Winner of the National Book Critics Circle award  for nonfiction, this controversial,  thought-provoking, and timely book is "as groundbreaking as  Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex  and Betty Friedan's The Feminine  Mystique." -- Newsweek.

The authoritative, highly acclaimed classic history of the Korean War, THIS KIND OF WAR, is a dramatic and hard-hitting account of the conflict written from the perspective of those who fought it. The 50th anniversary of the Korean War, which began in June 1950, makes this an appropriate time to...  more

The authoritative, highly acclaimed classic history of the Korean War, THIS KIND OF WAR, is a dramatic and hard-hitting account of the conflict written from the perspective of those who fought it. The 50th anniversary of the Korean War, which began in June 1950, makes this an appropriate time to revisit this monumental study. Successive generations of U.S. military officers have considered this book an indipensable part of their education. To commemortae the anniversary, this special edition has been updated with battlefield maps, vivid photographs, and a foreword by Gen. Gordon Sullivan, USA (Ret.), former U.S. army chief of staff. T.R. Fehrenbach's narrative brings to life the harrowing and bloody battles that were fought up and down the Korean Peninsula. Partly drawn from official records, operations journals, and histories, it is based largely on the compelling personal narratives of the small-unit commanders and their troops. Unlike any other work on the Korean War, it provides a clear, panoramic view, sharp insight into the successes and failures of U.S. forces, and a riveting account of fierce clashes between UNited Nationa troops and the North Korean and Chinese communist invaders. The lessons that Colonel Fehrenbach identifies still resonate. Severe peacetime budget cuts after World War II left the U.S. military a shadow of its former self. The terrible lesson of Korea was that to send into action troops trained for nothing but "serving a hitch" in some quiet billet was an almost criminal act. Throwing these ill-trained and poorly equipped troops into the heat of battle resulted in the war's early routs. The United States was simply unprepared for war. As we enter a new century with Americans and North Koreans continuing to face each other across the 38th parallel, we would do well to remember the price we paid during the Korean War.

In 1927, the Mississippi River swept across an area roughly equal in size to Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont combined, leaving water as deep as thirty feet on the land stretching from Illinois and Missouri south to the Gulf of Mexico. Close to a million people -- in a...  more

In 1927, the Mississippi River swept across an area roughly equal in size to Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont combined, leaving water as deep as thirty feet on the land stretching from Illinois and Missouri south to the Gulf of Mexico. Close to a million people -- in a nation of 120 million -- were forced out of their homes. Some estimates place the death toll in the thousands. The Red Cross fed nearly 700,000 refugees for months. Rising Tide is the story of this forgotten event, the greatest natural disaster this country has ever known. But it is not simply a tale of disaster. The flood transformed part of the nation and had a major cultural and political impact on the rest. Rising Tide is an American epic about science, race, honor, politics, and society. Rising Tide begins in the 19th century, when the first serious attempts to control the river began. From the engineers and the dominant families in the Delta to the New Orleans elite, Rising Tide tells how the flood changed the face of American and laid the groundwork for the New Deal.

In this moving book, two skilled oral historians collect the words of Americans who have been victims of political repression in their own country. Disturbing and provocative, It Did Happen Here is must-reading for everyone who cares about protecting the rights and liberties upon which this...  more

In this moving book, two skilled oral historians collect the words of Americans who have been victims of political repression in their own country. Disturbing and provocative, It Did Happen Here is must-reading for everyone who cares about protecting the rights and liberties upon which this country has been built.

The first freedom paths taken by runaway slaves led to Native American villages, where black men and women found a red hand of friendship and an accepting culture. The offspring of Black-Indian marriages shaped the early days of the fur trade, added a new dimension to frontier diplomacy, and...  more

The first freedom paths taken by runaway slaves led to Native American villages, where black men and women found a red hand of friendship and an accepting culture. The offspring of Black-Indian marriages shaped the early days of the fur trade, added a new dimension to frontier diplomacy, and made a daring contribution to the fight for American liberty. Though they seldom appear in textbooks, Hollywood movies, or TV shows of the Old West, Black Indians were there as sure as Sitting Bull, Davy Crockett, and Geronimo. But in the chronicles of the Americas their long, arduous quest for freedom is still a neglected chapter. Carefully researched and enhanced with rare antique prints and photographs, "Black Indians", by renowned historian William Loren Katz, reveals a little-known aspect of our past and shatters some myths.

An expanded edition of one of the most original and provocative works of American history of the last decade, which documents the pioneering experiences and grit of American frontier women.

An authentic autobiographical account of slave life in the South from the 1820s to the 1840s. To escape sexual exploitation by her master, Brent ran away and hid in an attic crawl space that became her home for seven years of unbelievable physical hardship. Edited by L. Maria Child; Introduction...  more

An authentic autobiographical account of slave life in the South from the 1820s to the 1840s. To escape sexual exploitation by her master, Brent ran away and hid in an attic crawl space that became her home for seven years of unbelievable physical hardship. Edited by L. Maria Child; Introduction by Walter Teller.

“WANTED. YOUNG, SKINNY, WIRY FELLOWS. NOT OVER 18. MUST BE EXPERT RIDERS. WILLING TO RISK DEATH DAILY. ORPHANS PREFERRED.” —California newspaper help-wanted ad, 1860 The Pony Express is one of the most celebrated and enduring chapters in the history of the United States, a...  more

“WANTED. YOUNG, SKINNY, WIRY FELLOWS. NOT OVER 18. MUST BE EXPERT RIDERS. WILLING TO RISK DEATH DAILY. ORPHANS PREFERRED.” —California newspaper help-wanted ad, 1860 The Pony Express is one of the most celebrated and enduring chapters in the history of the United States, a story of the all-American traits of bravery, bravado, and entrepreneurial risk that are part of the very fabric of the Old West. No image of the American West in the mid-1800s is more familiar, more beloved, and more powerful than that of the lone rider galloping the mail across hostile Indian territory. No image is more revered. And none is less understood. Orphans Preferred is both a revisionist history of this magnificent and ill-fated adventure and an entertaining look at the often larger-than-life individuals who created and perpetuated the myth of “the Pony,” as it is known along the Pony Express trail that runs from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California. The Pony Express is a story that exists in the annals of Americana where fact and fable collide, a story as heroic as the journey of Lewis and Clark, as complex and revealing as the legacy of Custer’s Last Stand, and as muddled and freighted with yarns as Paul Revere’s midnight ride. Orphans Preferred is a fresh and exuberant reexamination of this great American story.

One of the most important documents in southern history, this is a day-by-day diary of the Civil War years. It rings with authenticity while evoking the nostalgia, bitterness, and comedy of the Confederacy.

This is the heroic story of those seaborne Texans who were often outnumbered, usually outgunned, but never outsailed and never, ever outfought.

Forty years ago, James Meredith tried to integrate the University of Mississippi, and ignited an armed white rebellion in the nation’s heartland. This riveting book re-creates the day the country went to war against itself. An American Insurrection is the true story of the worst...  more

Forty years ago, James Meredith tried to integrate the University of Mississippi, and ignited an armed white rebellion in the nation’s heartland. This riveting book re-creates the day the country went to war against itself. An American Insurrection is the true story of the worst constitutional crisis since the Civil War and a major turning point in American history. It takes readers into the eye of the chaotic and ferocious white uprising that occurred when air force veteran James Meredith tried to become the first black student to register at the University of Mississippi, only to be physically blocked by radical segregationist Governor Ross Barnett, hundreds of state police, and thousands of student and civilian “volunteers” from across the South. The revolt climaxed in a fourteen-hour battle and the lightning invasion of the state by 30,000 combat troops ordered in by President John F. Kennedy.Based on years of intensive research, including more than 500 interviews with witnesses and key players in the drama, recently unsealed FBI files, and on JFK’s Oval Office and Cabinet Room tapes recorded during the crisis, An American Insurrection unearths the unsung heroes–and more than a few villains–of a dark and violent event that has remained buried in the historical shadows until now. It is the unforgettable account of a governor in rebellion, a president in crisis, soldiers on a perilous mission, a state sliding into civil war, and a battle that crushed forever the Southern strategy of massive resistance. What Black Hawk Down was to the American mission in Somalia, An American Insurrection is destined to become to the epic struggle for civil rights.

In 1889, when this book was first published, the depredations of the Indians upon the Texas settlements were still of recent memory, and the accounts still possess freshness and occasional ironic humor, despite the passage of over a century.

Astounding eyewitness accounts of Indian captivity by people who lived to tell the tale. Fifteen true adventures recount suffering and torture, bloody massacres, relentless pursuits, miraculous escapes and adoption into Indian tribes. Fascinating historical record and revealing picture of Indian...  more

Astounding eyewitness accounts of Indian captivity by people who lived to tell the tale. Fifteen true adventures recount suffering and torture, bloody massacres, relentless pursuits, miraculous escapes and adoption into Indian tribes. Fascinating historical record and revealing picture of Indian culture and frontier life. Introduction. Notes.

