I read Dellenbaugh's reprinted "Canyon Voyage" (the much abbreviated title) as a young man in the flatlands of western Kansas in the 1960's. The romance of the period of Dellenbaugh's youth, and the Powell Expeditions in particular (1869-72), stimulated in me an ongoing interest in the history of the region. I have read the edited and published diaries of most of the participants of the two expeditions, and continue to invest in an array of scholarly and coffee table books that even remotely address the subject. My annual crossings of the Colorado and Dirty Devil rivers to pursue research interests in southeastern Utah never fail to regenerate my own wish to have participated in such an epic adventure. Thus, when I saw the notice of publication of Maurer's book about Dellenbaugh on the second Powell expedition, with the expression in the title "the true adventures," I was expecting something on the order of D.D. Fowler's book about Jack Hiller's, another expedition participant. That is, a pretty serious biography of the man and a pretty faithful reproduction of the daily diary kept during his time in the field. Well, it might be the former, but it is certainly not the latter. Unlike the other expeditioners who kept diaries, Dellenbaugh's original diary has never been published. Perhaps this is because his 1908 "Canyon Voyage" was a timeline-based (albeit compressed) narrative and researchers may have believed there was nothing more of value in the original diary. While Maurer read the diaries of all the participants, including Dellenbaugh's, as well as Dellenbaugh's "Canyon Voyage" and the earlier "Romance of the Colorado River," Maurer's timeline is even more compressed than Dellenbaugh's. Consequently the book lacks the rich detail of Dellenbaugh's diary and earlier publications. For example, unlike the present book, the consecutive daily diary entries of "Looked for the Major today but of course he did not come; carried the rations over," "Looked for the Major again," and "Still waiting,"conveys a real sense of frustration at being in the same camp, on the bank of the Colorado, day after day, laying up under a boat to avoid the oppressive August heat, with nothing to do, waiting for the Major and Prof to come in so the party can continue the trip down the river through the Grand Canyon. Maurer acknowledged that in the writing of the book he "sometimes resorted to the methods of historical fiction to flesh out some of the stories" and that "footnotes would be out of place in a book like this." Thus despite having the best possible materials at hand from which to draw, this book was never intended as a scholarly work. In that context, the writing was a success. Maurer did locate some great historical photographs and drawings not published elsewhere, and that alone is an important contribution. More than that, though, the book was a really entertaining read. I can well imagine some person, like me once, never having heard of either Powell or Dellenbaugh, picking up the book and just marveling at what they did. And, interest aroused, they have an avocation.

Richard Maurer's new book chronicles Powell's second expedition through the eyes, words, and illustrations of Fred Dellenbaugh - a 17-year-old boy from Buffalo, NY who, along with some rowing experience on the turbulent Niagara River and a facility for drawing, had the gumption to make his dream come true. This story is very well written and quite compelling and will appeal to those who love adventure stories set in the Old West. The photographs and illustrations are remarkable. My hats off to the author!

I reviewed this book for the JOURNAL OF AMERICAN HISTORY when it first appeared, and nothing that has happened in the seven years since 1992 has changed my mind. Chief Justice Rehnquist writes clearly and well, but his research and historical perspective are sadly outdated. For example, he accepts the hoary myth that there was no good reason at all to consider Andrew Johnson an appropriate target for impeachment, despite Michael Les Benedict, THE IMPEACHMENT AND TRIAL OF ANDREW JOHNSON (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973), a fine study showing that Johnson deliberately violated many Congressional civil-rights and Reconstruction statutes validly enacted over his veto, that he also sought to gut efforts to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment, and that ultimately he deliberately provoked the 1868 attempt to remove him from office. Moreover, Rehnquist's analysis of the impeachment and trial of Justice Samuel Chase fails to situate it in the context of the previous year's impeachment, conviction, and removal of U.S. District Judge John Pickering, or the larger battle between Jeffersonian Republicans and Federalists over the control of the nation's judiciary -- a context without which the Chase impeachment is all but impossible to understand. Readers seeking light on this subject should consult Richard E. Ellis, THE JEFFERSONIAN CRISIS: COURTS AND POLITICS IN THE YOUNG REPUBLIC (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971; Norton paperback, 1973).

Chief Justice Rehnquist's book extols executive and judicial independence -- unexceptional and unexceptionable positions, to be sure -- but he also implicitly denounces the actions of democratically-elected legislatures -- a position more open to question, even as it is consistent with much of his constitutional jurisprudence as shown in Sue Davis, JUSTICE REHNQUIST AND THE CONSTITUTION (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).

Ultimately, perhaps, readers may value this book for its potential illumination of the presiding officer over the Senate's trial of President Clinton, but it adds little or nothing to our understanding of the history and law of the impeachment process. -- Richard B. Bernstein, Adjunct Professor of Law, New York Law School

If you're looking for clues as to how Rehnquist will preside over the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton you'll be disappointed. In fact this book is more like a simple retelling of events than a focus on constitutional issues. Rehnquist does make the point that the acquittal of Justice Chase helped foster a judiciary independent of political litmus tests by Congress, and the acquittal of President Johnson did likewise for the executive branch, both of which Rehnquist feels are good things, but other than that you'll be hard pressed to find anything about the author's personal opinions. The narrative of the book is far too much concerned with broad historical developments which are discussed in much better detail in other sources, rather than focussing on the particulars of the impeachment trials. The material on the trials themselves probably takes up no more than a quarter of the book.

It's obvious to the reader that Chief Justice Rehnquist has a good command of the subject he is discussing, which are the political and the historical implications of two very important impeachment decisions in the U.S. My only criticism was really that the book delves into a lot of history and one begins to wonder why, but then the relavence to the impeachments is made clearer as the reader progresses through the book. History enthusiasts may find it somewhat redundant in that respect, but the conclusions are well drawn and the American political system is shown for what it has always been- alive with partisanship and designed, through the constitution, to put at least a small roadblock to allowing one branch of government or party from completely dominating.