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Life on the Mississippi: An Epic American Adventure
Life on the Mississippi is an epic, enchanting blend of history and adventure in which Buck builds a wooden flatboat from the grand “flatboat era” of the 1800s and sails it down the Mississippi River, illuminating the forgotten past of America’s first western frontier.
Seven years ago, readers around the country fell in love with a singular American voice: Rinker Buck, whose infectious curiosity about history launched him across the West in a covered wagon pulled by mules.
Now, Buck returns to chronicle his latest incredible adventure: building a wooden flatboat from the bygone era of the early 1800s and journeying down the Mississippi River to New Orleans.
A modern-day Huck Finn, Buck casts off down the river on the flatboat Patience accompanied by an eccentric crew of daring shipmates. Over the course of his voyage, Buck steers his fragile wooden craft through narrow channels dominated by massive cargo barges, rescues his first mate gone overboard, sails blindly through fog, breaks his ribs not once but twice, and camps every night on sandbars, remote islands, and steep levees. As he charts his own journey, he also delivers a richly satisfying work of history that brings to life a lost era.
The role of the flatboat in our country’s evolution is far more significant than most Americans realize. Between 1800 and 1840, millions of farmers, merchants, and teenage adventurers embarked from states like Pennsylvania and Virginia on flatboats headed beyond the Appalachians to Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Settler families repurposed the wood from their boats to build their first cabins in the wilderness; cargo boats were broken apart and sold to build the boomtowns along the water route. Joining the river traffic were floating brothels, called “gun boats”; “smithy boats” for blacksmiths; even “whiskey boats” for alcohol. In the present day, America’s inland rivers are a superhighway dominated by leviathan barges—carrying $80 billion of cargo annually—all descended from flatboats like the ramshackle Patience.
As a historian, Buck resurrects the era’s adventurous spirit, but he also challenges familiar myths about American expansion, confronting the bloody truth behind settlers’ push for land and wealth. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 forced more than 125,000 members of the Cherokee, Choctaw, and several other tribes to travel the Mississippi on a brutal journey en route to the barrens of Oklahoma. Simultaneously, almost a million enslaved African Americans were carried in flatboats and marched by foot 1,000 miles over the Appalachians to the cotton and cane fields of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, birthing the term “sold down the river.” Buck portrays this watershed era of American expansion as it was really lived.
Seven years ago, readers around the country fell in love with a singular American voice: Rinker Buck, whose infectious curiosity about history launched him across the West in a covered wagon pulled by mules.
Now, Buck returns to chronicle his latest incredible adventure: building a wooden flatboat from the bygone era of the early 1800s and journeying down the Mississippi River to New Orleans.
A modern-day Huck Finn, Buck casts off down the river on the flatboat Patience accompanied by an eccentric crew of daring shipmates. Over the course of his voyage, Buck steers his fragile wooden craft through narrow channels dominated by massive cargo barges, rescues his first mate gone overboard, sails blindly through fog, breaks his ribs not once but twice, and camps every night on sandbars, remote islands, and steep levees. As he charts his own journey, he also delivers a richly satisfying work of history that brings to life a lost era.
The role of the flatboat in our country’s evolution is far more significant than most Americans realize. Between 1800 and 1840, millions of farmers, merchants, and teenage adventurers embarked from states like Pennsylvania and Virginia on flatboats headed beyond the Appalachians to Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Settler families repurposed the wood from their boats to build their first cabins in the wilderness; cargo boats were broken apart and sold to build the boomtowns along the water route. Joining the river traffic were floating brothels, called “gun boats”; “smithy boats” for blacksmiths; even “whiskey boats” for alcohol. In the present day, America’s inland rivers are a superhighway dominated by leviathan barges—carrying $80 billion of cargo annually—all descended from flatboats like the ramshackle Patience.
As a historian, Buck resurrects the era’s adventurous spirit, but he also challenges familiar myths about American expansion, confronting the bloody truth behind settlers’ push for land and wealth. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 forced more than 125,000 members of the Cherokee, Choctaw, and several other tribes to travel the Mississippi on a brutal journey en route to the barrens of Oklahoma. Simultaneously, almost a million enslaved African Americans were carried in flatboats and marched by foot 1,000 miles over the Appalachians to the cotton and cane fields of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, birthing the term “sold down the river.” Buck portrays this watershed era of American expansion as it was really lived.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published August 9, 2022
713 people are currently reading
5799 people want to read
About the author
Rinker Buck
10 books213 followersRinker Buck began his career in journalism at the Berkshire Eagle and was a longtime staff writer for the Hartford Courant. He has written for Vanity Fair, New York, Life, and many other publications, and his stories have won the Eugene S. Pulliam National Journalism Writing Award and the Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award. He is the author of The Oregon Trail as well as the acclaimed memoirs Flight of Passage and First Job. He lives in northwest Connecticut.
Follow him at Facebook.com/RinkerBuck.
Follow him at Facebook.com/RinkerBuck.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 385 reviews
September 5, 2022
Extremely disappointing…the author’s arrogant disdain for anybody who doesn’t agree with him is palpable on every page. He savages some of the very volunteers who shared the journey.
These are real people and he mocked and eviscerated them in writing. He did the same to many of the kind folks (particularly southerners) he met along the way. Any who don’t share his liberal New England politics are demeaned.
