Old Man River Contributor(s): Schneider, Paul (Author) |
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ISBN: 1250053102 ISBN-13: 9781250053107 Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL OUR PRICE: $23.40 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: October 2014 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Travel | United States - General - History | United States - State & Local - Midwest(ia,il,in,ks,mi,mn,mo,nd,ne,oh,sd,wi |
Dewey: 977 |
Physical Information: 1.2" H x 5.8" W x 8.1" (0.80 lbs) 416 pages |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher 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 of Little House in the Big Woods. Half-devastated product of American ingenuity, half-magnificent natural wonder, it is impossible to imagine America without the Mississippi. |
Contributor Bio(s): Schneider, Paul: - Paul Schneider is the acclaimed author of Bonnie and Clyde, Brutal Journey, The Enduring Shore, and The Adirondacks, a New York Times Book Review Notable Book. He and his family live in West Tisbury, Massachusetts. |