Eight narratives challenge old stereotypes and provide a clearer understanding of the nature of captive taking. These stories portray captors as individuals with a unique culture, offering glimpses of daily life in frontier communities.

From prehistory right up to the present-a classic, comprehensive, and superbly readable guide to the panoramic saga of Texas history Here is an up-to-the-moment history of the Lone Star State, together with an insider's look at the people, politics, and events that have shaped Texas from the...  more

From prehistory right up to the present-a classic, comprehensive, and superbly readable guide to the panoramic saga of Texas history Here is an up-to-the-moment history of the Lone Star State, together with an insider's look at the people, politics, and events that have shaped Texas from the beginning right up to our days. Never before has the story been told with more vitality and immediacy. Fehrenbach re-creates the Texas saga from prehistory to the Spanish and French invasions to the heyday of the cotton and cattle empires. He dramatically describes the emergence of Texas as a republic, the vote for secession before the Civil War, and the state's readmission to the Union after the War. In the twentieth century oil would emerge as an important economic resource and social change would come. But Texas would remain unmistakably Texas, because Texans "have been made different by the crucible of history; they think and act in different ways, according to the history that shaped their hearts and minds."

"Captured" is about the experiences of nine White children captured by Comanches and Apaches from 1865 to 1871. The children lived among the Indians for up to 12 years. Several of them were members of the large German-speaking community which settled in the Texas Hill Country west of...  more

"Captured" is about the experiences of nine White children captured by Comanches and Apaches from 1865 to 1871. The children lived among the Indians for up to 12 years. Several of them were members of the large German-speaking community which settled in the Texas Hill Country west of San Antonio. As the author wryly notes the only career path for Comanche men was "warrior" and the author details many of the brutal battles between Comanche and Texan. There are massacres and atrocities and gore galore here, but also a bit of humor and humanity. White children captives were often treated kindly and adopted into the tribe. Despite being eyewitnesses to the murder of their families, several of the male captives profiled by Zesch came to prefer the wild and free life of a Comanche warrior to that of a Texas sodbuster. Most notably, Herman Lehmann was one of the last few Comanche holdouts to surrender to the Whites in 1878 and he was a willing and enthusiastic participant in many battles against White soldiers and raids on White communities. Zesch also details the inability of the freed captives to readjust to life as Whites. Most became alienated drifters and a few later rejoined the defeated Comanches on reservations in Oklahoma. Many also lived to ripe old ages.

In this engrossing narrative of the great military conflagration of the mid-eighteenth century, Fred Anderson transports us into the maelstrom of international rivalries. With the Seven Years' War, Great Britain decisively eliminated French power north of the Caribbean — and in the process...  more

In this engrossing narrative of the great military conflagration of the mid-eighteenth century, Fred Anderson transports us into the maelstrom of international rivalries. With the Seven Years' War, Great Britain decisively eliminated French power north of the Caribbean — and in the process destroyed an American diplomatic system in which Native Americans had long played a central, balancing role — permanently changing the political and cultural landscape of North America.Anderson skillfully reveals the clash of inherited perceptions the war created when it gave thousands of American colonists their first experience of real Englishmen and introduced them to the British cultural and class system. We see colonists who assumed that they were partners in the empire encountering British officers who regarded them as subordinates and who treated them accordingly. This laid the groundwork in shared experience for a common view of the world, of the empire, and of the men who had once been their masters. Thus, Anderson shows, the war taught George Washington and other provincials profound emotional lessons, as well as giving them practical instruction in how to be soldiers.Depicting the subsequent British efforts to reform the empire and American resistance — the riots of the Stamp Act crisis and the nearly simultaneous pan-Indian insurrection called Pontiac's Rebellion — as postwar developments rather than as an anticipation of the national independence that no one knew lay ahead (or even desired), Anderson re-creates the perspectives through which contemporaries saw events unfold while they tried to preserve imperial relationships.Interweaving stories of kings and imperial officers with those of Indians, traders, and the diverse colonial peoples, Anderson brings alive a chapter of our history that was shaped as much by individual choices and actions as by social, economic, and political forces.

This book is a history of the Federal Convention in Philadelphia that resulted in the Constitution of the United States. A review of the events and personalities surrounding the Constitutional Convention of 1787 concluding with the debate and the final product.

The decade 1910-1920 was the bloodiest in the controversial history of one of the most famous law enforcement agencies in the world--the Texas Rangers. Much of the bloodshed was along the thousand-mile Texas/Mexico border because these were the years of the Mexican Revolution. Charles Harris III...  more

The decade 1910-1920 was the bloodiest in the controversial history of one of the most famous law enforcement agencies in the world--the Texas Rangers. Much of the bloodshed was along the thousand-mile Texas/Mexico border because these were the years of the Mexican Revolution. Charles Harris III and Louis Sadler shed new light on this turbulent period by uncovering the clandestine role of Mexican President Venustiano Carranza in the border violence. They document two virtually unknown invasions of Texas by Mexican Army troops acting under Carranza's orders. Harris and Sadler suggest the notorious "Plan de San Diego," usually portrayed by historians as a plot hatched in South Texas, was actually spawned in Mexico by Carranza. This irredentist conspiracy, which called for the execution of all Anglo males sixteen and older and the establishment of a Hispanic republic, was designed to cause a race war between Hispanics and Anglos. One of Carranza's goals was to end the support being given by border residents to his rival Pancho Villa. The "Plan de San Diego" caused the governor of Texas to order the Texas Rangers to wipe out the insurgency along the border. This resulted in an estimated 300 Hispanics being killed by the Rangers and others without benefit of judge and jury. The Texas Rangers and the Mexican Revolution is the first Ranger history to utilize Mexican government archives and the voluminous declassified FBI records on the Mexican Revolution. "There is no other book that focuses on the Texas Rangers in the period 1910-1920. This will be the standard book on the Rangers for this period and probably the most thoroughly researched book on the Rangers in any period."--Alwyn Barr, Professor of History, Texas Tech University"Harris and Sadler provide the first definitive evaluation of the Texas Rangers and their activities during the first and most violent decade of the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1920. This is a really outstanding, important work"--William H. Beezley, Professor of Latin American History, University of Arizona

The Republic of Texas was still in its first exultation over independence when John Salmon "Rip" Ford arrived from South Carolina in June of 1836. Ford stayed to participate in virtually every major event in Texas history during the next sixty years. Doctor, lawyer, surveyor, newspaper...  more

The Republic of Texas was still in its first exultation over independence when John Salmon "Rip" Ford arrived from South Carolina in June of 1836. Ford stayed to participate in virtually every major event in Texas history during the next sixty years. Doctor, lawyer, surveyor, newspaper reporter, elected representative, and above all, soldier and Indian fighter, Ford sat down in his old age to record the events of the turbulent years through which he had lived. Stephen Oates has edited Ford's memoirs to produce a clear and vigorous personal history of Texas.

In The Texas Rangers, published by UT Press in 1965, Walter Prescott Webb told the story of this unique law enforcement agency as no one else could. Forsaking the historian's ivory tower, Webb rode with the Rangers in the days when desperate, greedy men thought the border between Texas and...  more

In The Texas Rangers, published by UT Press in 1965, Walter Prescott Webb told the story of this unique law enforcement agency as no one else could. Forsaking the historian's ivory tower, Webb rode with the Rangers in the days when desperate, greedy men thought the border between Texas and Mexico was an open gate to bootleggers. He loved the harsh country through which the Rangers rode, and he loved the tempering of the steel within the Rangers that came from a life short on comfort and long on danger. The Texas Rangers grew out of the stories Webb heard around Ranger campfires at night, as the men drank coffee and swapped tales of their adventures. In this audiobook, popular Texas folk singer Steve Fromholz brings to life the very best of those stories. Two tapes offer nearly two hours of listening pleasure. The book was abridged by Turk Pipkin.

Nominated for the National Book Award, this book is set in colonial Massachusetts where, in 1704, a French and Indian war party descended on the village of Deerfield, abducting a Puritan minister and his children. Although John Williams was eventually released, his daughter horrified the family...  more

Nominated for the National Book Award, this book is set in colonial Massachusetts where, in 1704, a French and Indian war party descended on the village of Deerfield, abducting a Puritan minister and his children. Although John Williams was eventually released, his daughter horrified the family by staying with her captors and marrying a Mohawk husband.

The autobiography of the thirty-seventh President of the United States.  

