Beyond the Hundredth Meridian : John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West

by Stegner, Wallace (Author)

• ISBN13: 9780140159943
• ISBN10: 0140159940
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1992-03-01
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)

Summary

In this book Wallace Stegner recounts the sucesses and frustrations of John Wesley Powell, the distinguished ethnologist and geologist who explored the Colorado River, the Grand Canyon, and the homeland of Indian tribes of the American Southwest. A prophet without honor who had a profound understanding of the American West, Powell warned long ago of the dangers economic exploitation would pose to the West and spent a good deal of his life overcoming Washington politics in getting his message across. Only now, we may recognize just how accurate a prophet he was. "This book goes far beyond biography, into the nature and soul of the American West. It is Stegner at his best, assaying an entire era of our history, packing his pages with insights as shrewd as his prose." --Ivan Doig

Table of Contents

Introduction	xv
Bernard DeVoto
The Threshold	1	(115)
The Plateau Province	116	(86)
Blueprint for a Dryland Democracy	202	(41)
The Revenue of New Discovery	243	(51)
The Opportunity	294	(57)
The Inheritance	351	(18)
Notes	369	(51)
Index	420