Old Man River The Mississippi River in North American History |
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Author:
| Schneider, Paul |
ISBN: | 978-1-250-05310-7 |
Publication Date: | Oct 2014 |
Publisher: | Picador
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Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | USD $26.00 |
Book Description:
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Old Man River, Paul Schneider's exploration of America's great waterway--taking the reader from the Mississippi River's origins to its polluted present and tracing its prehistory, geology, and cultural and literary histories--is as vast as its subject. The fascinating cast of characters includes the French and Spanish explorers de Soto, Marquette and Joliet, and the incomparable La Salle; George Washington fighting his first battle in an effort to secure the...
More Description
Old Man River, Paul Schneider's exploration of America's great waterway--taking the reader from the Mississippi River's origins to its polluted present and tracing its prehistory, geology, and cultural and literary histories--is as vast as its subject.
The fascinating cast of characters includes the French and Spanish explorers de Soto, Marquette and Joliet, and the incomparable La Salle; George Washington fighting his first battle in an effort to secure the watershed; the birth of jazz and blues; and literary greats like Melville, Dickens, Trollope, and, of course, Mark Twain.
Pirates and riverbats, gamblers and slaves, hustlers and landscape painters, loggers and catfishers, tourists and missionaries: The Mississippi is a river of stories and myth. It's Paul Robeson sitting on a cotton bale, Daniel Boone floating on a flatboat, and Paul Bunyan cutting trees in the neighborhood ofLittle House in the Big Woods.
Half-devastated product of American ingenuity, half-magnificent natural wonder, it is impossible to imagine America without the Mississippi.