Jonathan Carver's Travels through the Interior Parts of North America in the Years 1766, 1767, and 1768 was one of the most popular and most successful American books in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. First published in London in 1778, Carver's Travels became a best-seller, and over the next one hundred years it was published in nearly sixty editions, including translations in French, German, Dutch, Swedish, and Greek. Its influence was perhaps greater than its popularity Not only was it the first book written by an American to have a large international following, but for more than a century it was cited as a standard authority on the native peoples and places of the upper Great Lakes region. More important, the book touched the imaginations of countless numbers of people, everyone from romantic poets to backwoods pioneers, offering them a unique vision of American wilderness and American promise. Today Carver's Travels is...