Discount Shopping Online :: Books Down the Great Unknown: John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon : :

Down the Great Unknown: John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon
by: Edward Dolnick

List Price: $13.95

Amazon.com's Price: $11.16

You Save: $2.79 (20%)
Prices subject to change.

Used Price: $0.01
Collectible Price: $13.95
Third Party New Price: $4.98

Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 917.913044
EAN: 9780060955861
ISBN: 0060955864
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: September 01, 2002
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Release Date: September 17, 2002
Sales Rank: 434506
Studio: Harper Perennial

Related Items:

Editorial Review:

Product Description:

0n May 24, 1869, a one-armed Civil War veteran named John Wesley Powell and a ragtag band of nine mountain men embarked on the last great quest in the American West. No one had ever explored the fabled Grand Canyon; to adventurers of that era it was a region almost as mysterious as Atlantis -- and as perilous.

The ten men set out down the mighty Colorado River in wooden rowboats. Six survived. Drawing on rarely examined diaries and journals, Down the Great Unknown is the first book to tell the full, true story.

Amazon.com Review:
Edward Dolnick's Down the Great Unknown depicts the 'last epic journey on American soil,' John Wesley Powell's exploration of the Grand Canyon and the fulminating, carnivorous Colorado River. The book, a model of precision, clarity, and serene passion, outshines, arguably, its bestselling brother-volume, Stephen Ambrose's Undaunted Courage.

On May 24, 1869, Powell, an ambitious, autocratic, one-armed Civil War veteran and amateur scientist, and a casually recruited crew of nine--without a lick of white water experience--embarked from an obscure railroad stop in the Wyoming Territory to travel through a region 'scarcely better known than Atlantis.' Ninety-nine days, 1,000 miles and nearly 500 rapids later, six of the men came ashore in Arizona--the first humans to run the waters of the Grand Canyon. Dolnick tells this story of courage, naiveté, hardship, and petty squabbling simply and authoritatively using entries from the men's journals, deft overviews (we always know where we are), and short science, history, and psychology lessons, as well as the prodigious knowledge of present-day river runners and his own first-hand observations. His prose carries the day: Powell looks like a 'stick of beef jerky adorned with whiskers,' the boats are 'walnut shells,' which in rapids are little better than 'ladybugs caught in a hose's blast' or 'drunks trying to negotiate a revolving door,' while the river is a 'taunting bully,' a 'colossal mugger,' a 'sumo wrestler smothering a kitten,' and a notable rock formation looks like what might happen if 'Edward Gorey had designed the Bat Cave.'

Down the Great Unknown brushes against perfection. This is history written as it should be--and too rarely is: enthusiastic, rigorous, painterly, gloriously free of both pedantry and hyperbole. --H. O'Billovitch

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Good story but a slog to read
This non-fiction book is about the expedition of John Wesley Powell and their pioneering and death-defying exploration of the Grand Canyon in 1869. Powell, a college professor who had lost an arm at Shiloh, was well-prepared to map the canyons of the Colorado and do a scientific andgeological survey. Unfortunately, he was no leader, and the expedition suffered terribly for it. He rounded up a crew of mountain men and ne'er-do-wells, as well as a few neurotic former Civil War veterans and set off in rowboats that couldn't have been more ill-suited to running the violent rapids of the Colorado. Powell and his men saw amazing sites, but they almost perished multiple times. Finally there was a mutiny in which several men ended up leaving the party and trying to hike out of the canyon(they were never seen again); the others ran the rapids and somehow lived to tell the tale.

While I liked learning more about ... Read More

Rating:

- To Be The First Through The Then Unknown Colorado....
I've "rafted" the upper Colorado.

Of course that was in a motorized raft, led by experienced pilots, with a map and they did all the cooking and if something really bad happened the ranger service could chopper in and get me (Hey, I *did* hike out from Phantom Ranch)

I can't conceive of doing it in an ungainly rowboat, without a steering oar, having little provisions, without a map or even knowledge of the river (what happens if you hit a 100 ft fall and nowhere to portage?), and where a broken ankle would have meant an almost certain death -- and with one arm.

Truthfully, its amazing this exposition survived.

Dolnick weaves in Powell's embellished account with the other expedition journals to craft a balanced account of the expedition, along with correlating the trip with known features of the canyon. Dolnick describes the tensions within the team -- categorizes their ... Read More

Rating:

- Too many digressions ...
This is a pretty decent book for the newcomer who has never read anything about Powell. I found it less entertaining than my fellow reviewers though, as it follows the tedium of the daily journals a little too closely. I also found the narrative to be interspersed with too many digressions. These range from opinions of the Green/Colorado river by modern rafting experts to accounts of other early rafting expeditions, and a lengthy 2-chapter segment on the American Civil war and Battle of Shiloh. This latter exercise contributes nothing to the book, by the way! The reader is also left in the dark about the Native American peoples, Mormon settlers, and miners who inhabited this area at the same point in time ... Really, it is as if the expedition were done in a vacuum. Even worse was the lack of information on 9 of the 10 men who took part in the expedition. While there is more than enough about John Wesley Powell, readers get ... Read More

Rating:

- Excellent read
I enjoyed this book very much. So much that I have loaned it to family and friends to enjoy.

Discount Shopping Online Books and Publications

Books : Down the Great Unknown: John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon
Books and Publications Average Rating:

Search the web for info about Down the Great Unknown: John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon

Discount Shopping Online Books and Publications

Books : Down the Great Unknown: John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand CanyonBooks and Publications Average Rating:

Search the web for info about Down the Great Unknown: John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon

Books : Down the Great Unknown: John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon
Books and Publications Average Rating: