This is my podcast introduction to an interview I just did with Craig Furman.

Craig Furman has written a new book about the Lewis and Clark expedition, a major book,

This Vast Enterprise, A New History of Lewis and Clark.

It's just out, Avid Reader Press.

It's his second book.

His previous book was about presidents writing, author and chief, which got extraordinary reviews, including in the Wall Street Journal.

Greg Furman lives in Indiana with his wife and children.

And the book is going to be in the bookstores within days here.

I've read the book carefully.

I've marked up the margin hundreds of times.

Um, I disagree with some things in this book, but it is an important piece of scholarship.

And at the end, he does something really truly

remarkable. Before he begins his footnotes on chapter X, whatever it's about, Sacajawea, as he

calls her, or York, the enslaved man, or Lewis, or Clark, or John Ordway, the first sergeant.

He has a little essay on his historiography, how he

searched the book, what's speculative and what's not, the secondary and tertiary sources that

he consulted. He provides a really interesting sort of essay perspective on each of the chapters

that he's writing. If you get the book, I would urge you to read those essays at the end in the footnotes

before you read the chapter because it will help you understand, help you negotiate his

methodology.

Anyway, it's an important book.

And my friend David Nacandri and I have been having this debate about it. I'm more critical

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