Reviews Promised Lands: Promotion,Memory, and theCreation of the American West By David Wrobel University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, 2002. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. 336 pages. $34.95 cloth. Reviewed by Gene M. Gressley Jacksonville,Oregon Literature on frontierpromoters and boosters abounds. What distinguishes Promised Lands from the chants of thesehuck ster hustlings issimplythatitisawork of subtlety, fullofnuances.Wrobel challenges his readers to revise theirencrusted images offrontierboost ers, to treatbooster effusionsas being of signifi cance, not worthy of derision. A second tributary ofhis narrative centerson pioneer reminiscences. Wrobel explores themas sive streamof thesepersonal testimonies,teasing from theirflorid prose allusions thatwould es cape a less discerning historian. In his probing search to discover their undertow of import, Wrobel undertook massive research on thepe riodbetween 1895and 1920, which he documents in more than a hundred pages ofnotes and bib liography? a veritable thirdof thebook. Avoiding entrapment innarrativeflotsam of pioneer reminiscences and booster propaganda, Wrobel suggeststhatthe"true significanceof the frontier" may residemore in the remembered past than in authentic reality. Regardless of the impact of the frontieron the national psyche, chronicler and booster/promoter alike couched much of their"message" inverbiage thatgloried in thepast to thedetrimentof thepresent, justas theypitched theirtidingsthatthefrontierrepre sentedopportunity,not hardship, to theunwary immigrant. As case studies of thepioneers ? both indi vidual and, later, collectivelythroughpioneer so cieties ? Wrobel focuses on the Jayhawkers and EzraMeeker. The Jayhawkers, aftertheirremark able hegirawest, devoted their energies to pre servingtheirroles as epic heroes fortheyounger generations.Meeker recounted the journeywest forone and all, entreatinghis listenerstoappre ciatewhat the journeymeant forhis and subse quent generations. Both boosters and thosewho re-createdtheir personalizedWest sought through theirreserva tion mentality toperpetuate the westward expe rience as "wonderlands ofwhiteness," although one should quickly concede thatneitherpromot ersnor chroniclers weremonolithic intheirracial attitudes. Wrobel argues thatperhaps themost lasting contribution on race of these sagebrush clarionswas that theypresented a forum forde bate on the statusofminorities, be they Native Americans or eastern immigrants. As to the subject of place in the attitudes of boosters and chroniclers, Wrobel writes: "People oftendefine themselvesand theirplaces by refer ence to what they are, who they are not, and where theyarenot" (p. 193).Regionalism can be, Reviews 437 and frequently is, a retroactive process. As an elaboration of thispoint,Wrobel contends that when immigrants moved froman impacted area toone of "stock mythic imagery,"theyfrequently clung to thehoary legends of theirnew place. Wrobel haswritten an importantbook. How significant will be leftto futurehistorians of the West who probe these same paths, some hidden, somewell blazed.Wrobel concedes asmuch when hewarns at thebeginning thathis book was in tended as a surveyof the "contours" ofwestern promoters' offers and the pioneers' reminiscences. The Literature of theLewis and Clark Expedition: A Bibliography and Essays Essays by Stephen Dow Beckham, bibliography by Doug Erickson, JeremySkinner, and Paul Merchant Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Ore., 2003. Illustrations, photographs, notes, bibliography, index. 315 pages. $75.00 cloth. Reviewed by David L. Nicandri Washington StateHistorical Society,Tacoma This is the type of Bo o K one imagines Thomas Jefferson would have found ap pealing: a Linnean-like catalogue of specimens, in thiscase thepublished literatureof theCorps of Discovery. This term, we learnhere, though the ubiquitous moniker for the enterprise, never ac tually appeared in the original documentary record but rather was coined and first appeared as the subtitle to Sergeant Patrick Gass's unau thorized but first-out-of-the-gate account, pub lished in 1807. The heft and production values of thisvol ume are amarvel, approximated inmy own ex perience onlyby the recent Atlas oftheLewis and ClarkExpedition, editedbyGaryMoulton, orKarl Bodmers America. The book isorganized into a seriesof essaysand attendantbibliographies. The latterare expanded so as to identifythose items tobe found specificallyintheholdings of theLewis and Clark College library. Many of these came to the institutionthrough theprodigious efforts of several regional bookmen, most notably Roger Wendlick. Students of the expedition will find thefirst two chapters ? analyses of the expedition's trav eling library and of theearliestexpedition-related accounts? tobe the most valuable in termsof interpretivecontent. StephenDow Beckham, the essayist forthepublication team,provides a fas cinatingreconciliationof journal entries with pas sages from those books in the libraryLewis put together that likely inspired particular observa tionsmade in the field. In so doing, Beckham seems,oddly, tohave overlooked the most...