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John Wesley Powell
- The Life and Legacy of One of 19th Century America’s Most Influential Explorers
- Narrated by: Steven Groothuis
- Length: 1 hr and 46 mins
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Publisher's summary
“The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately represented in symbols of speech, nor by speech itself. The resources of the graphic art are taxed beyond their powers in attempting to portray its features. Language and illustration combined must fail. You cannot see the Grand Canyon in one view as if it were a changeless spectacle from which a curtain might be lifted, but to see it, you have to toil from month to month through its labyrinths.” (John Wesley Powell)
Exploration of the early American West, beginning with Lewis and Clark’s transcontinental trek at the behest of President Thomas Jefferson, was not accomplished by standing armies, the era’s new steam train technology, or by way of land grabs. These came later, but not until pathways known only to a few of the land’s indigenous people were discovered, carved out, and charted in an area stretching from the eastern Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, and the present-day borders of Mexico and Canada.
Even the great survey parties, such as Colonel William Powell’s exploration of the Colorado River, came decades later. The first views of the West’s enormity by white Americans were seen by individuals of an entirely different personality, in an era that could only exist apart from its home civilization. One of the men most responsible for the closing of the frontier was John Wesley Powell, arguably the best-known American explorer after Lewis and Clark. He was lionized for a long portion of his life and vilified for another.
Powell was a competent man, self-confident and able to instill confidence in his abilities to lead, and his expeditions helped Americans better understand the West, an impressive achievement for the son of English immigrants who wanted him to become a Methodist preacher. Instead, he became America’s most influential scientist, without the kind of academic training required to rise to that position today.
As if the achievements alone weren’t enough, he managed to accomplish them despite physical handicaps. He was a schoolteacher at the age of 18, and throughout his twenties, he conducted solo voyages up and down the Mississippi, from New Orleans to St. Paul. He did the same on the Ohio River from Pittsburgh to the Mississippi, in addition to exploring the Illinois and Des Moines Rivers.
During the Civil War, Powell was a Union officer who rose to the rank of major, and even after he lost an arm at the Battle of Shiloh, he performed critical engineering work in the Vicksburg Campaign and commanded artillery at the Battle of Nashville. After the war, he virtually created the United States Geologic Survey and the Bureau of Ethnology and brought serious scientific study to American landforms, geology, and the study of native peoples. He was also one of the founders of the influential National Geographic Society.
That said, Powell’s legacy is complex. His creation, the United States Geological Survey, continues to do important work, as it has for more than a century, and is one of the most respected scientific agencies in the world. He is seen as a forerunner by environmentalists due to his views on water use and development in the West. But Powell is also seen as something like the patron saint of the Bureau of Reclamation, which environmentalists consider an enemy.
John Wesley Powell: The Life and Legacy of One of 19th Century America’s Most Influential Explorers chronicles Powell’s dramatic life, his most important expeditions, and the impact he had on the West.
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- The Epic Story of Yellowstone
- By: George Black
- Narrated by: Jack de Golia
- Length: 16 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Empire of Shadows is the epic story of the conquest of Yellowstone, a landscape uninhabited, inaccessible, and shrouded in myth in the aftermath of the Civil War. In a radical reinterpretation of the 19th century West, George Black casts Yellowstone's creation as the culmination of three interwoven strands of history.
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Paints a big picture
- By Gail Thomalla on 07-13-21
By: George Black
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Henry Knox's Noble Train
- The Story of a Boston Bookseller's Heroic Expedition That Saved the American Revolution
- By: William Hazelgrove
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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During the brutal winter of 1775-1776, an untested Boston bookseller named Henry Knox commandeered an oxen train hauling 60 tons of cannons and other artillery from Fort Ticonderoga near the Canadian border. He and his men journeyed some 300 miles south and east over frozen, often treacherous terrain to supply George Washington for his attack of British troops occupying Boston. The result was the British surrender of Boston and the first major victory for the Colonial Army.
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A must listen
- By Ronald Kern on 01-15-24
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Jungle of Stone
- The True Story of Two Men, Their Extraordinary Journey, and the Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Maya
- By: William Carlsen
- Narrated by: Paul Michael Garcia
- Length: 16 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1839 rumors of extraordinary yet baffling stone ruins buried within the unmapped jungles of Central America reached two of the world's most intrepid travelers. Seized by the reports, American diplomat John Lloyd Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwood sailed together out of New York Harbor on an expedition into the forbidding rainforests of present-day Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. What they found would rewrite the West's understanding of human history.
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Unsung Explorers at the Heart of History
- By thomas on 01-10-17
By: William Carlsen
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Old Man River
- The Mississippi River in North American History
- By: Paul Schneider
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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In Old Man River, Paul Schneider tells the story of the river at the center of America's rich history - the Mississippi. Some fifteen thousand years ago, the majestic river provided Paleolithic humans with the routes by which early man began to explore the continent's interior. Since then, the river has been the site of historical significance, from the arrival of Spanish and French explorers in the 16th century to the Civil War. George Washington fought his first battle near the river, and Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman both came to President Lincoln's attention after their spectacular victories on the lower Mississippi.