For the last sixty years, the CIA has managed to maintain a formidable reputation in spite of its terrible record, burying its blunders in top-secret archives. Its mission was to know the world. When it did not succeed, it set out to change the world. Its failures have handed us, in the words of...  more

For the last sixty years, the CIA has managed to maintain a formidable reputation in spite of its terrible record, burying its blunders in top-secret archives. Its mission was to know the world. When it did not succeed, it set out to change the world. Its failures have handed us, in the words of President Eisenhower, “a legacy of ashes.”Now Pulitzer Prize–winning author Tim Weiner offers the first definitive history of the CIA—and everything is on the record. LEGACY OF ASHES is based on more than 50,000 documents, primarily from the archives of the CIA itself, and hundreds of interviews with CIA veterans, including ten Directors of Central Intelligence. It takes the CIA from its creation after World War II, through its battles in the cold war and the war on terror, to its near-collapse after 9/ll.Tim Weiner’s past work on the CIA and American intelligence was hailed as “impressively reported” and “immensely entertaining” in The New York Times. The Wall Street Journal called it “truly extraordinary . . . the best book ever written on a case of espionage.” Here is the hidden history of the CIA: why eleven presidents and three generations of CIA officers have been unable to understand the world; why nearly every CIA director has left the agency in worse shape than he found it; and how these failures have profoundly jeopardized our national security.

William Cody (1846—1917), a.k.a. Buffalo Bill, was the most famous American of his age. A child of the frontier Great Plains, Cody was renowned as a Pony Express rider, prospector, trapper, Civil War soldier, professional buffalo hunter, Indian fighter, cavalry scout, horseman, dime-novel...  more

William Cody (1846—1917), a.k.a. Buffalo Bill, was the most famous American of his age. A child of the frontier Great Plains, Cody was renowned as a Pony Express rider, prospector, trapper, Civil War soldier, professional buffalo hunter, Indian fighter, cavalry scout, horseman, dime-novel hero, and actor. But Buffalo Bill’s greatest success was as impresario of the Wild West show, the traveling company of cowboys, Indians, Mexican vaqueros, and others, numbering in the hundreds, with which he toured North America and Europe for more than three decades. As Louis S. Warren reveals, the show company came to represent America itself, its dazzling mix of races sprung from a frontier past, welded into a thrilling performance, and making their way through the world via the modern technologies of railroad, portable electrical generator, telephones, and brilliantly colored publicity–an entrancing vision of the frontier-born, newly mechanized, polyglot United States in the Gilded Age.Biographers have long disputed whether Cody was a hero or a charlatan. As Warren shows, the question already preoccupied critics and spectators during Cody’s own lifetime. In fact, the savvy entertainer encouraged the dispute by mingling fictional exploits with his not inconsiderable achievements to construct the persona of an ideal frontiersman, a figure who was more controversial than has been commonly understood. At the same time, his show provided a means for rural westerners, including cowboys, cowgirls, and especially Lakota Sioux Indians, to claim a new future for themselves by reenacting a version of the past.The most comprehensive critical biography of William Cody in more than forty years, Buffalo Bill’s America places America’s most renowned showman in the context of his cultural worlds in the Far West, in the East, and in Europe. A rich and revealing biography and social history of an American cultural icon.

She was the first woman to address the U.S. Congress, the first to operate a brokerage firm on Wall Street, and the first to run for president. She's the woman Gloria Steinem called "the most controversial suffragist of them all." In this extensively researched biography, journalist Mary Gabriel...  more

She was the first woman to address the U.S. Congress, the first to operate a brokerage firm on Wall Street, and the first to run for president. She's the woman Gloria Steinem called "the most controversial suffragist of them all." In this extensively researched biography, journalist Mary Gabriel has written a comprehensive account of one of American history's most unusual and fascinating women, who, in an era of Victorian morality, was the loudest and most radical voice for women's equality. "One of the most controversial American women of the late nineteenth century springs to life in this study that leaves no stone unturned."--Publishers Weekly; "Deftly written biography . . . of a hell-raising visionary."--Mirabella; "A meaty slice of feminist history peppered with Victorian drama."--Civilization; "Remarkable . . . warrants a spot on every serious American history student's bookshelf."--Kirkus Reviews, pointer.

The Way We Never Were examines two centuries of American family life and shatters a series of myths and half-truths that burden modern families. Placing current family dilemmas in the context of far-reaching economic, political, and demographic changes, Coontz sheds new light on such...  more

The Way We Never Were examines two centuries of American family life and shatters a series of myths and half-truths that burden modern families. Placing current family dilemmas in the context of far-reaching economic, political, and demographic changes, Coontz sheds new light on such contemporary concerns as parenting, privacy, love, the division of labor along gender lines, the black family, feminism, and sexual practice.

In the tradition of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, a stunningly vivid historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West, centering on Quanah, the greatest Comanche chief of them all.S. C. Gwynne?s Empire of the Summer Moon...  more

In the tradition of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, a stunningly vivid historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West, centering on Quanah, the greatest Comanche chief of them all.S. C. Gwynne?s Empire of the Summer Moon spans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. The second entails one of the most remarkable narratives ever to come out of the Old West: the epic saga of the pioneer woman Cynthia Ann Parker and her mixed-blood son Quanah, who became the last and greatest chief of the Comanches. Although readers may be more familiar with the tribal names Apache and Sioux, it was in fact the legendary fighting ability of the Comanches that determined just how and when the American West opened up. Comanche boys became adept bareback riders by age six; full Comanche braves were considered the best horsemen who ever rode. They were so masterful at war and so skillful with their arrows and lances that they stopped the northern drive of colonial Spain from Mexico and halted the French expansion westward from Louisiana. White settlers arriving in Texas from the eastern United States were surprised to find the frontier being rolled backward by Comanches incensed by the invasion of their tribal lands. So effective were the Comanches that they forced the creation of the Texas Rangers and account for the advent of the new weapon specifically designed to fight them: the six-gun. The war with the Comanches lasted four decades, in effect holding up the development of the new American nation. Gwynne?s exhilarating account delivers a sweeping narrative that encompasses Spanish colonialism, the Civil War, the destruction of the buffalo herds, and the arrival of the railroads?a historical feast for anyone interested in how the United States came into being. Against this backdrop Gwynne presents the compelling drama of Cynthia Ann Parker, a lovely nine-year-old girl with cornflower-blue eyes who was kidnapped by Comanches from the far Texas frontier in 1836. She grew to love her captors and became infamous as the "White Squaw" who refused to return until her tragic capture by Texas Rangers in 1860. More famous still was her son Quanah, a warrior who was never defeated and whose guerrilla wars in the Texas Panhandle made him a legend. S. C. Gwynne?s account of these events is meticulously researched, intellectually provocative, and, above all, thrillingly told. Empire of the Summer Moon announces him as a major new writer of American history.

Bravos of the West is a panoramic history of the development of the West after the Lewis and Clark expedition. Appearing, exiting, and reappearing in this history are trappers, traders, prospectors, gunslingers, missionaries, soldiers, and scientists. Here they are shown trapping beaver,...  more

Bravos of the West is a panoramic history of the development of the West after the Lewis and Clark expedition. Appearing, exiting, and reappearing in this history are trappers, traders, prospectors, gunslingers, missionaries, soldiers, and scientists. Here they are shown trapping beaver, confronting bears, trading, and discovering natural wonders as they advance ever farther into the wilds. John Myers Myers begins with the struggle for Texas and follows the men and women who came West: the mountain men beyond the mouth of the Yellowstone, the emigrants to Oregon, the fortune hunters to California, the Mormons to Salt Lake, the stagecoaches, express ponies, and steam-engine trains through mountain passes and open country, and the outlaws to all of it. Playing their roles on this huge historical stage are Andrew Jackson, Davy Crockett, Hugh Glass, Jim Bowie, William Ashley, Mike Fink, Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Thomas Hart Benton, Stephen Austin, Sam Houston, Peg-leg Smith, Mountain Lamb, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, Jack Swilling, Henry Plummer, Jack Coffee Hays, Deaf Smith, John Charles Frémont, Brigham Young, John Sutter, Sitting Bull, Cynthia Ann Parker, Joaquin Murrieta, and Wild Bill Hickok.

"All of history is mystery," Dale L. Walker says, and he proves his point in this lively, humorous--and rational--approach to the West's greatest puzzles. Did Davy Crockett, for example, go down swinging Ol' Betsy, defending the ramparts of the Alamo--or was he captured? Who is buried in Jesse...  more

"All of history is mystery," Dale L. Walker says, and he proves his point in this lively, humorous--and rational--approach to the West's greatest puzzles. Did Davy Crockett, for example, go down swinging Ol' Betsy, defending the ramparts of the Alamo--or was he captured? Who is buried in Jesse James's grave? Was the man Pat Garrett shot that night really Billy the Kid? How did Black Bart, "the gentleman bandit," disappear? Did Sacajawea, the famous "Bird Woman" who scouted for Lewis and Clark, die twice? The possibilities unfold as Walker brings together little-known facts and the elusive connections that shed light on the biggest enigmas of the American West.

