Powell organized and managed the first scientific dory ride through the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. Soon thereafter, he became the second director of the U.S. Geological Survey and, much later, the director of the Bureau of Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution. Powell recorded his experiences in a number of books and articles, but A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell by Donald Worster is, according to the publisher’s blurb, the “first biography of this towering figure in almost fifty years.” The book is extremely well documented with thirty-five pages of notes and thirty-three pages of bibliographic references.