I’ve enjoyed his books in the past, but this time he let the mask slip to fully reveal the pompous ass he really is. I’ll never read another book by him.
These are real people and he mocked and eviscerated them in writing. He did the same to many of the kind folks (particularly southerners) he met along the way. Any who don’t share his liberal New England politics are demeaned.
I’ve enjoyed his books in the past, but this time he let the mask slip to fully reveal the pompous ass he really is. I’ll never read another book by him.
May 1, 2025
A first-rate account of building a modern update of a 19th century flatboat, and then sailing it it down the Monongahela, Ohio, and the mighty Mississippi to New Orleans. Buck learns early on that inviting a re-enactor for a crew member isn't going to work. And he has to learn, well, everything about sailing a flatboat, even a motorized one, from near Pittsburgh to New Orleans. It was quite a trip: 2,000 miles in 4 months!
Start with the publisher's summary above, then move on to to the fine New York Times review, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/09/bo.... Actually, the WSJ review is even better: if you don't subscribe, I'd be happy to email you a copy. https://www.wsj.com/articles/life-on-... (paywalled).
Chances are good that you have seen a photo or two of "Patience," Mr. Buck's flatboat. If memory serves, it got a mention in a National Geographic photo-feature some time ago. It's an ungainly-looking boat, but sturdy. More so than the crew: the author relates three mishaps resulting in his breaking his fragile ribs, as well as the arm of a volunteer crew-member. And a dunking in the river while replacing a broken anchor-line long after dark that could have been tragic: the author forgot to put on his life-jacket! And broke two more ribs.
This is my first encounter with Mr. Buck's writing, and I was well-pleased -- even if I started skimming over the arcana of navigating an ungainly flatboat among heavy commercial shipping. But the barge-captains were almost uniformly kind, and the "Patience" and her crew were big hits when they camped in the small towns along the way. And they got many kind, helping hands en route. Recommended reading for armchair travelers and American history buffs. Some of the historical accounts don't show our country at its best, I'm sad to say.
Start with the publisher's summary above, then move on to to the fine New York Times review, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/09/bo.... Actually, the WSJ review is even better: if you don't subscribe, I'd be happy to email you a copy. https://www.wsj.com/articles/life-on-... (paywalled).
Chances are good that you have seen a photo or two of "Patience," Mr. Buck's flatboat. If memory serves, it got a mention in a National Geographic photo-feature some time ago. It's an ungainly-looking boat, but sturdy. More so than the crew: the author relates three mishaps resulting in his breaking his fragile ribs, as well as the arm of a volunteer crew-member. And a dunking in the river while replacing a broken anchor-line long after dark that could have been tragic: the author forgot to put on his life-jacket! And broke two more ribs.
This is my first encounter with Mr. Buck's writing, and I was well-pleased -- even if I started skimming over the arcana of navigating an ungainly flatboat among heavy commercial shipping. But the barge-captains were almost uniformly kind, and the "Patience" and her crew were big hits when they camped in the small towns along the way. And they got many kind, helping hands en route. Recommended reading for armchair travelers and American history buffs. Some of the historical accounts don't show our country at its best, I'm sad to say.
July 11, 2022
I received an advanced reader's copy of this book in exchange for my review. And it appears I am not the target audience. In order to find this riveting reading you need to have a knowledge of and be interested in the technical details of floating a boat down a busy river. The number of descriptions of tactics taken to avoid a string of barges on the river was about all but one too many for the average recreational reader. I found the passages sharing the history of the towns along the way, and the information about the slave trade 'down-the-river' as well as the native American Trail of Tears experiences the best parts of the book. Also Rinker Buck's interactions with his different crew members. As some one who hasn't read a ton of travel literature, but has enjoyed most of what I have read, I was disappointed that I didn't enjoy this more.
July 25, 2025
Rinker Buck had an old time flatboat constructed with some adaptions made for travel on the mighty Mississippi that is a busy hub for the transport of cargo. Before he got to the Mississippi, the journey began on the Monongahela river in Pennsylvania and then to the Ohio river before he took his boat on the main river of the title of the book. Rinker Buck was warned to go back because of the dangers that he would face. The author pushes on and recounts his journey in a fascinating narrative about the history of the river in both past history and the present. I liked how the white folks of Vicksburg warned him about the blacks and the black folks warned him about the murderous whites. The river has dangerous tugboat traffic, sandbars, and the whirlpools that he was told would suck him down but it was also beautiful. Rinker Buck does not sugarcoat the history of the river because he mentions the brutal slave trade and the explosion of the Native Americans on the trail of tears. The experience of going down the river proved to be both exhausting and exhilarating for Rinker Buck as he faced many dangers. What really stands out about this man's character is how he is determined to see it to the end and learns not to take the naysayers seriously. The book was a great travelogue of the river and the people who live along it.
September 18, 2022
what a waste of time
Extremely repetitive. Tiresome reading how awesome the author does everything while everyone else are idiots. Would not recommend spending the time to read this self serving manuscript.
Extremely repetitive. Tiresome reading how awesome the author does everything while everyone else are idiots. Would not recommend spending the time to read this self serving manuscript.
