Book Review: Undaunted Courage

So we’re stuck at home by government direction, common sense, and maybe fear. Are you bored yet?  You need not be. We still have the Internet, we still have Amazon.com, and we can still read. Which I do. A lot.

The latest book for me was Undaunted Courage, by Stephen Ambrose, and it’s good. It was a little slow getting started (that’s the only criticism I have), but once the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery was underway, Undaunted Courage was a real page turner.

You know, my interest in the Lewis and Clark expedition (which is what Undaunted Courage is all about) was ignited on a visit to New Orleans 12 years ago.  Susie and I stayed in the French Quarter of that American jewel of a city, and we started each day with breakfast just across the street from  Jackson Square. There was a museum there and it focused on the Louisiana Purchase, something I had a very foggy memory of from maybe the fifth grade.

The Louisiana Purchase story basically goes like this: Thomas Jefferson wanted to buy New Orleans from Napolean Bonaparte because the US needed a port where the Mississippi met the ocean. Napolean needed cash for his war with the British and in response to Jefferson’s overture, he offered to sell us not just New Orleans, but the entire Louisiana Territory. Jefferson didn’t have the money, so he borrowed it from England so he could pay Napolean and then Napolean had the money he needed to fight England.  Who’s on first?

Think about what these men of the Lewis and Clark Expedition did and what they faced.  They entered and explored an unknown world with dangers beyond imagination: Indians, grizzlies, disease, weather, starvation, distance…you name it.  It is a hell of a story

Anyway, once we owned the Louisiana Territory, Jefferson wondered: What’s out there? No one really knew. That was one of the key reasons Jefferson funded the Lewis and Clark expedition. That, and Jefferson wanted our boys to find a northwest passage (a way to get from the Atlantic to the Pacific by water). That waterway didn’t exist (and that’s what Lewis and Clark discovered), but their struggles and the story of the expedition is, like I said above, a real page turner. What made it even more interesting was that, like many of the good folks who read the ExhaustNotes blog, I’ve ridden my motorcycle through many of the regions Lewis and Clark explored. This is good reading, folks.

An interesting component to this story is that all of the enlisted men on the Lewis and Clark expedition contracted venereal disease (specifically, syphilis and gonorrhea). It seems the Native Americans had no qualms about sharing their wives as a form of bartering for trinkets and tools (hey, it is what it is), and that’s how these diseases were transmitted.  That touched a nerve with me.  As a young Army officer in Korea, venereal disease was a problem that plagued us constantly. The Army tracked this sort of thing and my artillery battery ran a VD rate over 100% (I think the exact number was something like 112%). When I first saw that statistic I knew it had to be wrong (I didn’t have VD), and I said so. The guy who presented the statistics patiently explained that some of the guys in our battery had more than one venereal disease in the 30-day reporting period, and that’s why the number exceeded 100%.  Wow.

Another interesting fact:  Lewis carried an air rifle on this trip, along with several other flintlock rifles and handguns.  I didn’t know air rifles even existed back then, but apparently they did, and Lewis used his to put meat on the table.

Trust me on this:  Undaunted Courage is a superbly written book.  I think you’ll enjoy it.