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Beyond the Hundredth Meridian

John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West

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Beyond the Hundredth Meridian

Written by: Wallace Stegner
Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
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Buy Now for $32.71

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About this listen

Pulitzer Prize winner Wallace Stegner recounts the remarkable career of Major John Wesley Powell, the distinguished ethnologist and geologist who explored the Colorado River, the Grand Canyon, and the homeland of the Southwest Indian tribes. This classic work is a penetrating and insightful study of the Powell’s career, from the beginning of the Powell Survey, in which Powell and his men famously became the first to descend the Colorado River, to his eventual expulsion from the Geological Survey.

In masterful prose, Stegner details the expedition, as well as the philosophies and ideas that drove Powell.

©1954 Wallace E. Stegner (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Adventurers, Explorers & Survival Americas Professionals & Academics Science & Technology United States World Latin America Biography Old West Wild West

What the critics say

"Stegner's most exciting work." ( San Francisco Chronicle)
“The surrender of self-righteousness would be an enormous boon to the environmental cause. Acknowledging the unedited, complicated, utilitarian John Wesley Powell as an ideological parent would be a big step in that laudable direction, and it is this step that Worster's thorough and empathetic biography makes possible.” ( Los Angeles Times)
“No library of western/southwestern materials can be without this book…” ( Books of the Southwest)
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Most Relevant
Really enjoyed this book but I find the audio format suboptimal for these dense books with many names. (Similar to the Cadillac Desert.) Besides that, the story of John Wesley Powell is inspirational. As a hydrologist, I can see his ideas relevancy. He was ahead of his time and makes me wonder how things would be different if he has more support for his ideas.

Fascinating but dense

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