Undaunted Courage, written by Stephan E. Ambrose, is the tale of a hero, but it is also a tragedy. In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson selected his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to lead a pioneering voyage across the Great Plains and into the Rockies. It was completely uncharted territory; a wild, vast land ruled by the Indians. Lewis may have received a hero's welcome on his return to Washington in 1806, but his discoveries did not match the president's fantasies of sweeping, fertile plains ripe for the taking. Feeling the expedition had been a failure, Lewis took to drink and piled up debts. Full of colorful characters - Jefferson, the president obsessed with conquering the west; William Clark, the rugged frontiersman; Sacagawea, the Indian girl who accompanied the expedition; Drouillard, the French-Indian hunter - this is one of the great adventure stories of all time and it shot to the top of the US bestseller charts. Drama, suspense, danger and diplomacy combine with romance and personal tragedy making Undaunted Courage an outstanding work of scholarship and a thrilling adventure. Stephen Edward Ambrose was an American historian and biographer of U.S. …show more content…
Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He was a longtime professor of history at the University of New Orleans and the author of many bestselling volumes of American popular history. His many books, including the New York Times bestsellers Undaunted Courage and D-Day, as well as multi-volume biographies of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. Historian Stephen Ambrose died of lung cancer on October 13, 2002, in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, at the age of 66. The author of more than 35 books, he was an historian who became a best-selling author. Much of his career he was a professor at the University of New Orleans where he founded the Eisenhower Center for American Studies. He also founded the National D-Day Museum. It was a copy of the journals of Lewis and Clark, given to him by an aunt, that sparked Ambrose’s interest in the subject. It was from these journals that the Ambrose got the idea of where to spend the nation’s two hundredth birthday. He and his family would follow the trail of the expedition and on the Fourth of July, they would camp at Lemhi Pass, where Lewis became the first white man to cross the continental divide. The camaraderie felt on the trail drew the Ambrose family back every summer. It was only a matter of time before Ambrose felt compelled to write about the story he loves. Ambrose has walked the trail many times, and had even invited people …show more content…
What Lewis and Clark were facing was not just the physical obstacles of the land and the Indians, but the obstacles of the American leaders. The story implemented a detailed account of the courage, determination and resourceful self sufficiency displayed by these men and their companies to complete the expedition. While still giving great attention to the science, geography and their everyday life on the journey. Then in the very end, including that the success of mapping and documentation of Indian tribes, and new animals and plants could not sustain Lewis. He had trouble writing up the official account of the expedition and could not master the challenges of administration required in his appointment as Governor of the Louisiana Territory. Financial troubles and alcohol abuse appear to have contributed to his decline and the suicide inferred by