Events › History Book Discussion Group: Boyce Upholt, The Great River

On Monday, April 6, we will be meeting to discuss Boyce Upholt's The Great River: The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi, by Boyce Upholt.

Like the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River has forever awed all who have beheld it—and for millennia thwarted humans who have sought to domesticate it and make it serve their ambitions. Upholt begins his history with the Lewis & Clark expedition of the early 1800s which set out to explore the Mississippi Basin, discusses the indigenous tribes living along the river's banks, and talks about the levees and dams and other efforts to make this enormous flowing body of water bend to human will. He relates the past to the present, informing but also complicating our understanding of both.