"Absorbing." --Christian Science Monitor "Jolliet and Marquette is an engrossing history book that covers an early European expedition into lands unfamiliar to its explores; it is respectful in analyzing the not yet colonized cultures they encountered." --Foreword Reviews An authoritative and long-overdue treatment of the historic Jolliet-Marquette voyage of discovery. Walczynski reaffirms and explains what is good in past scholarship while demonstrating where the established histories went off the track. The guiding of the reader up the Illinois River on Marquette and Jolliets return trip is unparalleled and priceless.--Michael McCafferty, author of Native American Place-Names of Indiana This is a good read, and also a handy one in the 'old school' form of reliable regional history. The author writes about much more than the voyage. He contextualizes and discusses the earliest years of French interest in establishing a colony, and delves into the political mechanisms that drove early French colonial settlement in the Midwest. Walczynski also provides a welcome detailed description of the Illinois River Valley as it was during the seventeenth century.--Robert F. Mazrim, author of At Home in the Illinois Country: French Colonial Domestic Site Archaeology in the Midwest, 17301800 "Despite better organization and greater success by Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville and others along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana, the colony never achieved its potential. Walczynski's lucid account of French activities in North America helps explain why." --A Sea of Words
