Undaunted Courage

[Dakota]

", or A Tale of Meriwether Lewis and the American West." I bought this one when I met the author up in Washburn years back. Ambrose was likeable in the way a used car salesman or a newly ordained pastor. He spoke like people in those professions too.

It was a quick read. Ambrose never runs out of adjectives to describe Meriwether Lewis. He's a storyteller; mythologizes and eulogizes Lewis and his Corps of Discovery. Every deed is aggrandized. Each criticism is minimized. It wasn't the book I thought it was going to be. It wasn't James Rhonda. It was practically "The Far Horizons" (1955; Donna Reed as Sacagawea, Charles Heston as William Clark). There's so much testosterone in this book the spine is has muscles, and the pages sweat.

I have posted a review of this book is greater, nicer, detail on Good Reads. Check it out if you want.

The motive for me choosing this book was Ambrose's introduction. He was camping out at Lemhi Pass with family and friends as they observed the nation's 1976 bicentennial. At the same time the nation was commemorating the centennial of General Custer's infamous last battle at Little Bighorn. My father was in the American Indian Movement (AIM) in those days and was demonstrating against the reenactment of the last great Indian fight. In 2001, I was working at Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park when some reenactors set off on horses dressed as soldiers on their way to the Little Bighorn. I was dressed as an Indian Scout and lead the procession out of the park on horseback. My father was pissed.

Anyway, Ambrose's work certainly pushed the button of American pride and nationalism. During the Corps of Discovery's bicentennial, Americans - for a few years anyway - regularly stopped and read from Ambrose's book at many of the various designated Lewis and Clark sites, sometimes on the day the Corps stopped there. It was almost religious, and Ambrose's Undaunted Courage a bible.

It's a good patriotic book. It's an incomplete narrative too since it largely focuses on Meriweather Lewis. Ambrose's scholarship is sensational, not meticulous. And I finished this book feeling incomplete, not gratified.

[Thomas]

To be fair, the book is a biography. However, your critique of the work, the author, and the enterprise are is merited and spirited. Would you please post the link to your longer review?