Having covered the Civil War and baseball in masterly documentaries, filmmaker Burns has now prepared a documentary on the Lewis and Clark expedition. Duncan (Out West, Doubleday, 1996) wrote the script for the film and this companion volume, which tells the story of that epic journey in a straightforward manner. The challenge in both film and book is to tell a familiar tale in a new way. The authors meet that challenge by retracing the expedition's route and incorporating their experiences into the story. Interspersed throughout are quotations from the journals and illustrations in the form of paintings, photographs both historic and current, and facsimiles of the journals. William Least Heat Moon, Stephen Ambrose, and Erica Funkhouser have written brief essays on aspects of the expedition. Sidebars include such topics as new plants and animals encountered, the publication of the journals, and Lewis's Newfoundland dog, Seaman. An excellent introduction to the expedition for public and school libraries. -Stephen H. Peters
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