Sergeant Charles Windolph was the last white survivor of the Battle of the Little Big Horn when he described it nearly seventy years later. A six-year veteran of the Seventh Cavalry, Windolph fought in Benteen’s troop on that fatal Sunday and recalls in vivid detail the battle that wiped...  more

Sergeant Charles Windolph was the last white survivor of the Battle of the Little Big Horn when he described it nearly seventy years later. A six-year veteran of the Seventh Cavalry, Windolph fought in Benteen’s troop on that fatal Sunday and recalls in vivid detail the battle that wiped out Custer’s command. Equally vivid is the evidence marshaled by Frazier and Robert Hunt on events leading up to the battle and on the investigation that followed.

In the spring of 1851, nine members of the Oatman family set out for California on the old Santa Fe Trail. Seventy miles from the California border they were attacked by Indians, who massacred the entire family, except a boy, Lorenzo (mistakenly left for dead), and two girls, Ann and Olive. The...  more

In the spring of 1851, nine members of the Oatman family set out for California on the old Santa Fe Trail. Seventy miles from the California border they were attacked by Indians, who massacred the entire family, except a boy, Lorenzo (mistakenly left for dead), and two girls, Ann and Olive. The girls were taken into captivity, soon to be sold to other Indians farther west. Lorenzo, though badly wounded, found his way back to civilization. As soon as he was able, he began to search for his sisters. R. B. Stratton's narrative is based upon interviews with the Oatmans themselves. It vividly describes the Oatman family, their fateful journey, the massacre, captivity, and search. Olive Oatman's account of her captivity provided one of the earliest descriptions of life in Indian villages of the Southwest.

Below the Escondido Rim details the evolution of a legendary Texas cattle ranch and the historic background in which it evolved. It is a story about dreams as big as the land itself, of hardship and success and failure, of long days in the saddle beneath a relentless sun, of booms and busts,...  more

Below the Escondido Rim details the evolution of a legendary Texas cattle ranch and the historic background in which it evolved. It is a story about dreams as big as the land itself, of hardship and success and failure, of long days in the saddle beneath a relentless sun, of booms and busts, boondoggles and burnouts, overextension and recoil. It is a story about trying to overcome adversity in an incredibly vast but difficult land.

The riveting story of the Alamo ends in tragedy with no brave defender left alive to tell his tale, but there were others who did survive the final massacre--more than a dozen women and children. The thirteen days of the siege and fall of the Alamo have been studied, examined, probed, and...  more

The riveting story of the Alamo ends in tragedy with no brave defender left alive to tell his tale, but there were others who did survive the final massacre--more than a dozen women and children. The thirteen days of the siege and fall of the Alamo have been studied, examined, probed, and researched by students and historians for over 150 years, but here is the Alamo's story by the ones who were there.

Robert Hall was a true Texian: a pioneer settler, Indian fighter, Texas Ranger, and veteran of three wars (the war for Texas Independence, the Mexican War, and the Civil War). He joined the Texas Army shortly after the Battle of San Jacinto, and married into the prominent King family of Gonzales...  more

Robert Hall was a true Texian: a pioneer settler, Indian fighter, Texas Ranger, and veteran of three wars (the war for Texas Independence, the Mexican War, and the Civil War). He joined the Texas Army shortly after the Battle of San Jacinto, and married into the prominent King family of Gonzales County. Although less well known to history enthusiasts because of the rarity of this book, Robert Hall and his exploits were well known to other Texas heroes such as Sam Houston, Ed Burleson, Paint Caldwell, Ben and Henry McCulloch, "Big Foot" Wallace, and Jack Hays. His firsthand accounts of expeditions such as the one that he fought at Plum Creek are nowhere else published; "a gritty, intense chronicle, rich with perspective," says historian Stephen L. Hardin in his introduction to this new edition. Reprinted for the first time from the now extremely rare and valuable 1898 edition, Life of Robert Hall is a vital addition to the collection of first-person accounts of Texas' frontier history, reintroduces Hall and his exploits to the modern reader, and places him securely in the pantheon of Texas heroes where he belongs.

"...the reader seems to smell the acrid gunsmoke and to hear the creak of saddle leather." --Southwestern Historical Quarterly ". . . a true adventure story with so many unusual features that it is sure to be prized by collectors of Texana." --from the Foreword by Walter Prescott Webb Only an...  more

"...the reader seems to smell the acrid gunsmoke and to hear the creak of saddle leather." --Southwestern Historical Quarterly ". . . a true adventure story with so many unusual features that it is sure to be prized by collectors of Texana." --from the Foreword by Walter Prescott Webb Only an extraordinary Texas Ranger could have cleaned up bandit-plagued Southwest Texas, between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande, in the years following the Civil War. Thousands of raiders on horseback, some of them Anglo-Americans, regularly crossed the river from Mexico to pillage, murder, and rape. Their main objective? To steal cattle, which they herded back across the Rio Grande to sell. Honest citizens found it almost impossible to live in the Nueces Strip. In desperation, the governor of Texas called on an extraordinary man, Captain Leander M. McNelly, to take command of a Ranger company and stop these border bandits. One of McNelly's recruits for this task was George Durham, a Georgia farmboy in his teens when he joined the "Little McNellys," as the Captain's band called themselves. More than half a century later, it was George Durham, the last surviving "McNelly Ranger," who recounted the exciting tale of taming the Nueces Strip to San Antonio writer Clyde Wantland. In Durham's account, those long-ago days are brought vividly back to life. Once again the daring McNelly leads his courageous band across Southwest Texas to victories against incredible odds. With a boldness that overcame their dismayingly small number, the McNellys succeeded in bringing law and order to the untamed Nueces Strip--succeeded so well that they antagonized certain "upright" citizens who had been pocketing surreptitious dollars from the bandits' operations.

Thus spoke one lawman about John Wesley Hardin, easily the most feared and fearless of all the gunfighters in the West. Nobody knows the exact number of his victims-perhaps as few as twenty or as many as fifty. In his way of thinking, Hardin never shot a man who did not deserve it. Seeking to...  more

Thus spoke one lawman about John Wesley Hardin, easily the most feared and fearless of all the gunfighters in the West. Nobody knows the exact number of his victims-perhaps as few as twenty or as many as fifty. In his way of thinking, Hardin never shot a man who did not deserve it. Seeking to gain insight into Hardin’s homicidal mind, Leon Metz describes how Hardin’s bloody career began in post-Civil War Central Texas, when lawlessness and killings were commonplace, and traces his life of violence until his capture and imprisonment in 1878. After numerous unsuccessful escape attempts, Hardin settled down and received a pardon years later in 1895. He wrote an autobiography but did not live to see it published. Within a few months of his release, John Selman gunned him down in an El Paso saloon.

Hailed as "a rip-snortin', six-guns-blazin' saga of good guys and bad guys who were sometimes one and the same," Robert M. Utley's Lone Star Justice captured the colorful first century of Texas Ranger history. Now, in the eagerly anticipated conclusion, Lone Star Lawmen, Utley once again...  more

Hailed as "a rip-snortin', six-guns-blazin' saga of good guys and bad guys who were sometimes one and the same," Robert M. Utley's Lone Star Justice captured the colorful first century of Texas Ranger history. Now, in the eagerly anticipated conclusion, Lone Star Lawmen, Utley once again chronicles the daring exploits of the Rangers, this time as they bring justice to the twentieth-century West. Based on unprecedented access to Ranger archives, this fast-paced narrative stretches from the days of the Mexican Revolution (where atrocities against Mexican Americans marked the nadir of Ranger history) to the Branch Davidian saga near Waco and the recent bloody standoff with "Republic of Texas" militia. Readers will find in these pages one hundred years of high adventure. Utley follows the Rangers as they pursue bank robbers, bootleggers, moonshiners, and "horsebackers" (smugglers who used mule trains to bring liquor across the border). We see these fearless lawmen taming oil boomtowns, springing the ambush of Bonnie and Clyde, facing down angry lynch mobs, and tracking the "Phantom Killer" of Texarkana. Utley also highlights the gradual evolution of this celebrated force, revealing that while West Texas Rangers still occasionally ride the range on horseback and crack down on smugglers and rustlers, East Texas Rangers--who work mostly in big cities--now ride in high-powered cars and contend with kidnappers, forgers, and other urban criminals. But East or West, today's Rangers have become sophisticated professionals, backed by crime labs and forensic science. Written by one of the most respected Western historians alive, here is the definitive account of the Texas Rangers, a vivid portrait of these legendary peace officers and their role in a changing West.

