William Clark's World: Describing America in an Age of Unknowns

by Peter J. Kastor

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.

360 pages, Hardcover

First published December 21, 2010

Reviews

[Wayne Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an examination of the life and career of William Clark and shows how Clark's maps and writing about the Louisiana Purchase / North American West entered into the American imagination. The book discusses Clark’s role as co-captain of the Lewis and Clark Expedition followed by his transition to a public official in the new American West.