Product Description

The author recounts the successes and frustrations of John Wesley Powell, the distinguished ethnologist and geologist who explored the Colorado River, the Grand Canyon, and the homeland of Indian tribes of the American Southwest. "No library of western/southwestern materials can be without this book. . . ."-- Books of the Southwest.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3450 in Books
• Published on: 1992-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780140159943
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Customer Reviews

One of the few essential books on the American West
This classic work is a penetrating and insightful study of the public career of Maj. John Wesley Powell, from the beginning of the Powell Survey, which most famously had Powell and his men descend for the first time by anyone the Colorado River, to his eventual ouster from the Geological Survey. Stegner does a magnificent job of detailing both the myriad accomplishments by Powell in his remarkable career as public servant, but the philosophy and ideas that undergirded his work. Most readers at the end will conclude that the history of the United States might have proceeded differently had his profound insights into the nature of the American West been heeded.

Stegner writes in a lucid, clear, frequently exciting prose style. Although his history is solid, his writing is somewhat more. For example, at one point Stegner writes of one person who was more than a little deluded about the nature of the West: "The yeasty schemes stirring in Adams' head must have generated gases to cloud his eyesight." Especially in context a brilliant sentence, and not of the quality one anticipates in a historical work, especially one that deals at length with questions of public policy. The volume also contains an Introduction by Stegner's mentor and teacher Bernard DeVoto, an essay that contains in a few pages the heart of DeVoto's own understanding of the West, and which alone would be worth the cost of the volume.

Stegner does an excellent job of relating Powell's own insights and visions to those of others of the day. He contrasts Powell's philosophy with the desires and urges of the people who were rushing to obtain land in the West, and the politicians who were trying to lure them there. He points up similarities and differences in his way of looking at things, from those stoutly opposed to his views, and those in some degree sympathetic to him, like Charles King and the oddly omnipresent Henry Adams. From the earliest pages of the book to the very end, Stegner brings up Adams again and again, which is somewhat unexpected since Adams is not an essential participant in this story.

I have only two complaints with the book, one stylistic and the other substantive. The book contains a few maps but no photographs, and this book would have profited greatly from a number of illustrations. He refers to many, many visual things: vistas, rivers, people, paintings of the West, photographs of the West, maps, Indians, and locales, and at least a few photographs or illustrations would have greatly enhanced the book.

The second complaint is more serious. Stegner is completely unsympathetic to the attacks of Edward D. Cope on Othniel C. Marsh and, primarily by association, Powell. The Cope-Marsh controversy was, as Stegner quite rightly points out, the most destructive scientific controversy in United States history, and one that does absolutely no credit to either major participant. My complaint with Stegner's account is that he makes Cope sound more than a little psychotic, and his complaints more symptoms of mental illness and irrational hatred than anything generated by reasonable causes. Cope's hatred of Marsh was not rational, but neither was it baseless. Cope had indeed suffered grievously at the hands of Marsh, who had used his own considerable political power to prevent Cope from obtaining additional fossil samples. In this Powell was not completely innocent. I believe that anyone studying the Cope-Marsh controversy in greater detail will find Cope and not Marsh to be the more sympathetic figure, and certainly the more likable. The careers of both Cope and Marsh were destroyed by their controversy, but so also was that that of Powell greatly diminished. I can understand why Stegner is so unsympathetic to Cope, while at the same time believing that he overlooks the justness of many of Cope's complaints.

Excellent adventure and history book
Wallace Stegner combines the adventure of John Wesley Powell's historic running of the Colorado River and the story of government science. Powell's river running is a dramatic yarn, and Stegner draws on his strengths as a historian to debunk some of the exaggerations of Powell's own writings. Stegner has quite a way with words and brings Powell's story to life. The second half of the book is somewhat dry, but it is an important document of the history of government-funded science in this country. (Powell played an important role in government science.) He does an excellent job of enlivening the characters, and the history has important implications today. While this is not Stegner's best book, it is a good read, especially for fans of the American West.

History of water in the west; rollicking adventure story
Stegner is a prolific historian of the American West, as well as a prolific author of fiction. To my mind, his nonfiction is always a notch better than even the best of his fiction; to my mind, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian is the best of the lot.

To be sure, my view that this one is his best is likely colored by my impression that it treats the most important issues dealt with within Stegner's œuvre, namely, the question of water use in the American West. However, independent of the book's importance in understanding the history of water use, it is also a rollicking adventure tale of a one-armed madman shooting hellacious rapids the likes of which our continent no longer knows, while strapped to a wooden boat.

Powell was a brilliant, eccentric man, and the United States would be a better place if the policies he suggested had been intelligently implemented (rather than first ignored and subsequently mis-applied). His life is well worth learning about.