Based on papers delivered at the Bicentennial Conference for Lewis & Clark, held in Philadelphia in Aug. 2003, these essays grapple in different ways with the motives underlying the Corps of Discovery & the impact on American culture. The question of failure is used by the authors as a means of interrogating the intellectual & cultural context in which the expedition was framed & in which its results were distributed. Contributors include Robert S. Cox (also the Ed. of the vol.), Domenic Vitiello, S.D. Kimmel, John W. Jengo, Brett Mizelle, & Andrew J. Lewis. Illus.

Tracing North American Exploration from Balboa to Lewis and Clark, Devoto tells in a classic fashion how the drama of discovery defined the American nation. The Course of Empire is the third volume in historian Bernard Devoto's monumental trilogy of the West. Entertaining and incisive, this is the dramatic story of three hundred years of exploration of North America leading up to 1805.