22 March, 2004
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, Stephen Ambrose (521 pp, TPB, 1996)
This is ostensibly a biography of Meriwether Lewis, but it's really the story of the Lewis and Clark expedition. (The distinction is vague, since the expedition was Lewis' greatest achievement, but it's a matter of emphasis.)
This isn't a serious history book; there's not much discussion of how the expedition fits into the larger historical picture. Ambrose's purpose is to tell a good story. And he does, at that. The story is exciting and compelling all by itself, to make an interesting book out of it, Ambrose only needed to avoid boring it down with bad prose. He succeeds; the writing is simple and straightforward, which is all it needs to be.
That being said, Ambrose has a few auctorial tics which bugged me throughout the book. First, he has a propensity to fill gaps in the historical record with his own speculation. Second, he's a bit too rah-rah cheerleadery in the way he discusses Lewis and the expedition. He's clearly a raving Lewis and Clark fanboy. On the one hand, his attitude undoubtedly injects a sense of excitement into the writing, but on the other hand, it grates in the way that fanboyishness sometime does.
The part of the book which recounts the expedition is the best (that is to say, most of the book). The part that finishes up the story of Lewis' life, post-expedition, kind of drags, and it ends on a down note. (Lewis suffered from depression his entire life, and committed suicide at the age of 35.)