flicka. They dream of towering peaks, promising paths, and opportunities beyond the world they grew up in. Back in high school, I took an elective class—Historical Fiction—I wasn’t even sure what that was! We read The Source by James Michener. When I’m not hiking or dreaming about horses, there’s nothing I love more than making up wilderness stories set in the 1800s.
This is the kind of book you get lost in. My favorite stories almost always include a trail—a journey. And the path followed by Lewis and Clark is, of course, more than just a journey.
I loved experiencing this excursion through the perspective of the heroic young mother. If it weren’t for her, the expedition would have been doomed. I’m long overdue for another read of this book, and I’m looking forward to diving back into it one of these days.
I have loved the history of the West since I was a child, as my family has lived here for over a century. I devoured historical fiction about pioneer girls in grammar school (including the works of Laura Ingalls Wilder), and as I got into college, I expanded my reading universe to include books about women’s roles in the West, and the meaning of this region in overall American history. This concept is what drew me to study the cultural influence of dude ranching, where women have always been able to shine -- and where I placed the protagonist of my first novel.
When we think of the West, we so often think about people moving and traveling, but rarely do women come to mind, except as pioneers in covered wagons. But ever since Sacagawea walked with the Lewis and Clark expedition, women have not only traveled West, they often led the way, both physically and metaphorically. Scharff’s book is a fascinating look at how hard it was for women to actually move through the region, whether stumping for suffrage or civil rights. Scharff’s book is especially valuable because she includes so many women of color, and you can feel their pain and their exhilaration on the page.
From Sacagawea's travels with Lewis and Clark to rock groupie Pamela Des Barres's California trips, women have moved across the American West with profound consequences for the people and places they encounter. Virginia Scharff revisits a grand theme of United States history - our restless, relentless westward movement--but sets out in new directions, following women's trails from the early nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries. In colorful, spirited stories, she weaves a lyrical reconsideration of the processes that created, gave meaning to, and ultimately shattered the West. "Twenty Thousand Roads" introduces a cast of women mapping the world on their…
Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977, and Voyager 2 was launched on August 20, 1977. Both began a historic journey with unique 'time capsules' on board intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record 12-inch gold-plated disk…
I grew up reading dark fiction, and the only two books I kept from that period were The Wicked Heart and Whisper of Death, both by Christopher Pike. Though both were categorized as horror, the first is a crime mystery that partly follows the murderer, while the latter feels like an episode out of The Twilight Zone. I never cared for pure horror, and a book doesn’t have to scare me for me to find them enjoyable. What I often wanted was a tangible sense of dread paired with insight into the human psyche, which I believe makes for a more potent reading experience.
What a sensible-sounding title to a series that was anything but. David Lynch is famously known for avoiding explaining his work lest he kills the mystery, but not only did Frost deftly provide an explanation while keeping the mystery alive, he aggrandized the lore behind it into mythology.
The Secret History of Twin Peaks enlarges the world of the original series, placing the unexplained phenomena that unfolded there into a vastly layered, wide-ranging history, beginning with the journals of Lewis and Clark and ending with the shocking events that closed the finale. The perfect way to get in the mood for the upcoming Showtime series.
I’ve always been a history lover. Since my 7th-grade teacher brought history to life I have been interested in a wide variety of topics and times. After living in Oregon for twenty-five years I found myself wanting to contribute to the cataloging of this great state’s history. The niche I discovered was to explore the world of work over Oregon’s history. Researching Oregon at Work: 1859-2009 I spent many hours across kitchen tables with the descendants of Oregon pioneers. They had boxes of ancient documents and photographs on their side, I came equipped with my laptop and scanner. Through this process, I researched thousands of documents, books, maps, diaries, photos, and more. I became an expert on the subject and my interest only grew.
We often think of Oregon pioneers were hardy men setting off for a new promised land. In reality, the women who made the perilous journey and carved a life out of the Oregon wilderness are the real heroes. This book captures the pioneer spirit of the women who ventured out west, and those already in the land. One of the things I like best about this book is the narrative fashion - as if we are living in the shoes or moccasins of the women featured. There is a great article about Sacajawea, the only woman in the Lewis and Clark expedition.
I grew up a fan of an evening news segment called “On the Road with Charles Kuralt.” Kuralt spotlighted upbeat, affirmative, sometimes nostalgic stories of people and places he discovered as he traveled across the American landscape. The charming stories he told were only part of the appeal; the freedom and adventure of being on the open road ignited a spark that continues to smolder. Some of my fondest memories from childhood are our annual family road trips, and I still jump at the chance to drive across the country.
Duncan follows the route Lewis and Clark took as they headed up the Missouri River. He embarks on the trip several generations later and drives a camper, so he experiences a very different landscape from the early explorers. It doesn’t matter; while the book itself is thirty-five years old, his blend of history, traveler’s and camping advice, and personal encounters make this memoir insightful, funny, and poignant even now. For anyone who would prefer to take a road trip from the comfort of their favorite reading chair, this is a satisfying read.
Describes the author's trip through the American West--retracing Lewis and Clark's historic trail from the Gateway Arch in St. Louis to the Oregon coast--and his encounters with the people who have adopted the myths of the West
Deputy Jenna Hart has only been working in her sleepy hometown of Pearl Springs for seven months when city officials begin to be targeted by a killer. Twenty years ago, the construction of a dam caused people to lose their land to eminent domain. That wound has not healed with…
I am a teacher and professor of psychology and consciousness studies. I have been fascinated by the enigma of consciousness my entire adult life. Over the years I have written and taught in a number of different fields including biology, psychology, history, art, and philosophy, always looking to the nature of consciousness, and always exploring its spiritual dimensions. My writings include the present selection, Consciousness Explained Better, described by Ken Wilber as “the finest book on consciousness in modern times, bar none” and The Radiance of Being, that shared a book of the year award with Nobel laureate Roger Penrose’s book, The Emperor’s New Mind.
This is the third and most important of three recent volumes that have come out of Esalen Institute’s Center for Theory and Research. Together they explore dimensions of experience that extend beyond the limits of traditional materialistic science. In Alfred Korzybski’s famous words, “The map is not the territory,” and nowhere are these truer than regarding the territory of consciousness.
This book explores topics such as reincarnation, out-of-the-body experiences, precognition, and more, offering metaphysical and spiritual models of the place of consciousness in the cosmos. It is remarkable for drawing together an enormous amount of research and scholarship hitherto largely ignored. Michael Murphy, co-founder of Esalen Institute, likens it to the Lewis and Clark expedition into the previously unknown territory of western North America.
Building on the groundbreaking research of Irreducible Mind and Beyond Physicalism, Edward Kelly and Paul Marshall gather a cohort of leading scholars to address the most recent advances in the psychology of consciousness. Currently emerging as a middle ground between warring fundamentalisms of religion and science, an expanded science-based understanding of nature finally accommodates empirical realities of spiritual sorts while also rejecting rationally untenable overbeliefs.
The vision sketched here provides an antidote to the prevailing postmodern disenchantment of the world and demeaning of human possibilities. It not only more accurately and fully reflects our human condition but engenders hope and…
