Good evening and welcome to another episode of Inside the Cover.

I am your host, Ted Ayres, and I want to welcome you to your locally produced show about books and the joys of reading them.

As always, thanks for watching.

Seriously, good TV here on PBS Kansas and thanks for inviting me into your home.

Several years ago, I had the pleasure of finding and reading the Oregon Trail by Rinker Buck and I have kept an eye open ever since for another book by him.

Thus, my happiness and excitement when I saw his newest book, Life on the Mississippi on the Bookstore Shelf.

It is now time to go inside the cover Rinker.

Buck was born on December 29, 1950, in Morristown in New Jersey.

He has five brothers and five sisters.

He is perhaps best known for his 1997 memoir, Flight of Passage.

In that book, he writes about a plan he devised at age 15 with his 17 year old brother to rebuild their father's 1948 Piper PA 11, and fly it from Somerset Hales Airport in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, to Capistrano Airport in San Juan Capistrano, California.

Their journey took six days and was successfully completed in July of 1966.

Buck graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and his first job was writing for the Berkshire Eagle in 1973.

His career has been as a journalist and an author.

He has six books, including this latest, which was copyrighted in 2022.

I find Buck to be a fascinating character and a bit of a renaissance man.

He is a pilot.

He rides motorcycles.

He is an author and historian and a guy who seemingly can address every challenge.

Who else would take it upon themselves to ride a prairie schooner across the Oregon Trail?

Just to have the experience?

Or take a makeshift flat boat on multiple waterways from Pennsylvania to New Orleans.

Life on the Mississippi is summarily speaking about planning and making a long distance boat trip in 2016, 2000 miles over four months.

Thus, the book's subtitle, An Epic American Adventure.

However, is about so much more is about American history and frontier life.

It's about communication.

It's about people.

It's about addressing challenges.

It's about teamwork.

It's about boating and successfully navigating treacherous waters.

It's about life.

All written with style and panache.

I learned so very much from reading this book, and I'm relatively certain that it will find its way into my 2023 very important book list.

And the acknowledgments section is a virtual master's thesis on relevant books and authors.

There are so many pearls of wisdom in this book.

I want to share with you this commentary about life on the river as an example of Buck's writing.

The river was my teacher.

Crises beget solutions.

People are models of complexity, not perfection or even expectations.

Bend to bend.

Moment to anxious moment.

I was slowly learning how to master a boat.

Awareness arrived in the form of mistakes.

If you have watched our show previously, you know how much I enjoy making connections with other books I have read or am reading.

In this case, I would refer you to Showboat by Edna Ferber.

For a perspective on the entertainment boats that worked the Mississippi River.

Buck also references These Truths by Jill Lepore, a book we reviewed here on Inside the Cover.

Tonight's book has been a Life on the Mississippi by Rinker Buck.

I recognize of course, that every author has a perspective and a goal when writing.

But I love this book and I give it my highest recommendation.

I hope you read it and enjoy.

Good night.

See you next time here on PBS Kansas, the home of Seriously Good TV.