When the Mississippi Ran Backwards

by Jay Feldman
Category: "Crime and Disaster (non-fiction)"
Pages:241
Year of Publication:2005
Date Added:08/12/2006
Date Read:09/12/2005
Notes:Subtitle: Empire, Intrigue, Murder, and the New Madrid Earthquakes

An interesting, but schizophrenic book on the series of earthquakes that devastated the area around New Madrid, Missouri during December 1811 and into April 1812. Feldman explains the causes of earthquakes and the scales used to measure them. He gives several eye-witness reports of those in the area. This was all very interesting.

But he also discusses Tecumseh’s attempt to join the Indian tribes together to fight the Americans, the Western theater of the War of 1812, the founding of New Madrid, the first steamship voyage down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and the murder of a slave by two nephews of Thomas Jefferson. The earthquake and war stories didn’t overlap at all. Tecumseh’s story only did because of a prediction that the chief supposedly made to the Creeks when they wouldn’t join his confederacy. The steamship, the New Orleans, was on the Mississippi when the first quake hit. It survived. The murder of the slave was exposed when the quake knocked down the chimney where the slave’s remains were hidden.
My Rating: 7

Reviews for When the Mississippi Ran Backwards

Review - When the Mississippi Ran Backwards

It was well written, and jumped from story to story to keep it from getting tedious, but some of the story lines didn’t really seem to fit.
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