Set of vignettes on the Mississippi when the river and the people living on it were the edge of the American frontier. Wild and untamed, these true stories are the stuff of tall tales.

The Mississippi holds a place in the American mythos that no other river can claim - no other river has been written about, talked about, mythologised and anthropomorphised in the same way. From the 'Old Man River' of Mark Twain, from Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, to the visions of Abraham Lincoln on his wooden raft and the gracious steamboats plying their way up and downstream, laden with Southern belles and gamblers and rough-housing pilots, there is something about the Mississippi that has come to encapsulate a certain time and a place in American history.

This book is a look at that time and place, the great age of the Mississippi from the early 1800s to just after the American Civil War, when the rise of the railroads killed off most of the river traffic and the newly-empowered federal government set out to tame and control the river. It's a meandering tale, much like the river itself, full of anecdotes and tall tales, covering law and order, gamblers and drunkards, the voyageurs of the early days, the pilots of the steamboats, floods and tornados, the unique culture of the river valley, the role the river played in the Civil War, particularly in the Siege of Vicksburg.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, although the rambling nature does take some getting used to. But certain chapters stand out - the unique culture of New Orleans, the flattening of Natchez by a tornado, the sinking of the Sultana, the greatest naval disaster in American history, in particular.