Craig Fehrman — This Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis and Clark
Historian Craig Fehrman offers a major revisionist account of Lewis and Clark, restoring overlooked voices and consequences of the expedition.
Why we picked this
The Lewis and Clark story most Americans know is the adventure version. Fehrman's revisionist history restores what was left out — the Indigenous perspectives, the consequences, the politics behind the myth.
The Lewis and Clark expedition is one of America’s foundational narratives — and, like most foundational narratives, the version most people know omits as much as it includes. Craig Fehrman’s major revisionist history restores the voices, consequences, and political context that have been systematically left out of the standard account.
This is not a debunking. Fehrman takes the expedition seriously as a historical event while insisting that a more accurate and complete account is also a more interesting one. The result challenges assumptions about exploration, westward expansion, and the origins of American mythology.
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