A professor of history at LSU-Shreveport, Gary Joiner is also a professional cartographer and a native of Farmerville, Louisiana. Co-author Eric Brock is a life-long resident of Shreveport, a social historian, and a columnist for the Shreveport Journal. Together they have compiled an unprecedented visual history of the steamboats that once ran along the Red River and the people who operated those craft--shaping the history of the American South and the nation's great expansion westward.