September 13, 2022
I really enjoyed all the parts discussing the history of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers in America. Unfortunately, I found Buck insufferable which made most of this book a slog.
August 13, 2022
Rinker Buck, in his new book Life on the Mississippi, takes his readers with him as he builds a flatboat modeled after those from the early 1800s. It takes a year, combining care for his aging mother with work on the boat, to build it before he sails the flatboat two thousand miles down the Mississippi to New Orleans. His account of the trip on his boat that he named Patience reminded me of a well-seasoned stew with all the parts that combined to make the whole.
First there are the advice-givers in every place his boat rests that repeat the warning of how dangerous the next phase of his trip will be. The constant prediction is that the Patience is going to be sucked under by whirlpools so strong that all the clothes of its passengers will be torn off. He is warned that the travelers themselves need to be prepared to die and that they need to advise their families of the awaiting doom since they will be identifying the passengers’ unclothed bodies. Everybody had a story of a shipwreck or someone lost on the river.
Other helpers and fellow travelers come and go as Rinker makes his way down the river. His characterizations of his fellow travelers make them characters in his story along with the locals that he meets along the way. His daring shipmates often take charge leaving him time to explore the books that feed his background for his trip and the history of the land as they move along.
The history of the river, its cities and rural areas, and its people are woven in geographically as the flatboat winds its way down the river, spliced in with whatever current challenge is happening with the Patience. In a spoiler alert, there were some broken ribs but the Patience made it all the way to New Orleans without being sucked under and none of the travelers died.
It would be hard to read this book without thinking of Mark Twain. I found it a very good way to take my mind off the coronavirus that had me laid up while I read it.
First there are the advice-givers in every place his boat rests that repeat the warning of how dangerous the next phase of his trip will be. The constant prediction is that the Patience is going to be sucked under by whirlpools so strong that all the clothes of its passengers will be torn off. He is warned that the travelers themselves need to be prepared to die and that they need to advise their families of the awaiting doom since they will be identifying the passengers’ unclothed bodies. Everybody had a story of a shipwreck or someone lost on the river.
Other helpers and fellow travelers come and go as Rinker makes his way down the river. His characterizations of his fellow travelers make them characters in his story along with the locals that he meets along the way. His daring shipmates often take charge leaving him time to explore the books that feed his background for his trip and the history of the land as they move along.
The history of the river, its cities and rural areas, and its people are woven in geographically as the flatboat winds its way down the river, spliced in with whatever current challenge is happening with the Patience. In a spoiler alert, there were some broken ribs but the Patience made it all the way to New Orleans without being sucked under and none of the travelers died.
It would be hard to read this book without thinking of Mark Twain. I found it a very good way to take my mind off the coronavirus that had me laid up while I read it.
October 6, 2022
I'm of a mixed mind on this book. Sections on the important role the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and their tributaries, and the boats that plied them, played in early American history were fascinating and gave me a new perspective. Sections on some of the river towns Buck's flatboat visited were also entertaining and informative. The progress of the flatboat, Patience, down the rivers was also fun to read. On the other hand, as a non-boater, some descriptions of the flatboat's navigation of the rivers were mind-numbing and I often found myself skipping ahead when I encountered them. Now for the reason I checked "Hide entire review because of spoilers". First, despite the book's title, for more than 3/4th of the book, the Patience is on the Ohio River, not the Mississippi. A misleading title to say the least. Second, as I read parts dealing with Bucks tense and unpleasant interactions with a fellow named John Cooper, who built the Patience, and with Scott Mandrell, a volunteer on the crew who Buck came to dislike, I found myself feeling, "I don't think I'd like this guy, Buck. He seems really mean spirited. And why did he have to be so vituperative in print?" The Acknowledgements section at the end of the book explains some of the reasons for Buck's hostility, but in my view, a good editor would have discouraged the inclusion of this personal carping.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 28, 2022
Like Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, Life on the Mississippi is a gentle, meandering read supported by a pleasant narrator. The book is by no means "epic," as the subtitle suggests. This is a summer spent piloting a flatboat down the Mississippi. That's about as leisurely as travel gets.
Life on the Mississippi is far more about the history of our nation and the people who currently populate it. Rinker Buck has a real penchant for making friends with oddballs, who he seems to adore. Up and down the river, he's finding unique locals to help in his quest, or simply admiring a fellow boatman he's brought aboard. Buck's goal seems to be demonstrating that stereotypes are real - but don't tell the whole story of a person. It's a decently old-timey bipartisan read in that way.
The history portions of Life on the Mississippi were by far my favorites. The flatboat era encompasses a rarely explored period of time in American history, back when west of the Appalachians was considered "the frontier." Whole societies formed on and around the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, many of which are long since washed away. Buck also delves into how the abuses of Native Americans and Blacks were swept under the rug in this era - not exactly a streamlined addition to the river storytelling, but critical information nonetheless.
Buck's time on the boat, particularly his narration of navigating around tugs and sandbars, is largely dull - unless you've piloted a flatboat yourself. So much time is spent discussing the many ways to park or anchor a boat on the Mississippi. With the audiobook, these chapters were a good time to tune out.
I look forward to diving into another book by Buck - the gentle lull of history and adventure were perfect companions on my drive to work.
