BEYOND LEWIS AND CLARK:
The Army Explores the West
 Beyond Lewis and Clark: The Army Explores the West is a companion volume to the exhibition by the same name, organized by the Washington State Historical Society. With stops at the Virginia, Washington, Kansas, and Missouri Historical Societies, Beyond Lewis and Clark, the exhibition, is one of the most ambitious interpretive projects of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial.
Written by James Ronda—one of the preeminent Lewis and Clark scholars, H. G. Barnard Chair in Western History at the University of Tulsa, and former president of the Western History Association—Beyond Lewis and Clark, the book, offers a corrective vision of the history of the expedition. The nearly exclusive attention paid to Lewis and Clark of late has cast the broader pattern of army exploration in the West into obscurity. In this volume Ronda places Lewis and Clark within the larger perspective of Enlightenment-era science and empire-building and establishes how the Jeffersonian model of exploration endured to varying degrees via other army expeditions. In this regard, particular attention is paid to the pivotal figure in the evolution of the "Army in the West"—John C. Frémont—and other notable explorers, including Stephen H. Long and Isaac I. Stevens. In a path-breaking interpretation, Ronda even places the pre-Little Big Horn exploratory ventures of George Armstrong Custer within the paradigm established by Lewis and Clark's initial foray.
120 pages, 30 illustrations (including 11 maps), and bibliography; $14.95 paper.
Available in August 2003 at the Pendleton Museum Store inside the Washington
State History Museum or at a book store near you. To order by phone call the
Pendleton Museum Store at 253/798-5880.
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