Oddities, Delights, and even Dark Corners of one of America's most famous frontiersman are explored in this newly released book. The Character of Meriwether Lewis: Completely Metamorphosed in the American West, the first book in a series is Clay Jenkinson's scholarly view on an American hero's complex character. He examines the nature of Meriwether Lewis starting with his boyhood and continues through the dark despair of alcoholism, depression and finally his suicide. 
Not just a dry historical account of Meriwether Lewis' life but an insight into a complex man with many quirks. The hilarity of Lewis' obsession with clothes and food together with the sadness of his depression are sure to stir your emotions. Clay gives readers new lenses into the character of Meriwether Lewis.

The Character of Meriwether Lewis: "Completely Metamorphosed" in the American West

Clay Straus Jenkinson

The Marmarth Institute

"I call it the sacred corridor. That's a poetic name for a district that most people would do anything to avoid, a corridor travelers pass through as quickly as possible, with their souls and windows closed, and describe later as the flatest, dreariest, most isolated country they have ever seen. 
This book is a love song to that lonely country...I call it the landscape of the improbable. The promise of America is that we will create a society equal to the magnificence of the continent on which we have planted it. It is not quite too late. I remember how inspired I felt the first time I heard Wallace Stegner's phrase, 'a society to match the landscape.' 
At a time when rural America has fewer advocates than at any previous era in our history, I wish to argue that our national renewal must come from the empty quarter, the backwater villages and the unvisited buttes of the American West. As a nation, we are being destroyed by mobility, abstraction from nature, alienation from the macrobiotics of the food chain and the food supply, and addiction to homogenized comforts that deracinate us from the life of the spirit. This is a book about spirit of place."

Message on the Wind: A Spiritual Odyssey on the Northern Plains

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Marmath Pr

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Clay Straus Jenkinson. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Clay Straus Jenkinson

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Clay Straus Jenkinson. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Character of Meriwether Lewis: "Completely Metamorphosed" in the American West

Message on the Wind: A Spiritual Odyssey on the Northern Plains