From the perilous ocean crossing to the shared bounty of the first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrim settlement of New England has become enshrined as our most sacred national myth. Yet, as bestselling author Nathaniel Philbrick reveals in his spellbinding new book, the true story of the Pilgrims is...  more

From the perilous ocean crossing to the shared bounty of the first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrim settlement of New England has become enshrined as our most sacred national myth. Yet, as bestselling author Nathaniel Philbrick reveals in his spellbinding new book, the true story of the Pilgrims is much more than the well-known tale of piety and sacrifice; it is a fifty-five-year epic that is at once tragic, heroic, exhilarating, and profound.

"He who opens these pages for the first time faces a rich experience."-C. Vann Woodward. In the words of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., here "is romantic history at its most vivid and compelling." This edition of the classic study of the two brilliant opposing generals in the French and Indian War...  more

"He who opens these pages for the first time faces a rich experience."-C. Vann Woodward. In the words of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., here "is romantic history at its most vivid and compelling." This edition of the classic study of the two brilliant opposing generals in the French and Indian War features not only over forty illustrations but also a masterly foreword by the distinguished historian C. Vann Woodward.

"Leckie is a gifted writer with the ability to explain complicated military matters in layperson’s terms, while sustaining the drama involved in a life-and-death struggle. His portraits of the key players in that struggle . . . are seamlessly interwoven with his exciting narrative."...  more

"Leckie is a gifted writer with the ability to explain complicated military matters in layperson’s terms, while sustaining the drama involved in a life-and-death struggle. His portraits of the key players in that struggle . . . are seamlessly interwoven with his exciting narrative." –Booklist"As always, [Leckie] describes the maneuvers, battles, and results in telling detail with a cinematic style, and his portraits . . . are first-rate."–The Dallas Morning News"Leckie’s accounts of battles, important individuals, and the role of Native Americans bring to life the distant drama of the French and Indian Wars."–The Daily Reflector With his celebrated sense of drama and eye for colorful detail, acclaimed military historian Robert Leckie charts the long, savage conflict between England and France in their quest for supremacy in pre-Revolutionary America. Packed with sharply etched profiles of all the major players–including George Washington, Samuel de Champlain, William Pitt, Edward Braddock, Count Frontenac, James Wolfe, Thomas Gage, and the nobly vanquished Marquis de Montcalm–this panoramic history chronicles the four great colonial wars: the War of the Grand Alliance (King William’s War), the War of the Spanish Succession (Queen Anne’s War), the War of the Austrian Succession (King George’s War), and the decisive French and Indian War (the Seven Years’ War). Leckie not only provides perspective on exactly how the New World came to be such a fiercely contested prize in Western Civilization, but also shows us exactly why we speak English today instead of French–and reminds us how easily things might have gone the other way.

The story of this war has usually been told in terms of a conflict between blundering British generals and their rigidly disciplined red-coated troops on the one side and heroic American patriots in their homespun shirts and coonskin caps on the other. In this fresh, compelling narrative,...  more

The story of this war has usually been told in terms of a conflict between blundering British generals and their rigidly disciplined red-coated troops on the one side and heroic American patriots in their homespun shirts and coonskin caps on the other. In this fresh, compelling narrative, Christopher Hibbert portrays the realities of a war that raged the length of an entire continent -- a war that thousands of George Washington's fellow countrymen condemned and that he came close to losing. Based on a wide variety of sources and alive with astute character sketches and eyewitness accounts, Redcoats and Rebels presents a vivid and convincing picture of the "cruel, accursed" war that changed the world forever. 16 pages of illustrations.

First published in 1984, Robert Utley's The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846-1890, is considered a classic for both students and scholars. For this revision, Utley includes scholarship and research that has become available in recent years.

Praise for Blood and Thunder“Kit Carson’s role in the conquest of the Navajo during and after the Civil War remains one of the most dramatic and significant episodes in the history of the American West. Hampton Sides portrays Carson in the larger context of the conquest of the...  more

Praise for Blood and Thunder“Kit Carson’s role in the conquest of the Navajo during and after the Civil War remains one of the most dramatic and significant episodes in the history of the American West. Hampton Sides portrays Carson in the larger context of the conquest of the entire West, including his frequent and often lethal encounters with hostile Native Americans. Unusually, Sides gives full voice to Indian leaders themselves about their trials and tribulations in their dealings with the whites. Here is a national hero on the level of Daniel Boone, presented with all of his flaws and virtues, in the context of American people’s belief that it was their Manifest Destiny to occupy the entire West.”—Howard Lamar, Sterling Professor Emeritus of History, Yale University and editor of The New Encyclopedia of the American West“The story of the American West has seldom been told with such intimacy and immediacy. Legendary figures like Kit Carson leap to life and history moves at a pulse-pounding pace—sweeping the reader along with it. Hampton Sides is a terrific storyteller.”—Candice Millard, author of The River of Doubt“Hampton Sides doesn't just write a book, he transports the reader to another time and place. With his keen sense of drama and his crackling writing style, this master storyteller has bequeathed us a majestic history of the Old West.”—James Bradley, author of Flags of Our Fathers and Flyboys“Blood and Thunder is a big-hearted book whose subject is as expansive as they come. Hampton Sides tackles it with naked pleasure and narrative cunning: In his telling, the vast saga of America’s westward push has a logical center. The dusty town of Santa Fe becomes the nexus around which swirl the fortunes and strategies of a mixed set of serious overachievers, from Kit Carson, the original mountain man, to James K. Polk, the enigmatic president whose achievements, in the dreaded name of Manifest Destiny, were almost biblical in scope. Sides is alive to the exuberance and alert to the tragedy of the taking of the West.” —Russell Shorto, author of Island at the Center of the World“For a huge percentage of us immigrant Americans (those whose ancestors arrived after 1492), Hampton Sides fills a gaping hole in our knowledge of American history—a vivid account of how ‘The New Men’ swept away the thriving civilizations of the Native Americans in their conquest of the West.” —Tony Hillerman"BLOOD AND THUNDER is a balanced, thoughtful summary of the American conquistadors in the 19th century Southwest. Hampton Sides has re-created violent events and such inflammatory figures as Kit Carson without bias. Carefully researched, thoroughly enjoyable."-Evan S. Connell, author of SON OF THE MORNING STAR, CUSTER AND THE LITTLE BIGHORNA Magnificent History of How the West Was Really Won—a Sweeping Tale of Shame and GloryIn the fall of 1846 the venerable Navajo warrior Narbona, greatest of his people’s chieftains, looked down upon the small town of Santa Fe, the stronghold of the Mexican settlers he had been fighting his whole long life. He had come to see if the rumors were true—if an army of blue-suited soldiers had swept in from the East and utterly defeated his ancestral enemies. As Narbona gazed down on the battlements and cannons of a mighty fort the invaders had built, he realized his foes had been vanquished—but what did the arrival of these “New Men” portend for the Navajo?Narbona could not have known that “The Army of the West,” in the midst of the longest march in American military history, was merely the vanguard of an inexorable tide fueled by a self-righteous ideology now known as “Manifest Destiny.” For twenty years the Navajo, elusive lords of a huge swath of mountainous desert and pasturelands, would ferociously resist the flood of soldiers and settlers who wished to change their ancient way of life or destroy them.Hampton Sides’s extraordinary book brings the history of the American conquest of the West to ringing life. It is a tale with many heroes and villains, but as is found in the best history, the same person might be both. At the center of it all stands the remarkable figure of Kit Carson—the legendary trapper, scout, and soldier who embodies all the contradictions and ambiguities of the American experience in the West. Brave and clever, beloved by his contemporaries, Carson was an illiterate mountain man who twice married Indian women and understood and respected the tribes better than any other American alive. Yet he was also a cold-blooded killer who willingly followed orders tantamount to massacre. Carson’s almost unimaginable exploits made him a household name when they were written up in pulp novels known as “blood-and-thunders,” but now that name is a bitter curse for contemporary Navajo, who cannot forget his role in the travails of their ancestors.

A brilliant account of the proud and ferocious American fighters who stood up to the British forces in savage battles crucial in deciding both the fate of the Carolina colonies and the outcome of the war. "A tense, exciting historical account of a little known chapter of the Revolution,...  more

A brilliant account of the proud and ferocious American fighters who stood up to the British forces in savage battles crucial in deciding both the fate of the Carolina colonies and the outcome of the war. "A tense, exciting historical account of a little known chapter of the Revolution, displaying history writing at its best."—Kirkus Reviews "His compelling narrative brings readers closer than ever before to the reality of Revolutionary warfare in the Carolinas."—Raleigh News & Observer. "Buchanan makes the subject come alive like few others I have seen." —Dennis Conrad, Editor, The Nathanael Greene Papers. "John Buchanan offers us a lively, accurate account of a critical period in the War of Independence in the South. Based on numerous printed primary and secondary sources, it deserves a large reading audience." —Don Higginbotham, Professor of History, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

In this book are the inspiring and often thrilling stories of men and women who contributed to the destiny of a great state but slipped from the pages of history.

