Spooky's House Of Books

The surprising story of how Thomas Jefferson commanded an unrivaled age of American exploration—and in presiding over that era of discovery, forged a great nation.
At the dawn of the nineteenth century, as Britain, France, Spain, and the United States all jockeyed for control of the vast expanses west of the Mississippi River, the stakes for American expansion were incalculably high. Even after the American purchase of the Louisiana Territory, Spain still coveted that land and was prepared to employ any means to retain it. With war expected at any moment, Jefferson played a game of strategy, putting on the ground the only Americans he could: a cadre of explorers who finally annexed it through courageous investigation.

Responsible for orchestrating the American push into the continent was President Thomas Jefferson. He most famously recruited Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who led the Corps of Discovery to the Pacific, but at the same time there were other teams who did the same work, in places where it was even more crucial. William Dunbar, George Hunter, Thomas Freeman, Peter Custis, and the dauntless Zebulon Pike—all were dispatched on urgent missions to map the frontier and keep up a steady correspondence with Washington about their findings.

But they weren’t always well-matched—with each other and certainly not with a Spanish army of a thousand soldiers or more. These tensions threatened to undermine Jefferson’s goals for the nascent country, leaving the United States in danger of losing its foothold in the West. Deeply researched and inspiringly told, Jefferson’s America rediscovers the robust and often harrowing action from these seminal expeditions and illuminates the president’s vision for a continental America

My thoughts on it:
five stars all the way
I have to say that I loved this book and so glad that I picked it up to read:
what did I love about it:
1:how well researched it was and that it contains lots of information about the early explorers including Meriweather Lewis, William Clark, Zebulon Peak, Peter Custis, William Dunbar, Thomas Freeman, George Hunter and James Wilkinson
2:the old black and white photos and paintings
3:readable narrative and is enhanced by its access points
4: how it seems to just pull you in to the story and that you can almost feel and see what is happing
5: the maps
ok so I loved everything about it, what's not to love ,this book brings to life the history of the people as well as the times that the book take place in, I .was provided with a free copy of this book by Blogging for Books and I have to say thinks to them because with out them I might not of picked it up, there's so much in this book that I didn't even know,.Its a Must read to any one who loves history just as much as I do.