The first four volumes of the new edition of the Journals
of the Lewis and Clark Expedition have been widely heralded as a lasting achievement in western history studies. This eagerly awaited fifth volume begins on July 28, 1805, more than one year after Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set out on their epic journey. The expedition now enters upon perhaps the most difficult part of its route, from the Three Forks of the Missouri River in present-day Montana, over the Bitterroot Mountains, and to the Cascades of the Columbia River on today's Washington-Oregon border. The explorers encounter Shoshone, Flathead, Nez Perce, and other Indian tribes, some of whom have never before met white people.
Incorporating a wide range of new scholarship dealing with all aspects of the expedition, from Indian languages to plants and animals to the geographical and historical context, this new edition expands and updates the annotation of the last edition, published early in this century.
"The University of Nebraska Press has become the pre-eminent publisher of Lewis and Clark titles, including what is now considered the definitive edition of the journals edited by Nebraska history professor Gary Moulton."—John Marshall, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
"Moulton not only edited the transcriptions of the journal entries; he also provided a detailed index and oversaw a team of consultants who provided expert annotations on botany, zoology, astronomy, archaeology, linguists and medicine. As a result, readers can understand the expedition in its full context. It's no wonder that the series has received many plaudits."—Omaha World Herald
"[This edition] stands as one of the great accomplishments of American scholarship and scholarly publishing alike. The work of historian Gary Moulton and a team of some three dozen specialists working through the University of Nebraska's Center for Great Plains Studies with the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the 13-volume Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition was published by the University of Nebraska Press from 1983 to 2001."—Gregory McNamee, Washington Post Book World
"The journey of the Corps of Discovery, under the command of Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, across the American West to the Pacific Ocean and back in the years 1804-1806 seems to me to have been our first really American adventure, one that also produced our only really American epic, The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, now at last available in a superbly edited, easily read edition in twelve volumes (of an eventual thirteen), almost two centuries after the Corps of Discovery set out. . . . This important text has not been fully appreciated for what it is because of two centuries of incomplete and inadequate editing. All three editions previous to this excellent one from the University of Nebraska . . . were flawed by significant omission. . . . Thus my gratitude to the present editor, Gary Moulton, and his assistant editor, Thomas Dunlay, for bringing what I believe to be a national epic into plain view at last. . . . For almost two hundred years their [Lewis' and Clark's] strong words waited, there but not there, printed but not read: our silent epic. But words can wait: now the captains' writings have at last spilled out, and fully, in this regal edition."
"Lewis and Clark loom over the narrative literature of the West as the Rockies loom over the rivers that run through them. These Journals are to the narrative of the American West as the Iliad is to the epic or as Don Quixote is to the novel: a first exemplar so great as to contain in embryo the genre's full potential. The narrative writing about the West that came before Lewis and Clark seems fragmentary and slight; what came after them seems insipid and slight, lacking both the scale and the force of those Journals."—Larry McMurtry in the New York Review of Books
"Meticulously edited, with detailed (and absolutely necessary) footnotes, these volumes are a triumph of scholarly publishing. . . . One version or another belongs on most readers' shelves—and should accompany any road trip through the West."—Atlantic Monthly
"These journals of exploits and courage in a pristine West have a simplicity and timeliness about them—never failing to capture the imagination of the ordinary reader or to interest the historian, the scientist, or the geographer."—Mary Lee Spence, Montana
"If the criterion for good editing of an exploratory account is that it should result in narrative that is as gripping as an adventure story, then Moulton's success as editor is unquestioned."—John Logan Allen, Utah Historical Quarterly
"Meticulous scholarship marks this landmark revision. . . . Essential to every American history collection."—Reference and Research