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Amazing, inspiring and informative
- By Rodney Curlee on 04-27-23
By: Paul Schneider
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The Suppressed History of America
- The Murder of Meriwether Lewis and the Mysterious Discoveries of the Lewis and Clark Expedition
- By: Paul Schrag, Xaviant Haze
- Narrated by: Allan Robertson
- Length: 5 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Meriwether Lewis discovered far more than the history books tell - ancient civilizations, strange monuments, "nearly white, blue-eyed" Indians, and evidence that the American continent was visited long before the first European settlers arrived. And he was murdered to keep it all secret. Examining the shadows and cracks between America's official version of history, Xaviant Haze and Paul Schrag propose that the America of old taught in schools is not the America that was discovered by Lewis and Clark and other early explorers.
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Don't Bother
- By Georgia Deardoff on 03-31-17
By: Paul Schrag, and others
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Into the Silence
- The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest
- By: Wade Davis
- Narrated by: Enn Reitel
- Length: 28 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In this magisterial work of history and adventure, based on more than a decade of prodigious research in British, Canadian, and European archives, and months in the field in Nepal and Tibet, Wade Davis vividly re-creates British climbers’ epic attempts to scale Mount Everest in the early 1920s. With new access to letters and diaries, Davis recounts the heroic efforts of George Mallory and his fellow climbers to conquer the mountain in the face of treacherous terrain and furious weather.
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He wrote exquisite Eel-agies?
- By Florence on 11-29-12
By: Wade Davis
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Dreams of El Dorado
- A History of the American West
- By: H. W. Brands
- Narrated by: Matt Kugler
- Length: 17 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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In Dreams of El Dorado, H. W. Brands tells the thrilling, panoramic story of the settling of the American West. He takes us from John Jacob Astor's fur trading outpost in Oregon to the Texas Revolution, from the California gold rush to the Oklahoma land rush. He shows how the migrants' dreams drove them to feats of courage and perseverance that put their stay-at-home cousins to shame - and how those same dreams also drove them to outrageous acts of violence against indigenous peoples and one another. El Dorado was at least as elusive in the West as it ever was in the East.
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Dreadful narration
- By Fredmo on 12-09-19
By: H. W. Brands
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Blood and Thunder
- An Epic of the American West
- By: Hampton Sides
- Narrated by: Don Leslie
- Length: 20 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 1846, the Army of the West marched through Santa Fe, en route to invade and occupy the Western territories claimed by Mexico. Fueled by the new ideology of “Manifest Destiny,” this land grab would lead to a decades-long battle between the United States and the Navajos, the fiercely resistant rulers of a huge swath of mountainous desert wilderness.
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Publisher's summary does not do it justice
- By Eric on 02-07-11
By: Hampton Sides
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Off the Edge of the Map
- Marco Polo, Captain Cook, and 9 Other Travelers and Explorers That Pushed the Boundaries of the Known World
- By: Michael Rank
- Narrated by: Kevin Pierce
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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An exciting new audiobook on the greatest explorers in history and how their discoveries shaped the modern world. Whether it is Rabban Bar Sauma, the 13th-century Chinese monk commissioned by the Mongols to travel West form a military alliance against the Islam; Marco Polo, who opened a window to the East for Europe; or Captain James Cook, whose maritime voyages of discovery created the global economy of the 21st century, each of these explorers had an indelible impact on the modern world. This audiobook will look at the 11 greatest explorers in history.
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Fascinating stories, delivery sometimes cringe-y
- By Oliver on 10-02-14
By: Michael Rank
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The Training Ground
- Grant, Lee, Sherman, and Davis in the Mexican War 1846-1848
- By: Martin Dugard
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Nearly all of the Civil War's greatest soldiers - Grant, Lee, Sherman, Davis, and Jackson - were forged in the heat of the Mexican War. This is their story. At this fascinating juncture of American history, a group of young men came together to fight as friends - only, years later, to fight again as enemies.
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Excellent Story
- By Richard on 05-16-09
By: Martin Dugard
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A Crack in the Edge of the World
- America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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San Francisco Earthquake that leveled a city symbolic of America's relentless western expansion. Simon Winchester has also fashioned an enthralling and informative informative look at the tumultuous subterranean world that produces earthquakes, the planet's most sudden and destructive force. In the early morning hours of April 18, 1906, San Francisco and a string of towns to its north-northwest and the south-southeast were overcome by an enormous shaking that was compounded by the violent shocks of an earthquake, registering 8.25 on the Richter scale.
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7 Hours and 45 minutes . . .
- By Tim on 12-09-05
By: Simon Winchester
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War on the Run: The Epic Story of Robert Rogers and the Conquest of America's First Frontier
- By: John F. Ross
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Often hailed as the godfather of today's elite special forces, Robert Rogers trained and led an unorthodox unit of green provincials, raw woodsmen, farmers, and Indian scouts on "impossible" missions in colonial America that are still the stuff of soldiers' legend. The child of marginalized Scots-Irish immigrants, Rogers learned to survive in New England's dark and deadly forests, grasping, as did few others, that a new world required new forms of warfare. John F. Ross not only re-creates Rogers's life and his spectacular battles with breathtaking immediacy and meticulous accuracy...
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WOW!!!
- By Olaf the Black on 11-23-18
By: John F. Ross
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The Pioneers
- The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West
- By: David McCullough
- Narrated by: John Bedford Lloyd
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The number one New York Times best seller by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough rediscovers an important chapter in the American story that's "as resonant today as ever" (The Wall Street Journal) - the settling of the Northwest Territory by courageous pioneers who overcame incredible hardships to build a community based on ideals that would define our country.
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i would prefer david reading it
- By hooterwah on 05-07-19
By: David McCullough