| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 38.2

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 38.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Life and Times of the Steamboat Red Cloud or How Merchants, Mounties, and the Missouri Transformed the West. By Annalies Corbin. Foreword by William E. Lass. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006. xvii + 145 pp. Illustrations, maps, tables, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. $45.00, cloth; $19.95, paper.)

Many histories of nineteenth-century western transportation focus on overland trails or railroad routes. Corbin's book is one of the few that highlights the important role of western rivers during the nineteenth century. She reminds us that the Missouri River "was the most direct route to the land, resources, and people that lay beyond the settled regions of the Mississippi Valley and the eastern seaboard" (p. 8). She claims that the "settlement of the borderland West was dependent on the Missouri River as its central supply artery prior to the coming of the railroad" (p. 4). Corbin uses the records of the steamboat Red Cloud and the vessel's owner, the I. G. Baker & Company, as the basis of this history. This book is more than the history of a steamboat. It is a succinct case study of the business of western expansion.

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