Mississippi Currents: Journeys Through Time and a Valley

Wedding Malcolm's lyrical, muscular prose to Straus's wonderfully evocative, often wistful photographs, this memorable travelogue explores the Mississippi River as a diverse waterway, vital economic route, elemental natural force and living symbol of the mid-American psyche. By ship, barge and on foot, the authors followed the Mississippi's entire course, from northern Minnesota's woods through thriving heartland riverfront towns to the ""chemical alley"" of Baton Rouge, lined with refineries and factories, ending in the Gulf's watery wilds. They interview park rangers, hydraulic engineers, a riverboat casino operator, a bank president, witnesses to the flood of 1993, mingling personal stories with snippets of history and observations on the intrepid, inventive spirit of a region that spawned the airplane, the steel plow, Mark Twain, American populism and half the presidents since the Civil War. Their deceptively leisurely journey becomes a quest for the soul of America. Malcolm is a policy adviser to Montana's governor; Straus is chair of High Tide Press. Author tour. (Nov.)