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Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery
4 cassettes / 4 hours
Read by the Author, Adam Arkin, and a supporting cast
The companion volume to Ken Burns's PBS documentary film.
In the spring of 1804, at the behest of President Thomas Jefferson, a party of explorers called the Corps of oDiscovery crossed the Mississippi River and started up the Missouri, heading west into the newly acquired Louisiana Territory.
The expedition, led by two remarkable and utterly different commanders--the brilliant but troubled Meriwether Lewis and his trustworthy, gregarious friend William Clark--was to be the United States' first exploration into unknown spaces. The unlikely crew came from every corner of the young soldiers from New Hampshire and Pennsylvania and Kentucky, French Canadian boatmen, several sons of white fathers and Indian mothers, a slave named York, and eventually a Shoshone Indian woman, Sacagawea, who brought along her infant son.
Together they would cross the continent, searching for the fabled Northwest Passage that had been the great dream of explorers since the time of Columbus. Along the way they would face incredible hardship, disappointment, and danger; record in their journals hundreds of animals and plants previously unknown to science; encounter a dizzying diversity of Indian cultures; and, most of all, share in one of America's most enduring adventures. Their story may have passed into national mythology, but never before has their experience been rendered as vividly, in words and pictures, as in this marvelous homage by Dayton Duncan.
Plentiful excerpts from the journals kept by the two captains and four enlisted men convey the raw emotions, turbulent spirits, and constant surprises of the explorers, who each day confronted the unknown with fresh eyes. An elegant preface by Ken Burns, as well as contributions from Stephen E. Ambrose, William Least Heat-Moon, and Erica Funkhouser, enlarge upon important threads in Duncan's narrative, demonstrating the continued potency of events that took place almost two centuries ago. And a wealth of paintings, photographs, journal sketches, maps, and film images from the PBS documentary lends this historic, nation-redefining milestone a vibrancy and immediacy to which no American will be immune.
Read by the Author, Adam Arkin, and a supporting cast
The companion volume to Ken Burns's PBS documentary film.
In the spring of 1804, at the behest of President Thomas Jefferson, a party of explorers called the Corps of oDiscovery crossed the Mississippi River and started up the Missouri, heading west into the newly acquired Louisiana Territory.
The expedition, led by two remarkable and utterly different commanders--the brilliant but troubled Meriwether Lewis and his trustworthy, gregarious friend William Clark--was to be the United States' first exploration into unknown spaces. The unlikely crew came from every corner of the young soldiers from New Hampshire and Pennsylvania and Kentucky, French Canadian boatmen, several sons of white fathers and Indian mothers, a slave named York, and eventually a Shoshone Indian woman, Sacagawea, who brought along her infant son.
Together they would cross the continent, searching for the fabled Northwest Passage that had been the great dream of explorers since the time of Columbus. Along the way they would face incredible hardship, disappointment, and danger; record in their journals hundreds of animals and plants previously unknown to science; encounter a dizzying diversity of Indian cultures; and, most of all, share in one of America's most enduring adventures. Their story may have passed into national mythology, but never before has their experience been rendered as vividly, in words and pictures, as in this marvelous homage by Dayton Duncan.
Plentiful excerpts from the journals kept by the two captains and four enlisted men convey the raw emotions, turbulent spirits, and constant surprises of the explorers, who each day confronted the unknown with fresh eyes. An elegant preface by Ken Burns, as well as contributions from Stephen E. Ambrose, William Least Heat-Moon, and Erica Funkhouser, enlarge upon important threads in Duncan's narrative, demonstrating the continued potency of events that took place almost two centuries ago. And a wealth of paintings, photographs, journal sketches, maps, and film images from the PBS documentary lends this historic, nation-redefining milestone a vibrancy and immediacy to which no American will be immune.
Audio Cassette
First published September 30, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 51 reviews
August 22, 2022
This popped up in a friend's feed and I had forgotten to add and rate it. I love history - kinda a nerd in that way. This was a phenomenal book and so much of it was due to their notes on their journey. Definitely not PC, but it is so cool what they accomplished for that day and time.
