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Contact: Victor Bailey, Hall Center, (785) 864-7822.

Biography of 19th-century explorer wins 2001 Caldwell Smith book prize

LAWRENCE -- Donald Worster, Hall Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of Kansas, has won the 2001 Byron Caldwell Smith Book Prize, awarded by the Hall Center for the Humanities for his book, "A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell." His book appeared in bookstores in the fall of 2000 and was published by Oxford University Press in January 2001.

The prize committee noted that "Worster's book is a biography of John Wesley Powell, an explorer and naturalist, who in 1869 navigated the Colorado River, down its main stream and through the Grand Canyon." Powell "put the Colorado River on American maps and revealed the Grand Canyon to the world."

More than a biography of its central character, Worster's book is a history of American exploration and expansion, beyond the Mississippi, in the 19th century. Worster sets all these themes on a wide canvas: of social and religious history in the 19th and 18th centuries, of the history of American science, of the anti-slavery movement and the Civil War, of the relations of the American Indian nations to the U.S. and its westward expansion.

"A River Running West" is a biography with a distinctive goal, to capture an era, and beyond that to put the contest between conservation and economic development in the West, a contest that continues to the present day, into context. The book is engaging and interesting throughout, and extremely well written (clear, tightly organized conceptually, often elegant). Members of the award committee described the book as monumental, extremely impressive and excellent as literature.

The Byron Caldwell Smith Award was established at the bequest of Kate Stephens, a former KU student and one of KU's first women professors. As an undergraduate, Kate Stephens learned to love the study of Greek langauage and literature from Professor Byron Caldwell Smith. In his name she established this award, given biennially to an individual who lives or is employed in Kansas, and who has written an outstanding book in the humanities. This year's award committee considered books published in 1999 or 2000.

Worster, a pioneer in the field of environmental history, joined KU's history department in 1989 when he accepted the Joyce and Elizabeth Hall Distinguished Professorship in American History. Born in California in 1941, he grew up in Hutchinson and attended KU where he earned a B.A. degree in 1963 and an M.A. degree in 1964. He received his Ph.D. in American history and literature at Yale University in 1971.

Worster's previous books include "Rivers of Empire" (1985), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; "The Dust Bowl: an Agricultural and Social History" (1979), which won the Bancroft Prize; and "Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas" (1994, second edition).