Through the center of North America rushes a broad, powerful giant which Indians named the Mississippi, meaning "great river." But they nicknamed it Old Big Strong, for they new how the river could thrash around its valley, chewing into its own banks and building a course full of twists and bends and curves. They had seen the huge sand bars it could build up and later sweep away. They had been on some of those peninsulas it cut off and turned into islands. Time and again their villages were washed away when the river flooded its valley.

For the Mississippi is a restless giant, shifting, changing, moving, like an almost living thing. In its time, it has swallowed whole towns. And it has dumped enough silt along its bank to make a river port into an inland town.

Why the Mississippi behaves this way and how man has tried to tame the river make a thrilling story which Patricia Lauber tells in The Mississippi, Giant at Work. This is a vivid report which includes history, geology and engineering. It is illustrated with an extraordinary collection of photographs, many of them made by cameramen who traveled for weeks by tugboat to get their shots of Old Big Strong at work.

Maps By Rene Martin. 

From the dust jacket