January 26, 2011
Excellent companion to the PBS documentary. Of course, it has more details. I particularly enjoyed the followup about Patrick Gass:
and the sentimental comment by Stephen Ambrose on the subject of friendship:
When Sergeant Patrick Gass was 60, he married 20-year-old Marie Hamilton, and they had six children. He was 90 when he volunteed to fight in the Civil War. And he was almost 99 when he died in West Virginia, the last surviving member of the Corps of Discovery.
and the sentimental comment by Stephen Ambrose on the subject of friendship:
Friendship is different from all other human relationships. Unlike acquaintanceship, it is based on love. Unlike that between lovers and married couples, it is free of jealousy. Unlike that between children and parents, it know neither criticism nor resentment. Friendship has no status in law. Business partnerships are based on a contract. So, is marriage. Parents are bound by the law, as are children. But friendship is freely entered into, freely given, freely excercised.
Friends never cheat each other, or take advantage. Friends glory in each other's successes and are downcast by the failures. Friends minister to each other. Friends give to each other, worry about each other, stand always ready to help. Friends will go hungry for each other, freeze for each other, die for each other. It is rarely achived, but at its height, friendship is an ecstasy. For Lewis and Clark, it was an exstasy, and the critical factor in their great success.
December 27, 2023
Fascinating book on the journey of the Corps of Discovery led by Lewis & Clark
July 1, 2025
The book version of the Ken Burns documentary. Loved being able to peruse all the letters and pictures a little more in depth. This expedition is fascinating to me and it's cool that we live right where the explorers came through. Sacajawea was a Shoshone and my kids learn all about Shoshone and Nez Perce indians in school. There are schools and streets named for Lewis and Clark here. I'd love to go see where Clark carved his name someday and I absolutely loved their descriptions of Sacajawea. She was absolutely incredible - to birth and raise a baby on an exploratory expedition and keep herself and her corps of discovery alive. She's someone I'd love to meet someday.
June 15, 2025
The photos and illustrations are an engaging addition to the story.
August 27, 2021
Informative, but repetitive and lacking good maps.
Bought in a used book store in Northern Oregon, this illustrated history provided a good introduction to the Lewis and Clark expedition. Its strength is the use of numerous writings and drawings from the expedition journals, C19th paintings, late-C19th photographs, and other documentary materials. This is the companion book to a documentary film by Ken Burns and seems angled to those who appreciate a visual history.
At the same time, it could have been so much better with a stronger editorial hand. The preface notes that Dayton Duncan, who had written an extraordinary book, Out West, had been persuaded to author this history. Unfortunately, unlike his previous book, this is not “a masterpiece, beautifully written, and unusually moving.” The last chapter by Duncan provides a good reflection, however, on the legacy of the expedition.
A key problem is repetition. There is continuous duplication between the texts describing the illustrations, the journal extracts, and the main body of the history. To take just one example, on page 77, a journal entry refers to a bitterly cold night after which ”a man Came in who had Stayed out without fire, and verry thinly Clothed. This man was not the least injured…” Right next to this text is a late C19th photograph of a lightly-clothed Indian hunter with a text note stating that the “Mandans and Hidatsas seemed much better at bearing the frigid temperatures, including one hunter who returned uninjured after spending a night on the Plains, without a fire or heavy clothing.” This duplication is almost continuous throughout the book, to the point of being irritating.
While Duncan was the main author, several sections come from other writers without being well-integrated. After reading more than 100 pages about the expedition’s progress as far the Continental Divide, a five-page essay is introduced by Stephen Ambrose on the relationship between Lewis and Clark, a topic already covered earlier in the book. A later seven-page chapter by Erica Funkhouser also seems poorly integrated into the volume, representing speculations on Sacagewea’s involvement in the expedition and the poems of Funkhouser that this prompted.
Last, the book cries out for maps to provide a clear picture of the different stages of the expedition. In practice, there are only two. The first, on page 17, gives a very high-level illustration of the political control of North America in the early 1800s (British Territory, Spanish Territory, Louisiana Purchase etc) while the second, on page 126, gives a summary of the paths of the expedition. The latter, while useful, is too general to give any real sense of the stages of the expedition detailed in the earlier and later chapters.
Overall, this may be a good starting volume to learn about the Lewis and Clark expedition, but I wish It had been better produced. Given the resources dedicated to making the film documentary and given Duncan’s expertise in the field, this should have been a much more polished work with fewer repetitions and helpful maps.
Bought in a used book store in Northern Oregon, this illustrated history provided a good introduction to the Lewis and Clark expedition. Its strength is the use of numerous writings and drawings from the expedition journals, C19th paintings, late-C19th photographs, and other documentary materials. This is the companion book to a documentary film by Ken Burns and seems angled to those who appreciate a visual history.
