Acts of discovery

by Albert Furtwangler

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark wove science and raw adventure together in their journals as they blazed a trail from St. Louis to the Pacific. Now, with fresh information drawn from many fields, Albert Furtwangler mines those journals for valuable insights into western American history as well as the process of discovery. Acts of Discovery argues that Lewis and Clark surpassed the enlightened instructions given to them by President Thomas Jefferson. They made a literal, large-scale experiment, probing the interior of a continent and weighing information that eventually would supersede the science, the politics, and even the artistic ideals of Jefferson and his age. Drawing on a background of interdisciplinary learning, Furtwangler illuminates the achievements of Lewis and Clark as naturalists, navigators, and diplomats who faced ever-new surprises as they worked their way west. He shows that their journals trace two very different patterns at the same time - as records of modern sc