"Mark Twain's "Life on the Mississippi" and "Huckleberry Finn" have stamped on the world's imagination for all time the picture of Mississippi River travel. Forever the big river will be locked in the ninteenth century, flanked by live oaks festooned with Spanish moss and peopled by steamboat pilots spinning gigantic steering wheels to battle treacherous currents, scalawag boys running away on jerry-built rafts, and handsome card sharps skinning their victims with their irresistible charm and appalling morals."
So writes Bern Keating in the introduction to this extraordinary representation of America's most celebrated river. in pictures and prose, author Theodor Geus and a group of distinguished photographers show us the many faces of the "Father of Waters," following the route of the French and Spanish explorers to the river's headwaters near the Canadian border and south to the Passes of the Mississippi Delta--more than two thousand miles of scenic grandeur.
Along the way are the sights and sounds of today's Mississippi, from the wild rice fields of Minnesota, past Indian mounds, logging camps, dairy farms, and spectacular bluffs, past abandoned utopias and thriving industrial cities, to the antebellum riverboat towns and sultry bayous of the Deep South, to the teeming marshlands of the Delta.
Here too are the people whose names are forever associated with the Mississippi--from De Soto, Marquette, and La Salle to Mark Twain, William Faulkner, and Louis Armstrong.Geus's informative and entertaining text complements the 150 superb color photographs by Nathan Benn, Thomas England, Joseph Holmes, Larry Knutson, Clyde Lockwood, Jerry Stebbins, and others. Here is a treat for the lover of history, the armchair adventurer, the wildlife enthusiast, and all who care to follow the lure of the mighty Mississippi.