Louisiana Purchase and Lewis and Clark Publications
March 10, 2010 at 2:16 pm Steve 1 comment
Today is the 106th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase.
On March 10, 1804 there was a formal ceremony in St. Louis to transfer ownership of the territory from Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte of France to the United States. This territory included most of the Westward Expansion of the U.S., with the present-day Midwest, Great Plains and Western states, plus New Mexico and Louisiana.
We offer you a wide selection of publications on the Lewis and Clark Expedition from 1804-1806. Below are two of our highlights:
The principal objective of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery 1804-06 was the mapping of the West to the Pacific Ocean. Clark’s final cartographic achievement was his 1814 engraved map. One of the great maps of all times, it is perhaps the single most influential one of the American West, for it was upon this map that our modern understanding of the topography of that vast areas would evolve.
The first publication of the Lewis and Clark journals was Nicholas Biddle’s 1814 two-volume chronological narrative containing the map. In 1998 there was another “run” of the map produced by means of offset lithography, printed by our affiliate the American Philosophical Society. Size: 2-1/2′ long x 14″. Tan. One thousand regular copies were printed, with Black plus 1 PMS ink for duotone. Also includes a 10-page booklet on the history of the expedition and the map.
Jefferson’s Botanists: Lewis and Clark Discover the Plants of the West
by Richard McCourt and Earle Spamer
(Academy of Natural Sciences, Paperback, 25 pages, $20)
This beautiful concise book discusses how Meriwether Lewis collected plant specimens on the journey of exploration that he and William Clark led across the American West to the Pacific Ocean & back, sent by President Thomas Jefferson. It includes facsimile excerpts from their original journals.
The task of plant collecting was Lewis’s military duty, but he seems to have had a real flair for collecting and describing the specimens. It is clear that he spent long hours observing the specimens, perhaps with a magnifying glass, cross-checking the anatomy of the plant before him with an illustrated edition of Linnaeus’s botany book.
The hundreds of Lewis and Clark specimens that survive today, known as the Lewis and Clark Herbarium, are stored in protective folders in special storage cabinets, in a climate controlled room at our affiliate, the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. Visiting scholars can readily retrieve and study the plants. Illus. (Paperback, 25 pages.)
Entry filed under: APS Publications, Publication Highlights. Tags: academy of natural sciences, america, american philosophical society, ans, aps, flowers, france, french, herbarium, history, lewis and clark, louisiana purchase, manifest destiny, map, meriwether lewis, napoleon, nicholas biddle, nonfiction, philadelphia, plants, specimens, thomas jefferson, u.s., united states, westward expansion, william clark.
Weekly Book Special: Savour of Ireland: A Photographic and Gastronomic Tour of Ireland a Century Ago St. Patrick’s Day and Irish/Ireland Books
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Google Preview 20,000 Publications on DianePublishing.net « Diane Publishing's Blog | April 1, 2010 at 9:31 am
[…] Now let’s try it out with the book “Jefferson’s Botanists,” published by our affiliate the Academy of Natural Sciences, which we also featured in an earlier post about Lewis and Clark publications. […]