Life on the Mississippi is far more about the history of our nation and the people who currently populate it. Rinker Buck has a real penchant for making friends with oddballs, who he seems to adore. Up and down the river, he's finding unique locals to help in his quest, or simply admiring a fellow boatman he's brought aboard. Buck's goal seems to be demonstrating that stereotypes are real - but don't tell the whole story of a person. It's a decently old-timey bipartisan read in that way.
The history portions of Life on the Mississippi were by far my favorites. The flatboat era encompasses a rarely explored period of time in American history, back when west of the Appalachians was considered "the frontier." Whole societies formed on and around the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, many of which are long since washed away. Buck also delves into how the abuses of Native Americans and Blacks were swept under the rug in this era - not exactly a streamlined addition to the river storytelling, but critical information nonetheless.
Buck's time on the boat, particularly his narration of navigating around tugs and sandbars, is largely dull - unless you've piloted a flatboat yourself. So much time is spent discussing the many ways to park or anchor a boat on the Mississippi. With the audiobook, these chapters were a good time to tune out.
I look forward to diving into another book by Buck - the gentle lull of history and adventure were perfect companions on my drive to work.
August 11, 2022
I like travelogues cum pseudo history books like this.
What I liked about Life on the Mississippi: the flotsam and jetsam of historical details he provided pertaining to the flatboat impact in US history; the vast array of interesting people he encountered along the way. A personal favorite of line was the wharf geezer; all the minutia he included..
What I didn’t care for: his lecturing on how he perceives US history is being taught; his need to describe his joy of defecating in the open woods.
Thanks to Avid Press and NetGalley and Edelweiss for the early read.
What I liked about Life on the Mississippi: the flotsam and jetsam of historical details he provided pertaining to the flatboat impact in US history; the vast array of interesting people he encountered along the way. A personal favorite of line was the wharf geezer; all the minutia he included..
What I didn’t care for: his lecturing on how he perceives US history is being taught; his need to describe his joy of defecating in the open woods.
Thanks to Avid Press and NetGalley and Edelweiss for the early read.
August 6, 2022
A little disappointed that this wasn’t a better adventure story. It focused a lot on avoiding collisions with barges on the highly commercial traveled rivers but never felt like a story that took you on an action packed trip. I often skipped boring details when the story switched to historical events, which seemed to take up to many pages. I applaud the author for giving a harsh but true commentary on our shameful history related to slavery and eradicating native Americans from their lands. I was however not interested in his modern day political viewpoints. When I read for pleasure I don’t want to get riled up over politics. It’s like when a good party gets ruined by some blowhard espousing their extreme viewpoints. He treaded lightly, but I’d prefer he didn’t tread at all.
August 9, 2022
A few years ago I read a book by a man called Rinker Buck where he followed the Oregon Trail in a covered wagon. I enjoyed it very much, and from time to time I wondered what he was up to now. It seems he has been going down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers in a flatboat!
This is a terrific book, full of hair-raising adventures and very near misses. I loved it, even while holding my breath, which I did a lot. Buck writes in a beguiling style, and I hated to put it down. Now I have to wonder, what next?
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.
This is a terrific book, full of hair-raising adventures and very near misses. I loved it, even while holding my breath, which I did a lot. Buck writes in a beguiling style, and I hated to put it down. Now I have to wonder, what next?
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.
October 4, 2022
Floating down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers from Pittsburgh to New Orleans on an old style flat boat has a definite romantic appeal. I'd love to see the world from the point of view of Mike Fink and Huck Finn, and rivers are beautiful and calming to the soul, even when they are fast, high and dangerous. It turns out that we have done everything possible to cut the beauty out of the Ohio and Mississippi, lining their banks with abandoned rustbelt industry, sunken watercraft and garbage, straightening them and taming them with giant locks and adding ugly piles of rocks for flood control and channel maintenance to facilitate their roles as superhighways for barge traffic. Yet Mr. Buck is still able to convey the beauty that exists despite and at times even on account of the ugliness.
The most interesting part of the book is the story of how Mr. Buck met the challenge of doing something that everyone told him was dangerous and probably impossible. He was a complete rookie when he started out, though it would have been hard to find a way to get any meaningful training. He treated every step of the way as a learning experience, innovating and making do with the available resources. He was almost always slow and cautious, though there were a few points along the way as he learned to handle his boat when when he made bold moves seeing that they were his safest choices. He learned to identify and rely on good crew members and, on the other hand, also learned to spot unhelpful fakers and to take dire warnings from ignorant people with a grain of salt. I like to think that I have enough of the qualities required to undertake a journey like this and that I could survive it, though the chances are slim and none that I would ever try it except as a thought experiment.
The most interesting part of the book is the story of how Mr. Buck met the challenge of doing something that everyone told him was dangerous and probably impossible. He was a complete rookie when he started out, though it would have been hard to find a way to get any meaningful training. He treated every step of the way as a learning experience, innovating and making do with the available resources. He was almost always slow and cautious, though there were a few points along the way as he learned to handle his boat when when he made bold moves seeing that they were his safest choices. He learned to identify and rely on good crew members and, on the other hand, also learned to spot unhelpful fakers and to take dire warnings from ignorant people with a grain of salt. I like to think that I have enough of the qualities required to undertake a journey like this and that I could survive it, though the chances are slim and none that I would ever try it except as a thought experiment.