At the same time, it could have been so much better with a stronger editorial hand. The preface notes that Dayton Duncan, who had written an extraordinary book, Out West, had been persuaded to author this history. Unfortunately, unlike his previous book, this is not “a masterpiece, beautifully written, and unusually moving.” The last chapter by Duncan provides a good reflection, however, on the legacy of the expedition.
A key problem is repetition. There is continuous duplication between the texts describing the illustrations, the journal extracts, and the main body of the history. To take just one example, on page 77, a journal entry refers to a bitterly cold night after which ”a man Came in who had Stayed out without fire, and verry thinly Clothed. This man was not the least injured…” Right next to this text is a late C19th photograph of a lightly-clothed Indian hunter with a text note stating that the “Mandans and Hidatsas seemed much better at bearing the frigid temperatures, including one hunter who returned uninjured after spending a night on the Plains, without a fire or heavy clothing.” This duplication is almost continuous throughout the book, to the point of being irritating.
While Duncan was the main author, several sections come from other writers without being well-integrated. After reading more than 100 pages about the expedition’s progress as far the Continental Divide, a five-page essay is introduced by Stephen Ambrose on the relationship between Lewis and Clark, a topic already covered earlier in the book. A later seven-page chapter by Erica Funkhouser also seems poorly integrated into the volume, representing speculations on Sacagewea’s involvement in the expedition and the poems of Funkhouser that this prompted.
Last, the book cries out for maps to provide a clear picture of the different stages of the expedition. In practice, there are only two. The first, on page 17, gives a very high-level illustration of the political control of North America in the early 1800s (British Territory, Spanish Territory, Louisiana Purchase etc) while the second, on page 126, gives a summary of the paths of the expedition. The latter, while useful, is too general to give any real sense of the stages of the expedition detailed in the earlier and later chapters.
Overall, this may be a good starting volume to learn about the Lewis and Clark expedition, but I wish It had been better produced. Given the resources dedicated to making the film documentary and given Duncan’s expertise in the field, this should have been a much more polished work with fewer repetitions and helpful maps.
May 19, 2020
The "accompanying" book for Ken Burns' PBS documentary on Lewis and Clark. Two men who with their band of explorers accelerated the progress of the United States westward in an expansion that changed the face of the continent. The immensity of land that Clark thought "would take 100 generations" to colonize was mapped, populated, and farmed within 5. The tale is fascinating, and most of us know bits and pieces from our introduction to them as schoolchildren, but reading the whole story as an adult, do you begin to appreciate the enormity or their task, and the amount of grit, luck, and destiny that they possessed. It does read a little like a text book; but aptly carries you through the chronology of Lewis and Clark's journey, from birth of the idea to the journey itself and the aftermath of the explorers and their respective fates. The large swath of land that Thomas Jefferson purchased needed exploration, and this book is a fascinating way to experience it, utilizing the journals of the men, stories of those that they had met along the way, and other historical records to recreate the trek. It is filled with wonderful paintings from early artists who travelled in the few decades after their journey, and pictures of the objects used, photocopies of their journal entries (with original illustrations), and old photographs of peoples from their respective native American tribes. It is a fascinating story that every American, nay every person, should be familiar with; filled with the thrill of discovery, the challenge of man versus nature, and the legacy of consequence for the peoples (native American) affected.
May 26, 2022
I used this highly illustrated book, in conjunction with Stephen Ambrose gem “Undaunted Courage”, along with watching the Ken Burns PBS documentary (same title as this book) in order to prepare for a trip I’m taking in two days. On Friday May 27 and Saturday I’ll be visiting Camp Disappointment, Fort Clatsop, the Lewis and Clark National Historic site around the Astoria Oregon area … and then traveling along the Columbia River inland as far as Mt. St. Helens, before moving back up to Mt. Rainier National park near Seattle.
I have always studied the Lewis and Clark adventure, and have seen in celebrated in museums and monuments in St. Louis, Omaha and in South and North Dakota … but I’m eager to get my first look at the mouth of the Columbia, and northern Oregon … to see the grandeur that resembles what the Corps of Discovery experienced 217 years ago.
I have always studied the Lewis and Clark adventure, and have seen in celebrated in museums and monuments in St. Louis, Omaha and in South and North Dakota … but I’m eager to get my first look at the mouth of the Columbia, and northern Oregon … to see the grandeur that resembles what the Corps of Discovery experienced 217 years ago.
