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Merle

Merle

Old Man River by Paul Schneider

Old Man River: The Mississippi River in North American History - Paul Schneider

This is a quirky mix of historical anecdotes with a bit of the author’s personal travels, endearing if not particularly cohesive. The geographical scope is quite broad, encompassing areas of the Mississippi River basin quite removed from the river itself (40% of the U.S. is in the Mississippi basin, though the points Schneider writes about are either along the river or east of it). Early sections cover the river basin’s geological history, and then move into Native American history mostly via archaeology, and the section on colonial explorations and warfare is extensive; we’re more than halfway through the book before the United States as a country is born. Because the book is not long and the time period covered is, the author seems to just tell us the stories that suit his fancy, which produce an interesting mix. The portions dealing with Native American history have been done better in, for instance, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, though on the other hand I think this is the most in-depth treatment of the French colonial/exploratory presence in the future U.S. that I’ve ever seen, which speaks to their treatment in most histories as no more than nebulous antagonists off in the woods somewhere.

My favorite part was the 60-page “Life on the Mississippi” segment set between the Revolution and Civil War, covering boat travel up and down the river both before and after the introduction of steamboats, and also river pirates and the like. The Civil War section seems disproportionately long at around 40 pages, and was less interesting to me, and then the book wraps up with a couple of chapters on the extensive dams and other artificial changes made to the river since and their environmental impacts. Long story short, alterations to make the river easier to navigate and reduce yearly flooding also reduce the sediment settling at the mouth of the river to the point that Louisiana is losing a huge amount of land area every year, while major floods are even more frequent and destructive.

There are interspersed chapters about the author’s various travels on and around the river, which are not particularly eventful but are clearly meaningful to him, and add some emotional dimension to the book. Also, on one trip he takes his teenaged son and they run along the top of a train stopped by the side of the river, which makes him a super cool dad.

Overall, this book is kind of scattershot – the author is pretty clearly just relating whatever historical anecdotes are most interesting to him, without making any attempts at being comprehensive, and it would be easy to nitpick what’s included and what’s not. However, it’s pretty well-written and as light supplemental history and travel reading it’s perfectly fine.