When as a young academic in 1933 Rupert Richardson wrote the definitive work on Comanche Indians in the Texas South Plains, his primary sources included Comanche Indians themselves, their champions (few) and victims (many).

The feuds raging in Texas in the nineteenth century bound in acrimony not only families but special-interest groups that, feeling intolerably wronged, sought "extralegal justice" when they believed the law would give them no satisfaction. In I’ll Die Before I’ll Run the prominent...  more

The feuds raging in Texas in the nineteenth century bound in acrimony not only families but special-interest groups that, feeling intolerably wronged, sought "extralegal justice" when they believed the law would give them no satisfaction. In I’ll Die Before I’ll Run the prominent historian C. L. Sonnichsen leaves no doubt that bad blood so often turned into bloody feuds in Texas because there the folk law of the frontier was reinforced by the unwritten code of honor of the South, and because everybody in Texas went armed. Although the Regulators and Moderators warred in eastern Texas in the 1840s, the really big feuds were ignited by the Civil War and flamed until late in the century, when the Texas Rangers began to put them out. In rich circumstantial detail Sonnichsen describes the most famous of the conflagrations stretching from the "sorrowful sixties" to the "nervous nineties."

Texas was the site of numerous battles both in its own war for independence from Mexico and in the Civil War. Battlefields of Texas is an overview of those significant and oftentimes controversial conflicts. Adobe Walls, Blanco Canyon, Gonzales, Salado, San Jacinto, the Alamo, Palo Duro Canyon,...  more

Texas was the site of numerous battles both in its own war for independence from Mexico and in the Civil War. Battlefields of Texas is an overview of those significant and oftentimes controversial conflicts. Adobe Walls, Blanco Canyon, Gonzales, Salado, San Jacinto, the Alamo, Palo Duro Canyon, and Rattlesnake Springs are just a few of the many sites across the state where battles were fought. Maps of the battlefields are also included in this unique collection of Texas history. Vivid descriptions of the fields of battle, individual profiles of the participants, and retrospective analysis make this book an excellent reference for both Texas and military historians alike.

Eyewitness To The Alamo is the actual account of the siege and Battle of the Alamo by those who were present during the attack. This book is the first complete accounting of the Battle of the Alamo by one of our country's foremost authorities on the event.

In 1912 author James T. DeShields dedicated his Border Wars of Texas to "The Sons and Daughters of Those Noble Pioneer Fathers and Mothers who . . . battled so bravely for supremacy and . . . made possible all the glorious blessings that have followed," and herein are the accounts of the early...  more

In 1912 author James T. DeShields dedicated his Border Wars of Texas to "The Sons and Daughters of Those Noble Pioneer Fathers and Mothers who . . . battled so bravely for supremacy and . . . made possible all the glorious blessings that have followed," and herein are the accounts of the early battles of those advancing pioneers as they relentingly encroached across the borders of the territories which the Indians believed to be theirs. DeShields' work, which used Texas' earliest historical sources such as John Henry Brown, John W. Wilbarger, and Henderson King Yoakum, is made invaluable by his extensive use of other primary source material such as his numerous turn-of-the-century interviews and correspondence with early Texas Rangers and frontiersmen who were yet living. Many of his accounts are found nowhere else in publications of Texas history and thus provide fresh insights into the history of Texas' wars against the Indians. Despite his view of Texas history as one in which the ultimate victory of the dauntless Anglo pioneer over the savage Indian was both predetermined and inevitable, DeShields' work retains a humanistic viewpoint, supporting Houston's conciliatory Indian policies of total destruction or expulsion. Regardless of DeShields' personal sympathies, the conflicts between the pioneer and Indian warring factions were bloody and savage, and DeShields superbly documents the savagery.

"I was but a boy in my nineteenth year, and in for adventure when I started out from Hopkinsville, Kentucky, with all my worldly possessions, consisting of a few dollars in money, a change of clothes, and a gun, of course, to seek my fortune in this lazy man's paradise." Noah Smithwick was an...  more

"I was but a boy in my nineteenth year, and in for adventure when I started out from Hopkinsville, Kentucky, with all my worldly possessions, consisting of a few dollars in money, a change of clothes, and a gun, of course, to seek my fortune in this lazy man's paradise." Noah Smithwick was an old man, blind and near his ninetieth year, when his daughter recorded these words. He had stayed on in "paradise"--Texas--from 1827 to 1861, when his opposition to secession took him to California. The Evolution of a State is his story of these "old Texas days." A blacksmith and a tobacco smuggler, Noah Smithwick made weapons for the Battle of Concepción, and he fought in that battle. With Hensley's company, he chased the Mexican army south of the Rio Grande after the Battle of San Jacinto. Twice he served with the Texas Rangers. In quieter times, he was a postmaster and justice of the peace in little Webber's Prairie. Eyewitness to so much Texas history, Smithwick recounts his life and adventures in a simple, straightforward style, with a wry sense of humor. His keen memory for detail--what the people wore, what they ate, how they worked and played-- vividly evokes the sights, sounds, and smells of the frontier. First published in part by the Dallas Morning News, Smithwick's recollections gained such popularity that they were published in book form, as The Evolution of a State, in 1900. This new edition of a Texas classic makes widely available for the first time in many years this "best of all books dealing with life in early Texas."

"John Holland Jenkins was thirteen and a half years old when the Alamo fell in 1836 and he became a soldier of the Texas Republic under General Sam Houston.... [But] it was not until 1884, when he was past sixty years old, that he began writing down . . . the reminiscences that, as now put...  more

"John Holland Jenkins was thirteen and a half years old when the Alamo fell in 1836 and he became a soldier of the Texas Republic under General Sam Houston.... [But] it was not until 1884, when he was past sixty years old, that he began writing down . . . the reminiscences that, as now put into book form, light up for whoever will read [them] the earliest days of early English-speaking Texas." --from the Foreword by J. Frank Dobie This is the firsthand account by one who measured up to the demands of danger and hardships and lived to write about it for others. For, here is history in the making--Indian raids and Mexican forays were daily menaces and brought massacres, capture and torture to these first settlers. These reminiscences . . . are invaluable for their recordings of early frontier times and for their presentation of such historic happenings as the Mier and Santa Fe expeditions. The original flavor of the writing has been beautifully retained and the entire account is well documented.

Through letters written by one family in post-Reconstruction Texas, Myers shows what life was like in this part of the Old West, from a feminine perspective.

"Sam W. Haynes has provided an excellent, well-written account of the ill-fated Texas expeditions against Mexico in the 1840s. Not only does the author cover these events in entertaining detail, he scrupulously places them in the context of the political and diplomatic realities of the Texas...  more

"Sam W. Haynes has provided an excellent, well-written account of the ill-fated Texas expeditions against Mexico in the 1840s. Not only does the author cover these events in entertaining detail, he scrupulously places them in the context of the political and diplomatic realities of the Texas Republic. He also takes care to be even-handed in his treatment of Texans and Mexicans. . . . superb storytelling and penetrating analysis." --Password

The story of the five Marlow brothers and their tribulations in late-nineteenth-century Young County, Texas, was first related in 1892 by William Rathmell in Life of the Marlows. After killing a popular sheriff and escaping, Boone Marlow was murdered by bounty hunters. The other four brothers,...  more

The story of the five Marlow brothers and their tribulations in late-nineteenth-century Young County, Texas, was first related in 1892 by William Rathmell in Life of the Marlows. After killing a popular sheriff and escaping, Boone Marlow was murdered by bounty hunters. The other four brothers, arrested as accessories and jailed, made a daring break but were recaptured and later forced to fight off a lynch mob. Angry citizens ambushed the Marlows during a transfer to another town: two brothers were shot and killed, the other two severely wounded, and three mob members died. The surviving brothers eventually were exonerated, but members of the attack mob were prosecuted in cases that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Rathmell's book, biased in favor of the Marlows, has long been out of print. Robert K. DeArment has sifted through the evidence and presents an objective, annotated edition. Now the complete story can be told and readers can judge for themselves: were the Marlows as law-abiding as Rathmell claims? Or was the mob reacting with justified anger?

Read of the triumph, passion, and tragedy of the valiant yet doomed defenders of the Old Spanish mission.

