Friday, June 3, 2016

Jefferson's America

Author: Julie M. Fenster
Stars: 3
Review by: Mandy Apgar

This was alright. Not bad, not very good, but somewhere in between trapped in a limbo due to flipping between so many people and not covering some adequately enough. (Think of an overloaded summer movie blockbuster.) The idea is simple enough - Jefferson as President sends out a motley troupe of not-always-the-most-stable explorers to map and help settle the western areas he hoped to buy. Pike (as in "Peak") is presented simply enough, Lewis and Clark as a total class of contrasts - one somewhat stable and sound (eventually semi adopting the son of Sacajawea, whom I thought got shafted in this) and the other an eventual suicide, and a few others folks aren't as familiar with. Together they presented Jefferson with some new ideas and attempted to make sense of the vast land the United States was acquiring (with some detail on the struggle in getting some of that land, Florida for example, thrown in).

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