Down the Great Unknown

Author: Edward Dolnick
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 006176034X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Book Description
Drawing on rarely examined diaries and journals, Down the Great Unknown is the first book to tell the full, dramatic story of the Powell expedition. On May 24, 1869 a one-armed Civil War veteran, John Wesley Powell and a ragtag band of nine mountain men embarked on the last great quest in the American West. The Grand Canyon, not explored before, was as mysterious as Atlantis—and as perilous. The ten men set out from Green River Station, Wyoming Territory down the Colorado in four wooden rowboats. Ninety-nine days later, six half-starved wretches came ashore near Callville, Arizona. Lewis and Clark opened the West in 1803, six decades later Powell and his scruffy band aimed to resolve the West’s last mystery. A brilliant narrative, a thrilling journey, a cast of memorable heroes—all these mark Down the Great Unknown, the true story of the last epic adventure on American soil.

The Emerald Mile

Author: Kevin Fedarko
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439159866
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 448

Book Description
The epic story of the fastest boat ride in history, on a hand-built dory named the "Emerald Mile," through the heart of the Grand Canyon on the Colorado river.

Down the Colorado

Author: Deborah Kogan Ray
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780374318383
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 60

Book Description
Chronicles the experiences of John Wesley Powell, who led the first scientific expedition down the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon.

A River Running West

Author: Donald Worster
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195156355
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 692

Book Description
This text is a magisterial account of John Wesley Powell, the great American explorer and environmental pioneer. It tells the true story of undaunted courage in the American West.

Down the Colorado

Author: Eliot Porter
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Explorers
Languages : en
Pages : 12

Book Description
One hundred years ago John Wesley Powell set out to explore the Grand Canyon of the Colorado - something no man had attempted before. His official report of the voyage remains one of the great adventure stories in all the literature of the American West.

The Great Unknown

Author: Marcus du Sautoy
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735221812
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 466

Book Description
“An engaging voyage into some of the great mysteries and wonders of our world." --Alan Lightman, author of Einstein’s Dream and The Accidental Universe “No one is better at making the recondite accessible and exciting.” —Bill Bryson Brain Pickings and Kirkus Best Science Book of the Year Every week seems to throw up a new discovery, shaking the foundations of what we know. But are there questions we will never be able to answer—mysteries that lie beyond the predictive powers of science? In this captivating exploration of our most tantalizing unknowns, Marcus du Sautoy invites us to consider the problems in cosmology, quantum physics, mathematics, and neuroscience that continue to bedevil scientists and creative thinkers who are at the forefront of their fields. At once exhilarating, mind-bending, and compulsively readable, The Great Unknown challenges us to consider big questions—about the nature of consciousness, what came before the big bang, and what lies beyond our horizons—while taking us on a virtuoso tour of the great breakthroughs of the past and celebrating the men and women who dared to tackle the seemingly impossible and had the imagination to come up with new ways of seeing the world.

There's this River

Author: Christa Sadler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Book Description

The Powell Expedition

Author: Don Lago
Publisher: University of Nevada Press
ISBN: 0874175992
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 375

Book Description
John Wesley Powell’s 1869 expedition down the Green and Colorado Rivers and through the Grand Canyon continues to be one of the most celebrated adventures in American history, ranking with the Lewis and Clark expedition and the Apollo landings on the moon. For nearly twenty years Lago has researched the Powell expedition from new angles, traveled to thirteen states, and looked into archives and other sources no one else has searched. He has come up with many important new documents that change and expand our basic understanding of the expedition by looking into Powell’s crewmembers, some of whom have been almost entirely ignored by Powell historians. Historians tended to assume that Powell was the whole story and that his crewmembers were irrelevant. More seriously, because several crew members made critical comments about Powell and his leadership, historians who admired Powell were eager to ignore and discredit them. Lago offers a feast of new and important material about the river trip, and it will significantly rewrite the story of Powell’s famous expedition. This book is not only a major work on the Powell expedition, but on the history of American exploration of the West.

The Promise of the Grand Canyon

Author: John F. Ross
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143128957
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 417

Book Description
“A convincing case for Powell’s legacy as a pioneering conservationist.”--The Wall Street Journal "A bold study of an eco-visionary at a watershed moment in US history."--Nature A timely, thrilling account of the explorer who dared to lead the first successful expedition down the Colorado through the Grand Canyon—and waged a bitterly-contested campaign for sustainability in the West. John Wesley Powell’s first descent of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in 1869 counts among the most dramatic chapters in American exploration history. When the Canyon spit out the surviving members of the expedition—starving, battered, and nearly naked—they had accomplished what others thought impossible and finished the exploration of continental America that Lewis and Clark had begun almost 70 years before. With The Promise of the Grand Canyon, John F. Ross tells how that perilous expedition launched the one-armed Civil War hero on the path to becoming the nation’s foremost proponent of environmental sustainability and a powerful, if controversial, visionary for the development of the American West. So much of what he preached—most broadly about land and water stewardship—remains prophetically to the point today.

The Book of Unknown Americans

Author: Cristina Henríquez
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0385350856
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 251

Book Description
A stunning novel of hopes and dreams, guilt and love—a book that offers a resonant new definition of what it means to be American and "illuminates the lives behind the current debates about Latino immigration" (The New York Times Book Review). When fifteen-year-old Maribel Rivera sustains a terrible injury, the Riveras leave behind a comfortable life in Mexico and risk everything to come to the United States so that Maribel can have the care she needs. Once they arrive, it’s not long before Maribel attracts the attention of Mayor Toro, the son of one of their new neighbors, who sees a kindred spirit in this beautiful, damaged outsider. Their love story sets in motion events that will have profound repercussions for everyone involved. Here Henríquez seamlessly interweaves the story of these star-crossed lovers, and of the Rivera and Toro families, with the testimonials of men and women who have come to the United States from all over Latin America.