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More than 200 years after they set out to chart the Louisiana Purchase, the names Lewis and Clark still evoke strong sentiments in the lands touched by their expedition. For good or ill, the captains who opened the American West undeniably helped define a young nation's sense of identity. On the Trail of Lewis and Clark - which is part modern travel narrative, part historical account of the Corps of Discovery's epic trek - provides a wonderfully illustrated and thoughtful look back at this legacy on its bicentennial.

Over the years, San Francisco-based author Bill Yenne had worn out countless pairs of hiking boots on the Lewis and Clark Trail. In addition to growing up in western Montana, just across the Continental Divide from Camp Disappointment, the northern-most point visited by the expedition, he is a graduate of the University of Montana in Missoula, located just across the river from the spot where Meriwether Lewis celebrated Independence Day in 1806. Yenne has rafted the same section of the Blackfoot River that Lewis followed, climbed Pompey's Pillar (the only place where William Clark's graffiti still survives), and camped on the Oregon Coast near the expedition's western terminus. His connection to the Corps of Discovery is also of a more personal nature - his wife's great-aunt was married to Sam Charbonneau, who was thought to be Sacagawea's great-grandson. In preparation for this book, Yenne travelled the entire route of the expedition, in a single epic road trip from Camp Dubois, Illinois, to Fort Clatsop, Oregon.