Eighteen-year-old Napoleon Augustus Jennings came to Texas in 1874 and joined a special force of Texas ranger charged with border patrol under the command of L.H. McNelly. At this time the South Texas region was home to hundreds of outlaws and riffraff, and some three thousand Mexican guerrillas...  more

Eighteen-year-old Napoleon Augustus Jennings came to Texas in 1874 and joined a special force of Texas ranger charged with border patrol under the command of L.H. McNelly. At this time the South Texas region was home to hundreds of outlaws and riffraff, and some three thousand Mexican guerrillas under Juan Cortina and others were raiding settlers on both sides of the Rio Grande. McNelly’s Rangers stormed into this lawless area for two reasons, according to Jennings: "Two have fun, and to carry out a set policy of terrorizing the Mexicans at every opportunity," which would gain them the reputation as "fire-eating, quarrelsome daredevils" and make their job of subduing the guerrillas an easier prospect. Within a short time the Rangers had arrested more than eleven hundred men and reputedly killed many more. Jennings records many a fight with the Mexican guerrillas, including the time when McNelly defied the United States government, crossed the Rio Grande, and fought Cortina and his raiders at Las Cuevas. Jennings also gives accounts of scrapes with King Fisher’s outlaw band, John Wesley Hardin, and the families involved in the Taylor-Sutton feud. Originally published in 1899, A Texas Ranger was reprinted in 1930 with a foreword by J. Frank Dobie, who defends the veracity of the account despite the fact that Jennings was not, as his story claims, a member of the company in its earliest years. In a new introduction of this edition, Stephen L. Hardin explores the authenticity of Jennings account and imparts the story of the feud that erupted between Dobie and Walter Prescott Webb over the publication of A Texas Ranger.

Texas was already slipping from the grasp of Mexico when Manuel Mier y Terán made his tour of inspection in 1828. American settlers were pouring across the vaguely defined border between Mexico's northernmost province and the United States, along with a host of Indian nations driven off...  more

Texas was already slipping from the grasp of Mexico when Manuel Mier y Terán made his tour of inspection in 1828. American settlers were pouring across the vaguely defined border between Mexico's northernmost province and the United States, along with a host of Indian nations driven off their lands by American expansionism. Terán's mission was to assess the political situation in Texas while establishing its boundary with the United States. Highly qualified for these tasks as a soldier, scientist, and intellectual, he wrote perhaps the most perceptive account of Texas's people, politics, natural resources, and future prospects during the critical decade of the 1820s. This book contains the full text of Terán's diary--which has never before been published--edited and annotated by Jack Jackson and translated into English by John Wheat. The introduction and epilogue place the diary in historical context, revealing the significant role that Terán played in setting Mexican policy for Texas between 1828 and 1832.

Mapping old trails has a romantic allure at least as great as the difficulty involved in doing it. In this book, William Foster produces the first highly accurate maps of the eleven Spanish expeditions from northeastern Mexico into what is now East Texas during the years 1689 to 1768. Foster...  more

Mapping old trails has a romantic allure at least as great as the difficulty involved in doing it. In this book, William Foster produces the first highly accurate maps of the eleven Spanish expeditions from northeastern Mexico into what is now East Texas during the years 1689 to 1768. Foster draws upon the detailed diaries that each expedition kept of its route, cross-checking the journals among themselves and against previously unused eighteenth-century Spanish maps, modern detailed topographic maps, aerial photographs, and on-site inspections. From these sources emerges a clear picture of where the Spanish explorers actually passed through Texas. This information, which corrects many previous misinterpretations, will be widely valuable. Old names of rivers and landforms will be of interest to geographers. Anthropologists and archaeologists will find new information on encounters with some 139 named Indian tribes. Botanists and zoologists will see changes in the distribution of flora and fauna with increasing European habitation, and climatologists will learn more about the "Little Ice Age" along the Rio Grande.

They called it Satan's Circus -- a square mile of Midtown Manhattan where vice ruled, sin flourished, and depravity danced in every doorway. At the turn of the twentieth century, it was a place where everyone from the chorus girls to the beat cops was on the take and where bad boys became...  more

They called it Satan's Circus -- a square mile of Midtown Manhattan where vice ruled, sin flourished, and depravity danced in every doorway. At the turn of the twentieth century, it was a place where everyone from the chorus girls to the beat cops was on the take and where bad boys became wicked men; a place where an upstanding young policeman such as Charley Becker could become the crookedest cop who ever stood behind a shield. Murder was so common in the vice district that few people were surprised when the loudmouthed owner of a shabby casino was gunned down on the steps of its best hotel. But when, two weeks later, an ambitious district attorney charged Becker with ordering the murder, even the denizens of Satan's Circus were surprised. The handsome lieutenant was a decorated hero, the renowned leader of New York's vice-busting Special Squad. Was he a bad cop leading a double life, or a pawn felled by the sinister rogues who ran Manhattan's underworld? With appearances by the legendary and the notorious -- including Big Tim Sullivan, the election-rigging vice lord of Tammany Hall; future president Theodore Roosevelt; beloved gangster Jack Zelig; and the newly famous author Stephen Crane -- Satan's Circus brings to life an almost-forgotten Gotham. Chronicling Charley Becker's rise and fall, the book tells of the raucous, gaudy, and utterly corrupt city that made him, and recounts not one but two sensational murder trials that landed him in the electric chair.

The 1893 Chicago World's Fair is the setting for this true account of two very different men: the celebrated architect Daniel H. Burnham who designed and supervised the construction of the "White City" around which the fair was built, and H.H. Holmes (born Herman Webster Mudgett),...  more

The 1893 Chicago World's Fair is the setting for this true account of two very different men: the celebrated architect Daniel H. Burnham who designed and supervised the construction of the "White City" around which the fair was built, and H.H. Holmes (born Herman Webster Mudgett), a fiendishly clever serial killer posing as a doctor who murdered scores of people, mostly young women, in his World's Fair Hotel, which contained a gas chamber and a handy crematorium for disposing of his victims. Telling their entwined stories in alternating points of view, Erik Larson illuminates the lives of these two men, but provides insightful commentary on the changes that were taking place in American society that allowed both phenomena -- a grandiose World's Fair and a string of unsolved murders -- to take place. The book contains cameo appearances by such late-19th-century celebrities as Buffalo Bill Cody, Susan B. Anthony, and Thomas Edison.

Beginning in 1866 and continuing for over a century, more than eight thousand people suspected of having leprosy were forcibly exiled to the Hawaiian island of Molokai -- the longest and deadliest instance of medical segregation in American history. Torn from their homes and families, these men,...  more

Beginning in 1866 and continuing for over a century, more than eight thousand people suspected of having leprosy were forcibly exiled to the Hawaiian island of Molokai -- the longest and deadliest instance of medical segregation in American history. Torn from their homes and families, these men, women, and children were loaded into shipboard cattle stalls and abandoned in a lawless place where brutality held sway. Many did not have leprosy, and many who did were not contagious, yet all were ensnared in a shared nightmare.  Here, for the first time, John Tayman reveals the complete history of the Molokai settlement and its unforgettable inhabitants. It's an epic of ruthless manhunts, thrilling escapes, bizarre medical experiments, and tragic, irreversible error. Carefully researched and masterfully told, The Colony is a searing tale of individual bravery and extraordinary survival, and stands as a testament to the power of faith, compassion, and the human spirit.

The ordeal of the whaleship Essex was an event as mythic in the nineteenth century as the sinking of the Titanic was in the twentieth. In 1819, the Essex left Nantucket for the South Pacific with twenty crew members aboard. In the middle of the South Pacific the ship was rammed and sunk by an...  more

The ordeal of the whaleship Essex was an event as mythic in the nineteenth century as the sinking of the Titanic was in the twentieth. In 1819, the Essex left Nantucket for the South Pacific with twenty crew members aboard. In the middle of the South Pacific the ship was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale. The crew drifted for more than ninety days in three tiny whaleboats, succumbing to weather, hunger, disease, and ultimately turning to drastic measures in the fight for survival. Nathaniel Philbrick uses little-known documents-including a long-lost account written by the ship's cabin boy-and penetrating details about whaling and the Nantucket community to reveal the chilling events surrounding this epic maritime disaster. An intense and mesmerizing read, In the Heart of the Sea is a monumental work of history forever placing the Essex tragedy in the American historical canon.

