The Lore of Explorers.('I Should Be Extremely Happy In Your Company,' 'Seduced by the West,' and 'Exploring Lewis and Clark: Reflections on Men and Wilderness')(Book Review)

"The looming mist, the shout in his breast, the wordless awe. But that is just it: wordless. A crash of white filling his ears and I! I! I! as he flew down the cliff."The grandeur of the Great Falls of the Missouri overwhelms Meriwether Lewis in Brian Hall's novel I Should Be Extremely Happy In Your Company (Viking), which deftly re-creates Lewis's journey with his partner, William Clark, across the new Western territory. Lewis is sensitive and insecure, suffering from self-recrimination as he tries, and fails, to meet President Jefferson's eccentric demands--to find a mammoth, Welsh Indians, and, of course, the Northwest Passage.

More insidious motives emerge in Seduced by the West (Ivan R. Dee), Laurie Winn Carlson's examination of the political plotting that surrounded the expedition. Carlson speculates that Thomas Jefferson may have intended to ...