Overview
Uncover the history of the United States by traveling its major rivers—from the time before Europeans arrived, to the nineteenth century. Indians, explorers, and settlers traversed our rivers for thousands of years—in canoes, rafts, flatboats, and steamboats. They settled the land by following these rivers westward, expanding the country. Using photographs, paintings, prints, and original maps, river guides Peter and Connie Roop lead readers on exciting rides on and over, down and around the Hudson, the Ohio, the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Rio Grande, the Colorado, and Columbia rivers.
Editorials
School Library Journal
Gr 5-8
The role of transportation in national history has seldom been more clearly delineated than in this meticulous treatment. Spanning prehistory to the 19th century, the sparkling text, inflected with wry humor, focuses sequentially on the Hudson River and Erie Canal, the Ohio, Mississippi, Missouri, Rio Grande, and the Colorado Rivers, and the Columbia River. Each chapter begins with quotations pertaining to the river, from the literary to songs such as "Fifteen Miles on the Erie Canal" and "Roll On, Columbia, Roll On." Each chapter discusses the river's source, indigenous inhabitants and civilization, exploration, and the impact of settlement in historical, sociological, and environmental terms. The straightforward historical progression of each chapter makes it easy to follow and gives the prose a sense of narrative and story. Maps, color photographs, and period reproductions are well placed. Text in blue highlights relevant people (e.g., Washington Irving, John Chapman), incidents (the New Madrid Earthquake, the fate of the steamboat Far West as it impacted General Custer's final days), or concepts (the Northwest Passage, for example). The lack of an index is a bit of a problem, though the organization is such that most items pertaining to a particular river will be in the chapter concerning it. This is a sound report source, and it will supplement units on American history generally and the Westward expansion in particular.
—Ann WeltonCopyright 2006 Reed Business Information.