September 29, 2022
I read Rinker Buck's previous book, The Oregon Trail and I liked it. Buck traveled cross country in a conestoga wagon so when I saw this book, I bought it. Buck brings to life a lost part of American history, traveling down the Mississippi in a flatboat that he constructed more or less himself. Buck began the trip in Pennsylvania and made it all the way down to New Orleans which in or of itself is amazing. Buck tells the story of how the Mississippi and the flatboat transformed America. The problem with the book is that Buck can't help himself. He joins the woke brigade to explain how America is a bad place and how we are all one big basket of deplorables. Buck is smug, very smug and sure of himself and if you disagree with him politically or if he does not like you, he destroys you in print. He psychoanalyzes one of his good friends which I am sure went over like a lead balloon. What is also curious is there are no pictures of the interior of the flatboat or even a drawing. It would have been interesting to see how it was all put together. What is even more curious is that this would have made an amazing special on Discovery or National Geographic if they had filmed this journey and gone along for the ride. There are also no pictures of the Mississippi or of the landscape. I wonder why. Is there more on the way?
September 24, 2022
I'd been looking forward to reading this book, thinking it was an American adventure book about taking a flatboat down the Mississippi River, with a little history thrown in. That didn't turn out to be the case. in fact, he didn't even get to the Mississippi River until page 263. The sections in the book that describe his journey were interesting, but most of the book seemed to be a diatribe against those who helped him build and crew the boat, intolerance for conservatives, and an overabundance of praise for his own intellect and skill. I ended up skimming quite a bit of this book since so little of it was about his experience floating down the Mississippi.
June 22, 2023
Rinker Buck delivers again. This journey was filled with adventure, misadventure, and a cast of characters to remember. The narrative is perfectly paced with plenty of drama, reflection, and Rinker’s beautifully concise treatment of history. His perspective blends his personal reflections with folklore debunked. I love his sense of humor, his sense of adventure and descriptions of life on the Mississippi. This book pulls American history together through the lowly flatboat and leaves the reader satisfied and grateful for Mr. Buck’s pluck and story telling.
November 13, 2022
I hate to say it, but this just doesn’t have the magic and charm of Rinker Buck’s previous book, Oregon Trail.
July 30, 2025
I feel as if I have spent a lifetime voyeuring down the Mississippi, first as a kid with Huck, more recently with James and Twain inLife on the Mississippi. I decided to move out of the 19th century and voyage to the 21st with Rinker Buck with Life on the Mississippi: An Epic American Adventure.
I first met Buck reading The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey. In that book Rinker travels with his brother Nick and seems fastidious and obsessive. In Life on the Mississippi he seems just the opposite, so perhaps his journey by covered wagon taught him something. Buck is a writer, journalist and historian, but not a reenactor.
As he started reading about flatboats he realized how important they were to our history and yet that part of history was not widely taught:
Traditional historians, when describing the creation of America, love to dwell on the high-sounding ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights—protections against big government, the promotion of individualism, freedom of speech and religion—but those were principles far removed from the hardscrabble, edgy lives of most 19th-century Americans. They were citizen-farmers, and they built America with logs, laboriously harvested by axe and two-man crosscut saws. First the logs were flatboats descending the Ohio, then they were converted into crude shacks on the frontier."
After reading several diaries and memoirs about flat-boaters, Rinker decided he wanted to experience it and travel from the Monagahela to the Ohio to the Mississippi to New Orleans. The problem starts, of course with building a modern day flat boat and by necessity it needs a motor as it is no longer safe to just drift down the Mississippi.
The text of the book details the journey, but also provides bits about running a flatboat, the geography of the rivers and a good deal of history. I would add that their are moments of great humor in this journey and I did enjoy it immensely.
History and travel fans should enjoy this book. Reading reviews I did noticed that Buck rubbed some the wrong way.
I first met Buck reading The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey. In that book Rinker travels with his brother Nick and seems fastidious and obsessive. In Life on the Mississippi he seems just the opposite, so perhaps his journey by covered wagon taught him something. Buck is a writer, journalist and historian, but not a reenactor.
As he started reading about flatboats he realized how important they were to our history and yet that part of history was not widely taught:
Traditional historians, when describing the creation of America, love to dwell on the high-sounding ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights—protections against big government, the promotion of individualism, freedom of speech and religion—but those were principles far removed from the hardscrabble, edgy lives of most 19th-century Americans. They were citizen-farmers, and they built America with logs, laboriously harvested by axe and two-man crosscut saws. First the logs were flatboats descending the Ohio, then they were converted into crude shacks on the frontier."
After reading several diaries and memoirs about flat-boaters, Rinker decided he wanted to experience it and travel from the Monagahela to the Ohio to the Mississippi to New Orleans. The problem starts, of course with building a modern day flat boat and by necessity it needs a motor as it is no longer safe to just drift down the Mississippi.
The text of the book details the journey, but also provides bits about running a flatboat, the geography of the rivers and a good deal of history. I would add that their are moments of great humor in this journey and I did enjoy it immensely.
History and travel fans should enjoy this book. Reading reviews I did noticed that Buck rubbed some the wrong way.
November 27, 2022
What a fascinating journey!
