Wicked River The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild [Paperback]

A riveting narrative look at one of the most colorful, dangerous, and peculiar places in America's historical landscape: the strange, wonderful, and mysterious Mississippi River of the 19th century.
 
Beginning in the early 1800s and climaxing with the siege of Vicksburg in 1863,Wicked Riverbrings to life a place where river pirates brushed elbows with future presidents and religious visionaries shared passage with thieves. Here is a minute-by-minute account of Natchez being flattened by a tornado; the St. Louis harbor being crushed by a massive ice floe; hidden, nefarious celebrations of Mardi Gras; and the sinking of the Sultana, the worst naval disaster in American history. Here, too, is the Mississippi itself: gorgeous, perilous, and unpredictable. Masterfully told,Wicked Riveris an exuberant work of Americana that portrays a forgotten society on the edge of revolutionary change.

In this lush, exuberant, action-packed and history-drenched book, Sandlin has brought the river back home again. . . . A vivid torrent of facts and passions, in an inspired agitation of water and words. . . .Wicked Riveris the best kind of history book. It is organized around people and their fates, not wars and dates and treaty signings. It artfully separates reality from fables, but it recognizes that fables have a story to tell, too, that our tall tales and our songs and our exaggerations and our mythologies can be as revelatory as topographical maps and temperature charts.
—Chicago Tribune

Gripping stuff. . . . Appreciators of what Greil Marcus calls the Old, Weird America will savorWicked River. Its many ghastly scenes, vividly rendered by Mr. Sandlin, started showing up in my dreams. . . . I was surprised, upon finishingWicked River, to read that this confident and swift-moving book is the author's first. It makes one eager for the next. -—John Jeremiah Sullivan,The Wall Street JoulãB