' This Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis & Clark' by Craig Fehrman

 This Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis & Clark, Craig Fehrman (4.0)

I can imagine this will not be a good book for those who are familiar with the Lewis and Clark expedition. It is well written and well researched, and for those less familiar, a good description of how the corps was formed, where they went and who they encountered. The author used diaries from Lewis, Clark and a sergeant. He augmented them with oral histories told by several American Natives met along or part of the journey, this is the ‘new’ in the title. He also gave suppositions for those not recorded (i.e. York, Clark’s slave). The book lagged in a few spots but overall gave an interesting view of why and how the expedition accomplished what it did. My biggest surprise was how the group was met with general interest and little animosity from the native peoples along the way. You could tell they were used to trading with the French and Spanish and didn’t quite realize the long-term goal of the ‘Americans’.