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 enlarge | Author: Stephen E. Ambrose
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $30.00
Buy Used: $0.07
You Save: $29.93 (100%)
New (58) Used (215) Collectible (21) from $0.07
Avg. Customer Rating:  345 reviews
Sales Rank: 48941
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 512
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.4
ISBN: 0684811073
Dewey Decimal Number: 917.8042
EAN: 9780684811079
ASIN: 0684811073
Publication Date: February 15, 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Dust Cover Missing. Help save a tree. Buy all your used books from Green Earth Books. Read -> Recycle -> Reuse!
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| Customer Reviews:
 Ambrose at his Best May 5, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The history of the Voyage of Discovery is one of the outstanding feats in American history. No one has told it better than Stephen Ambrose. This is a must read even if you don't enjoy history.
Good Read April 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I got this book for my birthday, picked it up, and enjoyed every page. It is a great way to learn more about the founding fathers of this country and have some real-life adventure as well as tragic thrown in throughout. Those things that we now take for granted once required risk of life to achieve. Great Read!
 poor pop history February 6, 2008
7 out of 16 found this review helpful
READ DEVOTO'S EDIT OF THE JOURNALS INSTEAD! There is probably a link for it somewhere on your screen. Please get that instead, you will enjoy reading about the trip from Lewis more then from Ambrose.
I read DeVoto's edit of the journals first, and it was great. I could have read a thousand more pages, and I might, by getting a copy of the entire journals. The journals themselves give the best, most exciting, and clearest version of the trip. There really is no comparing the journals themselves to this second hand retelling. Please don't review this critique unless you have read both, because I bet you would agree with me.
It really upsets me that people like this book or think it has any value. It shows how limited peoples understanding of history is. It's completely worthless to Lewis and Clark historiography and is really poorly written. I had a difficult time finishing it. This is a book for people who don't have a history background and don't know any better, for people who read the current best selling fiction books and want to try some non-fiction. It is not for historians or people serious about learning about Lewis and Clark. Historians will read the complete journals and read the various articles about parts of the trip. Serious history fans with time constraints will read an edited version of journals. Unfortunately, most people read this cheap literature and love it.
There is, however, an important purpose to secondary accounts of the trip.
When reading the edited journals there will be questions that you want answered that DeVoto either did not put in or they were not yet researched at the time DeVoto edited the journals. Things like why people got sick, or background information about different tribes, ect. Things that the journsls do not themselves explain but that maybe a doctor or a historain could clear up.
An example is the loud noise heard by the party near the mountains. If my memory serves me correctly this is not explained in the Journals or Courage, however after reading a book about David Thompson, who was also in the area at this time, it seems likely that the sound was in fact frequent, intense avalanches. This is what Ambrose is supposed to tell, and in fact he did a respectable job of it. The problem is with the rest of the book.
'Courage' can be divided into three separate parts, though the parts switch back and forth frequently throughout the book.
(1)- the details, info, and unanswered questions that you can't get from the journals themselves but really want to know after reading the journals
(2)- a brief narrative of lewis's life and the trip
(3)- worthless speculation and opinion
(1) is what we are here for, and there is some good stuff here, but lets be honest, this isn't really Ambrose's work. He is building off the work of many other Lewis and Clark scholars, researches, doctors, ect. who have in numerous other works helped explain many of the events of the trip
(2) Ambrose isn't a great story teller. It's about as exciting and detailed as reading a wikipedia entry. To be fair, I read it right after the journals, so it's hard to compete with the people who actually did it.
(3) I'm not sure why Ambrose would periodically end a chapter or whatever with some worthless hypo about would could of happened if this and this Indian killed Lewis or he fell of this mountain, or whatever. His random speculations about possible out comes or opinions about behavior sound more like a high school teacher, a tour guide, or a jr. history enthusiast, than a historian.
And while I'm at it, what kind of book is this anyway? A history, a biography? I'm not sure Ambrose had decided himself, just look at his long apologia at the beginning. He knew what he was writing didn't really fit into Lewis and Clark scholarship. He was in two minds when he wrote this book. Half of him wanted to tell the story of the trip to his kids around the camp fire, the other half wanted to narrate the life of Lewis. Both came off half cocked.
So, 1/3 of the book is good stuff, 1/3 is ok, and 1/3 is worthless.
3/3 of the journals are priceless.
Someone needs to take the info that we all wonder about when we read the DeVoto's journals and put it in foot notes of a re'edited version. When that happens Ambroses book will be 3/3 worthless. This is POP HISTORY and it sucks. Read the Journals.
 Puts you there February 3, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
A River Calling: A Christian Father and His Sons; A Canoe Adventure; A Spiritual Journey That Would Last a Lifetime Having canoed the length of the Missouri river from Three Forks, MT to St. Louis, MO back in 1979, I became hooked on the Lewis and Clark expedition. Ambrose does a great job of putting the reader right there on the expedition. In fact, when I returned to the river in 2002 with my two sons, I ran into a few folks who said it was this book that motivated them to canoe the Missouri in MT. For Lewis and Clark fans out there that are also Christian dads, I have written a book not only about my 1979 trip but also my 3 day trip with the boys 23 years later. If you're looking for a book on Christian fatherhood and raising godly sons along with travelling the river, you might like it. See "A River Calling".
An American epic ... and Tragedy January 22, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Historian Stephen Ambrose pens a compelling tale of great adventure, featuring the exploring tandem of Lewis and Clark venturing into the great Northwest, mapping the newly purchased Louisiana territory. It is a story of great courage, privation and leadership.
Sadly, juxtaposed with the story of survival and heroism is the tale of Meriwether Lewis' life after his successful expedition. The same man who had steely resolve to lead his party thousands of miles and back found himself unable to manage his own life and personal affairs in the aftermath. Addiction to alcohol, financial mismanagement, petty feuds, bureaucratic skirmishes over undocumented expenditures, indolence in not preparing his journal for much longed for publication and the inability to find a wife plunged Lewis into a spiral of despair.
Add to this a pinch of bipolar disorder, which Ambrose theorizes Lewis had. He could not keep his act together and ended up taking his own life. Though some argue that Lewis was murdered, Ambrose makes short work of this notion.
The contrast between the Lewis of the expedition and the Lewis in its aftermath is a cautionary tale of "the curse of success" and how great beginnings can derail and produce melancholy endings.
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