Review of: "The Mississippi: A Visual Biography," by Quinta Scott

Anfinson, John O.

English

The Annals of Iowa

The Mississippi: A Visual Biography

Review of:  The Mississippi: A Visual Biography,  by Quinta Scott

Iowa Research Online

The Annals of Iowa 
Volume 70 Number 2 (Spring 2011) pps. 190-191 
The Mississippi: A Visual Biography 
John O. Anfinson 
ISSN 0003-4827 
Copyright © 2011 State Historical Society of Iowa. This article is posted here for personal use, 
not for redistribution. 
Recommended Citation 
Anfinson, John O. "The Mississippi: A Visual Biography." The Annals of Iowa 70 (2011), 
190-191. 
Available at: https://doi.org/10.17077/0003-4827.1548 
Hosted by Iowa Research Online 
190      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
Iowa’s coterie of influential female naturalists, including Ada Hayden, 
Althea Sherman, and Lois Tiffany. Gladys’s knowledge and dedication 
outweighed her idiosyncrasies (indeed, her idiosyncrasies enhanced 
her effectiveness, allowing her an informal freedom that captivated 
everyone she encountered), and the authors have been particularly 
successful at providing anecdotes that illuminate Gladys’s character 
without caricaturing her.  
 More than a collection of entertaining stories, the first-person ac-
counts in this lively book convey the strength of the connections that 
Gladys was able to build, and the entire book has a real-time feeling 
that allows readers to understand how one person can make a vast 
and positive difference to her world. Anyone interested in nature and 
the environment, community activism, and the history of conservation 
in the Midwest will find much to admire in this book. 
 
 
The Mississippi: A Visual Biography, by Quinta Scott. Columbia: Univer-
sity of Missouri Press, 2010. x, 404 pp. Illustrations (many in color), 
maps, bibliography, index. $75.00 cloth. 
Reviewer John O. Anfinson is chief of resource management for the National 
Park Service’s Mississippi National River and Recreation Area. He is the au-
thor of The River We Have Wrought: A History of the Upper Mississippi (2003). 
Quinta Scott has written an encyclopedic introduction to the Missis-
sippi River, from Lake Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico and from its geo-
logic origins through the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She does this 
in two parts. The first is a narrative covering the river’s physical ori-
gins and the history of human meddling with the river’s natural char-
acter. At 107 pages, this part constitutes just under one-third of the 
book. Two hundred color photographs, with captions, and occasional 
one- to three-page essays make up the second part. 
 Scott provides no introduction to the book explaining her purpose 
or objectives. They are revealed by what she includes and what she 
leaves out. In both sections, she documents the ways humans — the 
Corps of Engineers, in particular — have changed the river and how 
most of those changes have harmed the river’s ecosystems. Through 
her many images of backwater channels, sloughs, wetlands, bayous, 
and wildlife refuges, she highlights that damage and the efforts to pre-
serve and restore native habitat. In both parts, she emphasizes the loss 
of floodplain and coastal wetlands, bottomland forests, and natural 
flow regimes and the consequences for the river and humans.  
 As if disgusted by their presence, Scott offers no pictures of the mas-
sive navigation and flood control projects she blames for destroying 
Book Reviews and Notices      191 
the river’s ecosystems. There are no images of the upper Mississippi 
River’s locks and dams. Distant images of tow boats and barges sneak 
into a couple of images, but imposing levees and other flood control 
projects are absent. Although she features the Old River Control Struc-
ture and the Bonnet Carre and Morganza spillways in her narrative, 
there are no images of them. Many photographic essays on the Missis-
sippi River conclude with the jetties funneling the Mississippi into the 
Gulf. Scott ends with a wetland image titled “Delta National Wildlife 
Refuge: Mud.” Even the river’s cities and towns make no appearance. 
Just looking at her photographs, someone who did not know the Mis-
sissippi would think it was still largely a natural river. Her captions, 
however, let readers know that even these seemingly unaltered land-
scapes have been changed dramatically. 
 Given the breadth of her narrative, there is little room for depth. 
Scott repeatedly fingers the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as the cul-
prit behind destroying the natural river, but she never looks behind 
the curtain — she does not investigate who pushed the Corps to do 
what it has done. The oil companies, navigation industry, agricultural 
interests, and Congress receive some blame, but she spends little time 
on them. The most difficult task in reading this book is visualizing the 
places discussed in the narrative. To really grasp the subject, readers 
need a map or the internet handy. 
 There are many, many photographic essays on the Mississippi 
River, many with narratives introducing the river’s history and cul-
ture. What distinguishes Scott’s endeavor from the rest is the breadth 
of details about all the work that has altered the river and all the ef-
forts to restore it. 
 
 
A Watershed Year: Anatomy of the Iowa Floods of 2008, edited by Cornelia 
F. Mutel. A Bur Oak Book. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2010. 
xix, 250 pp. Illustrations, maps, graphs, tables, color photograph in-
sert, notes, reference lists, index. $19.00 paper. 
The 1,000-Year Flood: Destruction, Loss, Rescue, and Redemption along the 
Mississippi River, by Stephen J. Lyons. Guilford, Conn.: Globe Pequot 
Press, 2010. xxvi, 229 pp. Map, color photograph insert, statistical ap-
pendix, notes, bibliography, index. $16.95 paper. 
Reviewer Jennifer Ambrose is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at the 
University of Iowa. She is working on a dissertation tentatively titled “Geog-
raphies of Responsibility: Post-9/11 Weather Discourse and the Ethics of Nat-
ural Disaster.” 


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