September 30, 2022
Conflicted thoughts of this voyage on so many levels. It certainly takes a special type of individual to attempt an adventure like this. Ringer is apparently well suited for it with a very diverse set of personal skills. The apparent less than perfectly built craft is dicey, but this is where so many would have failed worrying about the details and never set sail.
Reflections of history made the read worth it. Currently living on the Mississippi in Illinois and having also lived on the river in New Orleans made much of this very reminiscent for me. This is the content that I thoroughly enjoyed.
What the river has become is disheartening. I wouldn’t advise taking Rinker’s gallant (glib?) attitude of myth busting to heart. For the average pleasure boater, this would probably not be the best choice of conveyance - either craft or body of water. There are those that choose to scale the highest peaks or other feats of bravado simply for the adrenaline rush. I just feel that this journey would be as enjoyable as taking his electric bicycle and using it to navigate one of our busiest freeways at rush hour without a helmet.
Hopefully by the author’s exposure of the environmental disaster this mighty river has become for the sole purpose of commercial transportation- presented as an aside and not a cause- may actually spur readers to become aware or actually activate for river reclamation.
Reflections of history made the read worth it. Currently living on the Mississippi in Illinois and having also lived on the river in New Orleans made much of this very reminiscent for me. This is the content that I thoroughly enjoyed.
What the river has become is disheartening. I wouldn’t advise taking Rinker’s gallant (glib?) attitude of myth busting to heart. For the average pleasure boater, this would probably not be the best choice of conveyance - either craft or body of water. There are those that choose to scale the highest peaks or other feats of bravado simply for the adrenaline rush. I just feel that this journey would be as enjoyable as taking his electric bicycle and using it to navigate one of our busiest freeways at rush hour without a helmet.
Hopefully by the author’s exposure of the environmental disaster this mighty river has become for the sole purpose of commercial transportation- presented as an aside and not a cause- may actually spur readers to become aware or actually activate for river reclamation.
October 4, 2022
From page 1, I could not put this tale down. Just as in his book on the Oregon Trail, Rinker is a master at telling stories of real life - here and now and always from his well researched history. I appreciate that he gives us the history of the United States as it evolves and in this book, the history of flatboats on the Mississippi. He also corrects the myths we have been taught in history. I also appreciate his descriptions of his relationships with his flatboat team and how somehow, it all worked out!
My only negative is that I would have enjoyed more photos! Can't wait to hear what Rinker is going to re-discover for us next time.
My only negative is that I would have enjoyed more photos! Can't wait to hear what Rinker is going to re-discover for us next time.
September 5, 2022
While I generally liked the book, it is not a book I would read again. It is part travelogue, part history, and part personal reflection. Rinker is obviously an interesting fellow and a good writer. He has done his homework. Some of the details are somewhat meaningless to the casual reader. It means little to me where buoy such and such and mile post #321 are geographically since I have no real acquaintance with the Ohio or Mississippi Rivers. Obviously the author needed to know since they were his guideposts, so he included them. However, the incident near Rabbit Hatch and Petersburg on the Ohio did ring a bell because part of our family spent a week in that general area a few years ago. That was the only place in the whole journey that I could relate to. Of course, that’s not Rinker’s fault; it’s mine.
The idea of myths being popular truths that are repeated so often they are accepted as reality makes sense. It resonates with what Joseph Goebbels said about telling a lie long enough and loud enough and people with begin to believe it. I chuckled at the dire predictions he heard along the route, none of which came true. But there is another area where truth and reality are also blurred, primarily because of omission. Rinker’s pieces on the forced removal of native Indians and the great slave transfer to the south from the Tidelands were interesting and informative. He calls out the historians who pander to the myths and elites instead of giving a real life picture of what went on with the people. Well, what’s new? The winners write the history books, and they lionize those who will benefit them and get their books into print. The personal stories of regular folks rarely make the bestseller lists.
His last chapter on acknowledgments referred to many interesting sources. Too bad life is so short; too many books, so little time. His paragraph on Constance Skinner and her view of the 65 book series on American rivers she promoted reminded me of The Real America in Romance series edited by Edwin Markham the poet. As someone said, “Literature is the handmaiden of history.”
The various people who were on the boat with him and some of the folks he met when he ported were generally interesting. But they came and went pretty fast. I recognize he was almost always on the move, so that’s part of the explanation. He spent four months on the Patience guiding it down the rivers. It’s a lot to try and cram into 360 pages. In the main, it is a book with a loose thread; the theme that holds it together is the travel down the river. It is not a novel. The ending was a bit anticlimactic. He gets to the end, and, well, that’s all folks.
The idea of myths being popular truths that are repeated so often they are accepted as reality makes sense. It resonates with what Joseph Goebbels said about telling a lie long enough and loud enough and people with begin to believe it. I chuckled at the dire predictions he heard along the route, none of which came true. But there is another area where truth and reality are also blurred, primarily because of omission. Rinker’s pieces on the forced removal of native Indians and the great slave transfer to the south from the Tidelands were interesting and informative. He calls out the historians who pander to the myths and elites instead of giving a real life picture of what went on with the people. Well, what’s new? The winners write the history books, and they lionize those who will benefit them and get their books into print. The personal stories of regular folks rarely make the bestseller lists.
