Dreaming the Mississippi

By Katherine Fischer

Book Overview

Offering a fresh perspective on the river s environment, industry, and recreation, Dreaming the Mississippi challenges old stereotypes through the experiences of modern Americans who work the barges,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0826265472
• ISBN13: 9780826265470
• Release Date: October 2006
• Publisher: University of Missouri Press
• Length: 224 Pages

Customer Reviews

A handful of black-and-white photographs, and somber reflections upon the outcome to Hurricane Katri

Written by National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium consultant Katherine Fisher, Dreaming the Mississippi is part memoir, part cultural reflection, part celebration of the mighty Mississippi. From the author's daily life in a house so close to the Mississippi banks that each spring she must open her basement doors to accept the regular floods, to tongue-in-cheek accounts of river rats and towboat pilots, to tales of desperate sandbagging against unruly flood tides, river hangouts, choice waterfront taverns, and more. A chapter especially devoted to the river's mouth considers not only the natural gulf itself, but the gulf as a metaphor for the gulf between engineers and naturalists, America's haves and its have-nots. A handful of black-and-white photographs, and somber reflections upon the outcome to Hurricane Katrina's wrath round out this reverent reflection upon not only the celebrated Mississippi, but also humankind's inextricable bond to the natural world.