Product Description William Bartram's Travels is an informative and eloquent testimony to his explorations of the American Southeast. His descriptions of plants, animals, and human life, penned in the early years of the American Revolution, cover the region from the Smokies to Florida to the Mississippi River. Jim Kautz retraces Bartram's trail. Through stories and descriptions, supplemented with exhaustive research, he compares the early American landscape with that of today. He shares his perspective on what has happened to the Southland's people and places over the years of our nation's pilgrimage
Customer Reviews:
Past and Present Create Interest June 20, 2007 I have enjoyed reading this book, especially after my recent travels through several areas of Florida described in the text. The mixture of history, current events, and observations makes the book very readable.
Great "then and now" narrative, especially for Southerners May 17, 2007 For those who live in the south (specifically, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, or the Carolinas), this is a fascinating mix of history, arachaeology, and travelogue. Kautz' deep love and admiration for the region shows through in his excursions -- whether by boat, by foot, or by land vehicle -- into these lands, many of which, he notes, have been ecologically altered forever since Bartram's time. You get a real sense of each place as it is today -- the encroachment of chain restaurants and environmental degradation as well as the "untouched" areas, and you get to meet a bevy of local citizens and visting sportsmen, tourists, etc. at each locale, which really fleshes out the landscapes. The only flaw, to my mind, is the hand-wringing over the loss of natural habitats and the homogenization of unique cultures, which is a little maudlin and melodramatic at (very few) times. The point would've been made quite effectively without the editorial comments. For the most part, though, this is kept to a minimum, and Kautz lets the land and the residents tell the story for him.
highly recommend May 3, 2007 If you have read and delighted in the writing of Harvey Broome, Horace Kephart, or Michael Frome, seen the photographs of Jim Thompson, or know of Chapman, Guyot or Sterling or remember any of the tale of King's Mountain, you will enjoy this effort by the author to trace the early routes and see the places where Bartram travelled and join with him in musing about the differences between then and now in those places. Highly recommend you read this book!
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