His last chapter on acknowledgments referred to many interesting sources. Too bad life is so short; too many books, so little time. His paragraph on Constance Skinner and her view of the 65 book series on American rivers she promoted reminded me of The Real America in Romance series edited by Edwin Markham the poet. As someone said, “Literature is the handmaiden of history.”
The various people who were on the boat with him and some of the folks he met when he ported were generally interesting. But they came and went pretty fast. I recognize he was almost always on the move, so that’s part of the explanation. He spent four months on the Patience guiding it down the rivers. It’s a lot to try and cram into 360 pages. In the main, it is a book with a loose thread; the theme that holds it together is the travel down the river. It is not a novel. The ending was a bit anticlimactic. He gets to the end, and, well, that’s all folks.
August 19, 2022
Buck builds a flatboat and sails it down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans. Along the way he learns a lot about himself and the nation. He crosses the Trail of Tears and the pathway Black slaves took down the river to the sugar cane plantations of the Louisiana - both awful chapters in our history that must be told. He meets many wonderful, generous and friendly Americans from all walks of the life. The tugboat captains on the rivers are evidently pretty special folks. Great writing about life on the river and the history surrounding it. Well done!
November 30, 2022
I just went back to check my 2022 reading list to confirm my suspicions, and this is indeed, the best book I have read this year. I need to go further back to refresh my memory about Oregon Trail by Rinker Buck, which I thought was fantastic, but I’m sure Life on the Mississippi is at least as good. Five stars doesn’t just mean I really liked the book, it means I will tell any one who asks, and many others who don’t, that they should read this Epic American Adventure for what it tells about our past, present and future.
August 12, 2023
Buck intertwines the history of 19th century flat boat travel on the Ohio an Mississippi Rivers with a contemporary 21st century road narrative as he and his rotating crew navigate from West Virginia to New Orleans. The book lays out how the flat boat was the primary driver of commercial and population growth west of the Appalachians following the revolutionary war.
It also lays out the reprehensible role these same boats had in the forced removal of native American tribes from their homes in the southeast to Oklahoma, an evacuation that cost thousands of lives that was carried out by president Andrew Jackson and his government. Buck also describes how flat boats on the Ohio and Mississippi and forced marches on the Natchez Trace were used to move and sell a slave population based on the declining tobacco plantations of Virginia to the growing sugar and cotton plantations of Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana. Families were torn apart as owners sold younger slaves "down the river" to a much more physically punishing life in these southern plantations that were experiencing exponential growth. In the early to mid 1800's Natchez, MS became America's largest slave trading market.
The title "Life on the Mississippi" is a little misleading as two thirds of the book describes the travel and history on the Monongahela and Ohio Rivers. A title of Life on the Ohio would not provide the link to Mark Twain's narrative or to the Mississippi River mystique, much like Rt. 66 among highways.
The focus on the Ohio portion of the journey is driven by the geography of the lower Mississippi.
The Army Corp of Engineers, through years of flood control and channelization, has lined the river with rough boulder revetments that are a barrier between riverside towns and river traffic. Most of Buck's Missisippi travel narrative describes navigational challenges to avoid barge traffic and tying up among the rocks while the Ohio narrative is filled with more interesting character sketches.
Still, while Buck floats the lower Mississippi, his narrative gives light to the way the growth of America relied on tremendous cruelty and displacement. Something that was not fully brought forward in my high school AP American History class. Buck points out that it is a good thing that historians are starting to look at the broader base of stories, both attractive and repellent, that formed this country.
It also lays out the reprehensible role these same boats had in the forced removal of native American tribes from their homes in the southeast to Oklahoma, an evacuation that cost thousands of lives that was carried out by president Andrew Jackson and his government. Buck also describes how flat boats on the Ohio and Mississippi and forced marches on the Natchez Trace were used to move and sell a slave population based on the declining tobacco plantations of Virginia to the growing sugar and cotton plantations of Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana. Families were torn apart as owners sold younger slaves "down the river" to a much more physically punishing life in these southern plantations that were experiencing exponential growth. In the early to mid 1800's Natchez, MS became America's largest slave trading market.
The title "Life on the Mississippi" is a little misleading as two thirds of the book describes the travel and history on the Monongahela and Ohio Rivers. A title of Life on the Ohio would not provide the link to Mark Twain's narrative or to the Mississippi River mystique, much like Rt. 66 among highways.
The focus on the Ohio portion of the journey is driven by the geography of the lower Mississippi.
The Army Corp of Engineers, through years of flood control and channelization, has lined the river with rough boulder revetments that are a barrier between riverside towns and river traffic. Most of Buck's Missisippi travel narrative describes navigational challenges to avoid barge traffic and tying up among the rocks while the Ohio narrative is filled with more interesting character sketches.
Still, while Buck floats the lower Mississippi, his narrative gives light to the way the growth of America relied on tremendous cruelty and displacement. Something that was not fully brought forward in my high school AP American History class. Buck points out that it is a good thing that historians are starting to look at the broader base of stories, both attractive and repellent, that formed this country.
July 20, 2023
Having lived and worked in Iowa for many years, I’ve always been interested in the Mississippi River. On more than one occasion while crossing over the great river, I’ve wondered what it would be like to travel in a small boat all the way to New Orleans.
