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pp. 309, “‘Epic Wanderer’ is the first full-length biography of David Thompson. Drawing extensively on Thompson’s own journals, detailed sketches, and the map itself, popular historian D’Arcy Jenish recreates this exceptional life, setting it against the sweeping drama of the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and alongside the more celebrated stories of Lewis and Clark. It was a time of intense rivalries – between the fledgling United States and British North America, and between the two great fur-trading companies of the North, the London-based Hudson’s Bay Co. and the homegrown North West Co., in both of whose ranks Thompson once served. A time too of volatile, shifting relationships between Indian tribes, and between Native North Americans and the Europeans who had come to their land bringing guns, alcohol and disease. In ‘Epic Wanderer’ D’Arcy Jenish’s careful scholarship, his informed reconstruction of a world long past, and his elegant prose animate vividly the dramatic life and extraordinary work of a man who risked everything in the pursuit of knowledge.” paperback edition, previous owners inscription on FEP