This Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis & Clark

“This Vast Enterprise is a page-turner and a fantastic achievement. . . . Do we really need another book about the Lewis and Clark expedition? . . . After reading This Vast Enterprise, my answer is an emphatic yes. The author has done a huge amount of research, shifting the focus away from the familiar pairing of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and widening the lens. . . . Each chapter unfolds from the viewpoint of a different individual and the result is a richly woven tapestry of voices. . . . Through the perspectives of 10 people, Fehrman reframes this well-known story, revealing it as more complex, and profoundly human.” —Andrea Wulf, The New York Times Book Review (front-cover review)

“This is vivid, character-based history. . . . Fehrman weaves a tale that uses human stories to go beyond hard facts and calcified myths. . . . This Vast Enterprise moves Lewis, Clark, and their crew out of the realm of myth and into a world not just of blood and sweat but also negotiation: with the land, with Native peoples, and with each other. Fehrman’s approach to this well-trodden historical chapter is fresh and inclusive. It also makes for a ripping good read.” —Boston Globe

“More than 220 years later, the Lewis and Clark expedition still intrigues. . . . In his immensely engaging book, This Vast Enterprise, Craig Fehrman strives to capture the motivations, values and ideas of the individuals who contributed to this multifaceted historical event. . . . Based on thorough research of published and unpublished sources, as well as Native American oral tradition, the book gives this well-known story a fresh breadth of implication.” —Wall Street Journal

“An innovative new history of the expedition . . . History is usually written in the third person, even though it has to be lived in the first, and Fehrman takes advantage of the rich and deep documentation of the Lewis and Clark expedition to try to reconcile the discrepancy. . . . Fehrman doesn’t attempt to speak in the voices of his subjects. He merely focuses on what each individual experienced and knew, while keeping in mind how much they didn’t experience and didn’t know—an analytic technique that historians have always been free to borrow from novelists but often lose sight of in the scramble to accumulate data.” —New Yorker

“Riveting . . . Grounded in outstanding scholarship . . . By writing from various points of view, Fehrman broadens the long-held narrative of the expedition, enriching what we know of its successes and failures. . . . Fehrman has done a great service to American history in this must-read.” —Booklist (starred review)

“For a fresh take on the first American road trip: The Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis & Clark, Indiana-based journalist Craig Fehrman’s immersive panorama, drawing on oral histories and long-buried sources, rescues this potted narrative from the usual classroom tales of two men and a canoe, for a revelatory portrait about mutual surprise, allowing equal time to both the discovers and the owners of the land being discovered.” —Chicago Tribune

“A valuable fresh look at a storied moment in American history . . . The book’s wide-angle perspective is appropriate, since Lewis and Clark favored a more democratic decision-making style than was usual on a military expedition, and the inclusion of multiple Native points of view makes it clear how complex and fraught the team’s mission was. Fehrman’s approach gives added depth to his chronicle of the breathtaking natural wonders encountered and extraordinary hardships overcome on the Corps’ transcontinental trek.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A piercing revisionist account of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s 1804 expedition . . . Readers will learn much from this revelatory unveiling of the raw humanity behind the hagiography.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“I followed Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s expedition to the Pacific in Craig Fehrman’s This Vast Enterprise. . . . I now feel as if I know how the Lewis and Clark team felt. . . . Lewis, Clark and several of the 30 men with them kept detailed journals, and Fehrman has drunk deeply from them as well as from recollections of the Native American leaders they encountered along the way. I felt like I was sharing the vistas, smells, discomforts, injuries, terrors (grizzly bears!) and occasional joys of an expedition now over 200 years back. . . . [Fehrman] scored a touchdown.” —John McWhorter, New York Times Opinion

“This Vast Enterprise [is] an ambitious, appropriately timed book. . . . The Lewis and Clark story sits at the intersection of American idealism and original sin—the pioneering spirit that defines American exceptionalism, and the displacement and slavery that shadowed it. Fehrman doesn't choose a side. He offers an optimistic view of America through a self-critical lens. . . . This Vast Enterprise has much to say about the well-known heroes. More importantly, it advances the story, helping us understand what drives Americans from all walks of life to venture into the unknown.” —Indianapolis Star

“A born storyteller . . . Fehrman spent five years crafting this frontier Rashomon . . . in which the journey unfolds through multiple viewpoints distilled from 30 archives and a hundred Native and other oral histories. What in less skillful hands might have been a mere travelogue becomes a cross-cultural, stunningly rendered rethink of Discoverers and Discovered. . . . Fehrman has written a rousing adventure tale that may also qualify as the most lyrical of survival guides.” —The Washington Free Beacon