August 4, 2019
With the help of numerous photos, maps, and quotations from diaries, the authors, Dayton and Burns, hit the high and low points of the Lewis and Clark expedition while providing some interesting facts emerged, such as, for instance, the tameness (with the exception of grizzly bears) of the wildlife, or how often the expedition traveled without seeing Indians, or that the Teton Sioux were relative newcomers to the plains, having moved there from forested areas further east, etc., etc. A good read.
January 3, 2021
A perfect introduction to the Journals of Lewis & Clark with an immense amount of research and thoughtful essays by various individuals along the way. There are some poignant vintage photos of areas where the explorers visited and some of native tribes, as well. For readers interested in Lewis & Clark's journey, I might suggest reading this to whet your appetite. The actual journals are fascinating, but not the easiest reading. Start here. If you love this book, then you're ready to take the plunge into the journals!
February 10, 2021
A lot of photographs. Easy reading. A lot of excerpts from journal, which was wonderful. The men on the Corps of Discovery kept detailed journals about their trip. Unfortunately, several of those journals have been lost. This was a fascinating book of the discovery of the Louisiana Purchase and what the United States really did purchase from France and the Oregon Country going clear to the Pacific Ocean. What a difficult adventure. I want to read more about this trip.
March 19, 2023
A very readable history of the challenges and triumphs of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery trip from St. Louis to Astoria, Oregon, exploring the Louisiana Purchase lands. I had visited Fort Clatsop in person several years ago which brought the story to life even more. Without help from multiple Indian tribes, the group may never have reached the Pacific, much less made it all the way back with the loss of only one man, from illness.
January 31, 2025
I'd become interested in the Lewis & Clark expedition, and wanted to know the specifics. I watched the Ken Burns documentary on PBS and then read this accompanying book, which expanded and deepened the film account with many more details and illustrations. Among other aspects, I was particularly interested in the expedition's interactions with the native tribes they encountered, including with Sacagawea. My curiosity on all points was satisfied. Highly recommended.
January 6, 2026
Exceptional documentation of the evidence provided by the men on the journey in the forms of their journals. It Includes other secondary sources such as excerpts and quotes from natives who saw and spoke to the men many years after. I learned so much about native culture, and politics during those times (albeit through the lens of L&C) though the authors are careful to fact check them after showing their point of view. This book is a must read for people interested in this time in North American history, and would serve as a great precursor to a more exhaustive book.
May 16, 2023
I listened to the audiobook, the story is well-written and kept my attention to the end. It finished too soon!
The narration is done well, with different voices, but the main narrator is a bit monotonous and began too sound gloomy after a while.
All I wish for now is the printed book with maps, oh, and I want to watch the vlog Lewis & Clark kept during their intrepid journey of discovery!
The narration is done well, with different voices, but the main narrator is a bit monotonous and began too sound gloomy after a while.
All I wish for now is the printed book with maps, oh, and I want to watch the vlog Lewis & Clark kept during their intrepid journey of discovery!
March 3, 2019
This is one of my favorites. I have never much thought of myself as a wild west kind-of girl, but this book pulls you into it. Really enjoyed it and it opened up a whole new genre of reading interest for me.
June 6, 2021
As we are packing and planning for our own road trip out west I awed and amazed by the Corps of Discovery's group of men and Sacajawea. Their journey was long and very successful, accomplishing what they set out to do. I hope to be so successful.
March 19, 2023
My husband bought this book for me for Christmas. He saw how I lingered over it when we visited various Lewis and Clark gift shops at historical sites in Washington state. It does not disappoint. For anyone who hasn't seen the Ken Burns documentary, you are in for a treat.
September 12, 2017
How to get transported back in time and get lost in time imagining you are struggling along side them in their trip West.
August 11, 2018
Excellent.
August 16, 2018
A very shortened version of the trip. good information at the end of what happened to the Corps.
May 18, 2019
Excellent.
April 29, 2020
Well written book on the Lewis and Clark expedition.
June 30, 2020
Great read!
September 24, 2020
Excellent well researched living history book. I hope to get a chance to see the TV special on it soon.
February 28, 2021
A good introductory book to the story of the Lewis and Clark expedition. I want to read more about this fascinating expedition into the American West.
January 9, 2022
Very well done. Packed with information.
May 28, 2022
Loved listening to this book as we drove through Utah. Ken Burns uses quotes from first-person sources to make the book come alive. Still a wonderful adventure story!
December 8, 2022
Well written, thorough, and very interesting.
July 10, 2024
Very short but a great account of the expedition using a lot of their own words.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 51 reviews