Description
William Clark, co-captain of the famous Lewis and Clark Expedition, devoted his adult life to describing the American West. But this task raised a daunting challenge: how best to bring an unknown continent to life for the young republic? Through Clark's life and career, this book explores how the West entered the American imagination. While he never called himself a writer or an artist, Clark nonetheless drew maps, produced books, drafted reports, surveyed landscapes, and wrote journals that made sense of the West for a new nation fascinated by the region’s potential but also fearful of its dangers. William Clark’s World presents a new take on the manifest destiny narrative and on the way the West took shape in the national imagination in the early nineteenth century.
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Although he's best known today for the exploration he carried out with Merriweather Lewis, in fact, William Clark played a significant role in forming America's concept of itself as a naturally expanding nation, argues Kastor (history, Washington U., St. Louis), through his construction of maps, as well as his political activities and philosophies, including his role as governor of the Missouri Territory. Kastor follows the lengthy process of publishing the History of the expedition, detailing the correspondence between Clark and his publisher, describing its contents alongside descriptions of explorations by other writers of the time, offering a comparative analysis of how Clark saw geography, exploration, the environment, Indians, and how he presented himself within the narrative. (The heavily published expedition of Lewis & Clark itself is purposely not discussed.) Filled with quotes from primary materials, the study fully depicts Clark, his ideas, ideals, prejudices, and times, while also conveying the nature and impact of his notion of geography on Americans' sense of their new country. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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