Man, this was a great book. Yes, there are plenty of misspellings but honestly not super difficult to read through them. I learned so much about their journey and it made me really want to further my outdoor pursuits more.

You really learn how challenging their journey was, particularly on the way back. They ate so many dogs that is pretty nasty and it was weird reading Lewis write about he longed for dog meat at Fort Astoria after surviving mainly on elk for months. The promises they made to the Indians were truly heartbreaking as centuries later we all know how it turned out for them. I don't think this is what Lewis & Clark intended to happen but being US Military maybe they were indifferent to how it would eventually turn out.

Bernard DeVoto does an excellent job of summarizing the best of their entries. He also does an excellent job adding footnotes for confusing details or geographic points that have changed, such as names of rivers. He also notes how Thomas Jefferson should have sent a ship to the mouth of the Columbia River to resupply them on their way back. They had almost run out of necessary supplies and merchandise to trade which makes the journey back even more difficult.

Reading this book you really learn a lot, much more than you are taught in school and a ton about the relationships with the different tribes, such as the Indians at Fort Clatsop withholding a ship visiting during Lewis & Clark's stay there and the physical altercation on the way back in Western Montana after Lewis had split up to explore the Marias River.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in history, especially those who like the 1800s era and mountain men stories in general.

It was cool to read a primary source like this for my class. It was much more engaging than I was expecting; it was definitely striking to see the inhabited "wilderness" of America through the cultural lenses of early 19th century men.

Probably the best revelation: the translations when they met a new tribe, which were like games of telephone. They seemed to collect people who spoke several languages, but only overlapped someone else with one. So a question could go from English to French to Hidatsa to Shoshone to Nez Perce (I may be forgetting one or two), and then the answer would come back down the line. Add in the unreliability of some links, like Charbonneau, and it's incredible they were so successful.

This collection of Lewis and Clark's journals was unexpectedly awesome and a real page-turner, despite clocking in around 600 pages. I can't remember what compelled me to add this tome to my next-up pile, but man this was fun to read. L&C's reconnaissance of the largely unknown area that would become the western half of the United Stares is not only one of the most important American expeditions, but also one of the greatest travelogues of all time. These guys are the actual definition of the rugged explorer venturing into uncharted territories and a good reminder of all the impossibly brave acts that led to the rise of the American empire.

This is an amazing story for so many reasons, starting with Jefferson's instructions to Meriwether Lewis, which for me sums up what our national character is (should be). The way the character of the trip evolves over time (the difference between the outward-bound and homeward-bound journal entries is particularly striking), the abiding amity among the members of the expedition, their resourcefulness and sheer determination to do the job......I was in awe and completely absorbed through the whole book. The afterword, by Herman J. Viola, is an excellent summation, and it also answered my one gripe, which is that the book is not illustrated. One of Jefferson's few miscalculations about the expedition, he writes, was failing to send an artist along. Ken Burns's documentary corrects this error and makes a great supplement to the journals. A must-read for every American.

The only thing I learned from this book was the fact that Lewis and Clark didn't know proper spelling or basic grammar and the editor of this book (Bernard Devoto) was too lazy to go beyond copying and pasting the text which is full of spelling and grammatical errors which make the book pretty unreadable. I can't believe they even bothered to publish this.

What a bunch of legends - some of the entries are a little dry, mostly in the beginning and end, but there's plenty of drama during the journey that kept me entertained. Probably the highlight was an indian attack when Lewis and Clark split up at one point on the journey back. Overall, it's just really cool to read something like this - the diaries of people exploring untouched land for the first time and on the forefront of creating a country. Very very cool.

I enjoyed this book because, much like the country Lewis and Clark were exploring, it is largely left to the reader to figure out; with no extensive explanation or endless footnotes, with no epilogue and only a brief introduction. We are left to wonder what Lewis means when he talks about “our jugglers”, or what the actual hell a “penis do.” is- whatever it is, they ordered four of them to bring along on their journey. As an amateur linguist, I enjoy imagining Lewis and Clark’s voices from the way they have spelled certain words. All this would be lost if the journals had been edited or standardised for readability.

There are downsides to these unexpurgated texts, however. Numerous times I silently begged Lewis to just draw a goddamn picture instead of entering his third page of attempting to describe in words a particular shirt a native man was wearing. He was clearly a man who, when faced with something that has a strong impact on him, feels an overwhelming desire to describe it in great detail. Numerous times I can imagine his raccoon-skin hat spinning round and steam coming out of his ears when he encounters a native woman with exposed breasts or clothing that is made in a way that “when she stoops or places herself in any other attitude this battery of Venus is not altogether impervious to the penetrating eye of the amorite”. Great, you could see up her skirt, got it. Calm down!

If Lewis is the uptight one then Clark is the loose cannon of the pair. He frequently expresses his emotions in his entries, complaining about the weather, the reaction to the natives and just about everything else. I laughed out loud when he described the wife of a chief as “a sulky bitch”. Some things never change.

Overall, it’s a fascinating look, not only into the journey and everything they encountered, but also into the mentality of these early white Americans. They’re not hostile to the native people, and they aren’t overtly racist, they respond in kind.

Some things that did annoy me or begin to grate were:
-Lewis and Clark copying each other or repeating their own entries
-Lewis’s lengthy and dull descriptions of plants and animals
-I had just a vague idea of where they were on the map at any time
-No real narrative apart from “We are going west” and then “we are coming back again”
-If you’re an animal lover, be aware that they do reference eating dogs and horses numerous times (and at one point Clark straight-up throws a puppy in a man’s face as hard as he can)