Rinker Buck gave me an opportunity to experience such a trip vicariously through his book “Life on the Mississippi: An Epic American Adventure.” His trip along the Ohio and then the Mississippi from Pittsburgh to New Orleans in a hand-built wooden flatboat is both educational and entertaining.
It’s educational in that Buck intertwines the history of cities along the route with his actual journey. Readers learn about such famous river towns as Cairo and Natchez while re-living the history of the Midwest and South. He doesn’t whitewash that history. He includes our checkered American past including the dark history of slave trade along the river.
In between the history, readers learn about the challenges of the present-day Mississippi River. How do you navigate around the numerous immense barges while not getting hung up on the wing dams submerged along the river? I occasionally got lost as he navigated down the river, but the confusion was a small price to pay for the excitement.
Some readers may wish the history sections were a little more concise to eliminate the temptation to skim along these sections. It's obvious, he loves his history.
Nevertheless, a thoroughly enjoyable read. I learned a great deal about the history and sometimes the scary navigation along the Mississippi River.
Rinker Buck gave me an opportunity to experience such a trip vicariously through his book “Life on the Mississippi: An Epic American Adventure.” His trip along the Ohio and then the Mississippi from Pittsburgh to New Orleans in a hand-built wooden flatboat is both educational and entertaining.
It’s educational in that Buck intertwines the history of cities along the route with his actual journey. Readers learn about such famous river towns as Cairo and Natchez while re-living the history of the Midwest and South. He doesn’t whitewash that history. He includes our checkered American past including the dark history of slave trade along the river.
In between the history, readers learn about the challenges of the present-day Mississippi River. How do you navigate around the numerous immense barges while not getting hung up on the wing dams submerged along the river? I occasionally got lost as he navigated down the river, but the confusion was a small price to pay for the excitement.
Some readers may wish the history sections were a little more concise to eliminate the temptation to skim along these sections. It's obvious, he loves his history.
Nevertheless, a thoroughly enjoyable read. I learned a great deal about the history and sometimes the scary navigation along the Mississippi River.
May 22, 2023
Most of us don’t just decide to build a flatboat and take it down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Rinker Buck, however, is an old hand at difficult journeys by plane and covered wagon, and now he turns to river navigation on a flatboat. Along the way, he fills us in on the history of flatboats and their importance in the western expansion of the U.S. He also delves into Indian removal and slaves “sold down the river” to work at cotton and sugar plantations in the South. Mostly it is an enjoyable and entertaining read, and you will learn much about the towns along the Ohio River (the trip down the Mississippi was so fast that there was a lot less stopping). He could have spent less time crowing about how wrong all of the advice he received was and how clever he was to figure out how to navigate on his own. Perhaps the best parts are Buck’s portraits of memorable crew members like Danny Corjulo and the infamous reenactor Scott Mandrell.
August 13, 2025
As I got into this book, I wondered what I would say about it in this review. There are two strands running throughout: his personal adventure with his flatboat journey and his accounting of the history as it relates to his adventure. He is an obsessive reader and researcher, well informed. One thing is for sure, at least to me, Buck is quite introspective about himself and open to new things, perhaps obsessively so. A true adventurer! His indignation about the ways of slavery in the early years of this country was palpable. I have understood that this country was built and developed on the backs of the African American slaves. Buck reinforces that. I thought I was well informed about the treatment of enslaved people. However, his vivid descriptions of the treatment of slaves as they worked to make America great, turned my stomach. Yes, Buck is strong and vocal about his feelings. Some of the previous reviewers found that offensive. I found it informative, since I didn't learn about this significant part of my country's development in my public schooling. I will add that as a well educated octogenarian and long time educator I have lived a long time in ignorance. Sometimes the reading was tedious. The only fault I can find is that, in some cases, there was too much detail. Eventually, I found myself skimming through the many descriptions of getting Patience docked and avoiding collisions with other boats. At the end of the book, Buck acknowledges that he left out a lot, in order for the book to be of reasonable length. As a professional writer, his writing style was vivid: he used words to paint pictures in my mind as I read.
August 12, 2023
Loved this even more than Oregon Trail. Buck is a spellbinding storyteller and wizard of popularizing history. In the afterword, he summarizes what he (and I) find lacking in how history is taught: “I have long been disappointed that the Ivy League ‘deans’ of American history…steered their scholarship toward promotion of American myths instead of toward research of events that authentically reflected what happened in our past, and how these events affected the common man.” The flatboat era on the Ohio and Mississippi is a rich illustration of the ingenuity and persistence of the common people who made it happen, but Buck does not ignore the unsavory side of the story. And the adventure of the Patience is just as worthy! Highly recommend!
July 24, 2024
The book was enjoyable because of the premise: building and traveling in a flatboat made of wood in a style similar to what was on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers in the 1820s. Buck did a great job of telling the story of the history of the area as he floats his way down to New Orleans. However, his dismissive and condescending attitude towards anyone he doesn’t agree with definitely made the book less appealing. And he spends a lot of time talking about the actual captaining of the boat, which I would think would appeal only to a pretty narrow subset of readers. Even with those drawbacks, I loved taking an armchair adventure down the rivers and learning more about the role they played in American history.
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