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Down the Great Unknown: John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon
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Author
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Edward Dolnick.
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Publisher
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Harper Perennial
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Format
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paperback
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Product Dimensions
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8
x
5.25
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1
inches
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ISBN
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9780060955861
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Pages/Publication Date
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367/2002
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Daedalus Item Code
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14167
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This item is not available.
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Description
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By 1869 the map of the United States had long since been charted except for an immense area of the southwest, larger than any state in the union and any country in Europe. Civil War veteran John Wesley Powell and a ragtag band of nine men set out down the Colorado River to fill in that gap. Three months later, defying premature reports of their deaths, six of the men emerged to tell the fantastic tale of their discovery of the Grand Canyon. They were the first white men to explore the canyon, and the first of any race to brave the Colorado's ferocious and deadly rapids. Powell instantly became a national hero and a star of the lecture circuit, enthralling audiences with vivid stories of a hostile and alien environment. This was wild adventure, but Powell also recognized the Grand Canyon as a geological textbook, which supported Darwin's new theories about the unthinkably ancient nature of the earth. He found the West to be fundamentally different in nature from the East, and argued vehemently against the prevalent attitude of Manifest Destiny and the reckless development of the wilderness. Though Powell lapsed into obscurity after his death, Edward Dolnick brings this great character back to life, using previously untapped diaries, journals, and letters.
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