A colorful chronicle of the American West, this book brings to life General John Gibbon's experiences on the western frontier - as he first encountered it in 1860, and as he campaigned and scouted through the West during the 1870s. Gibbon was an uncommonly observant and articulate officer in the...  more

A colorful chronicle of the American West, this book brings to life General John Gibbon's experiences on the western frontier - as he first encountered it in 1860, and as he campaigned and scouted through the West during the 1870s. Gibbon was an uncommonly observant and articulate officer in the Regular Army, and his journal is a thoughtful record of the lives of the Indians, soldiers, and white settlers who uneasily shared the vast western wilderness. Above all, Gibbon recounts in detail the realities of army life and Indian warfare. He saw no gallant cavalry charges in the Sioux Campaign of 1876, only footsore infantrymen marching in search of Indian warriors who always managed to outdistance their pursuers. An avid sportsman and explorer, Gibbon relates stories of hunting and fishing trips in the wilderness and a visit to the newly created Yellowstone Park. Taken as a whole, Gibbon's journal and narratives offer a fascinating glimpse of life on the American frontier. John Gibbon (1827-1896) served in the U.S. military for nearly fifty years and is most closely associated with two of America's best-known battles - Pickett's Charge and Custer's Last Stand. His "Personal Recollections of the Civil War" is acknowledged as a classic account of the war. Alan and Maureen Gaff have been researching American history for twenty years. Alan Gaff is author of "Brave Men's Tears: The Iron Brigade at the Battle of Brawner Farm" and "If This Is War: A History of the Campaign of Bull's Run" by the Wisconsin Regiment Thereafter Known as the "Ragged Ass Second".

Presents a vivid account of a history-making storm that hit the New England coast in October 1991 and the lives it changed, weaving together the history of the fishing industry, the science of storms, and personal accounts.

September 8, 1900, began innocently in the seaside town of Galveston, Texas. Even Isaac Cline, resident meteorologist for the U.S. Weather Bureau failed to grasp the true meaning of the strange deep-sea swells and peculiar winds that greeted the city that morning. Mere hours later, Galveston...  more

September 8, 1900, began innocently in the seaside town of Galveston, Texas. Even Isaac Cline, resident meteorologist for the U.S. Weather Bureau failed to grasp the true meaning of the strange deep-sea swells and peculiar winds that greeted the city that morning. Mere hours later, Galveston found itself submerged in a monster hurricane that completely destroyed the town and killed over six thousand people in what remains the greatest natural disaster in American history -- and Isaac Cline found himself the victim of a devestating personal tragedy. Using Cline's own telegrams, letters, and reports, the testimony of scores of survivors, and our latest understanding of the science of hurricanes, Erik Larson builds a chronicle of one man's heroic struggle and fatal miscalculation in the face of a storm of unimaginable magnitude. Riveting, powerful, and unbearably suspenseful, Isaac's Storm is the story of what can happen when human arrogance meets the great uncontrollable force of nature.

The enlisted men in the United States Army during the Indian Wars (1866-91) need no longer be mere shadows behind their historically well-documented commanding officers. As member of the regular army, these men formed an important segment of our usually slighted national military continuum...  more

The enlisted men in the United States Army during the Indian Wars (1866-91) need no longer be mere shadows behind their historically well-documented commanding officers. As member of the regular army, these men formed an important segment of our usually slighted national military continuum and, through their labors, combats, and endurance, created the framework of law and order within which settlement and development become possible. We should know more about the common soldier in our military past, and here he is. The rank and file regular, then as now, was psychologically as well as physically isolated from most of his fellow Americans. The people were tired of the military and its connotations after four years of civil war. They arrayed their army between themselves and the Indians, paid its soldiers their pittance, and went about the business of mushrooming the nation’s economy. Because few enlisted men were literarily inclined, many barely able to scribble their names, most previous writings about them have been what officers and others had to say. To find out what the average soldier of the post-Civil War frontier thought, Don Rickey, Jr., asked over three hundred living veterans to supply information about their army experiences by answering questionnaires and writing personal accounts. Many of them who had survived to the mid-1950’s contributed much more through additional correspondence and personal interviews. Whether the soldier is speaking for himself or through the author in his role as commentator-historian, this is the first documented account of the mass personality of the rank and file during the Indian Wars, and is only incidentally a history of those campaigns.

The Great Sioux War of 1876-77 is memorable to most Americans because of Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer's last stand at the Battle of Little Big Horn.  Yet despite its infamy, it was only one engagement of many in the protracted, disjointed struggle between the U.S. Army and the...  more

The Great Sioux War of 1876-77 is memorable to most Americans because of Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer's last stand at the Battle of Little Big Horn.  Yet despite its infamy, it was only one engagement of many in the protracted, disjointed struggle between the U.S. Army and the allied Sioux and Northern Cheyenne Indians. Battles and Skirmishes of the Great Sioux War 1876-1877  presents the military side of the struggle and offers fifteen accounts, with maps of the many engagements as they were observed by participating officers, enlisted men, scouts, surgeons, and newspaper correspondents.  Jerome A. Green's introduction and commentary on each account help readers understand the interrelationship of events and the context of the entire campaign.  For those wishing to understand the Indian perspective, the companion volume by the same author, Lakota and Cheyenne: Indian Views of the Great Sioux War, 1876-1877, offers a perspective "from the other side."

Since Sylvester Pattie was one of the first Anglo-Americans to visit San Diego, and since he died here, the Pattie expedition of the 1820s has always been of considerable interest to San Diegans. When you add to that the fact that the story of the Pattie enterprise and son James' subsequent...  more

Since Sylvester Pattie was one of the first Anglo-Americans to visit San Diego, and since he died here, the Pattie expedition of the 1820s has always been of considerable interest to San Diegans. When you add to that the fact that the story of the Pattie enterprise and son James' subsequent narrative is a rousing good western adventure yarn, then a good book on the subject cannot fail to be an exciting enterprise. Richard Batman's book, originally published as American Ecclesiastes: An Epic Journey through the Early American West, is certainly that. It is both a biography of the Patties, an account of the expedition west, and a running comment on the 1831 Personal Narrative and other sources. Well researched and colorfully written, this is both a major contribution to the scholarship of the topic and a popular biography of James Pattie. The University of Oklahoma Press has now reissued the book in a paperback edition, with the new title of James Pattie's West: The Dream and the Reality.

"For 60 years, The Trail Drivers of Texas has been considered the most monumental single source on the old-time Texas trail drives north to Kansas and beyond. . . . Because of its vast volume of raw material, expressed in the words of those who lived the life and rode the long miles, students of...  more

"For 60 years, The Trail Drivers of Texas has been considered the most monumental single source on the old-time Texas trail drives north to Kansas and beyond. . . . Because of its vast volume of raw material, expressed in the words of those who lived the life and rode the long miles, students of cattle industry history regard it with high respect, even awe." --Elmer Kelton, Dallas Morning News ". . . the essential starting point for any study of Texas trail driving days. Walter Prescott Webb called it 'Absolutely the best source there is on the cattle trail . . .'" --basic texas books These are the chronicles of the trail drivers of Texas--those rugged men and, sometimes, women who drove cattle and horses up the trails from Texas to northern markets in the late 1800s. Gleaned from members of the Old Time Trail Drivers' Association, these hundreds of real-life stories--some humorous, some chilling, some rambling, all interesting--form an invaluable cornerstone to the literature, history, and folklore of Texas and the West. First published in the 1920s and reissued by the University of Texas Press in 1985, this classic work is now available in a handsome paperback edition that contains the full text, historical illustrations, and name index of the hardcover edition.

San Franciscans in 1851 would no longer turn to their government, the Law-and-Order Party, as it was then called, for protection of their property and person. One hundred and three respectable citizens banded together to turn the tide. "The name and style of the association shall be the...  more

San Franciscans in 1851 would no longer turn to their government, the Law-and-Order Party, as it was then called, for protection of their property and person. One hundred and three respectable citizens banded together to turn the tide. "The name and style of the association shall be the Committee of Vigilance for the protection of the lives and property of the Citizens and residents of the City of San Francisco."

Are America's secrets for sale? A survey of U.S. intelligence failures from the Pueblo incident to the present.

In Telling Memories Among Southern Women, Susan Tucker presents a revealing collection of oral-history narratives that explore the complex, sometimes enigmatic bond between black female domestic workers and their white employers from the turn of the twentieth century to the civil rights...  more

In Telling Memories Among Southern Women, Susan Tucker presents a revealing collection of oral-history narratives that explore the complex, sometimes enigmatic bond between black female domestic workers and their white employers from the turn of the twentieth century to the civil rights revolution of the 1960's. Based on interviews with forty-two women of both races from the Deep South, these narratives express the full range of human emotions and successfully convey the ties that united-and the tensions and conflicts that separated-these two mutually dependent groups of women.

Written without a trace of sentimentality or apology, this is an unforgettable personal story -- the truth as a remarkable young woman named Anne Moody lived it. To read her book is to know what it is to have grown up black in Mississippi in the forties an fifties -- and to have survived with...  more

Written without a trace of sentimentality or apology, this is an unforgettable personal story -- the truth as a remarkable young woman named Anne Moody lived it. To read her book is to know what it is to have grown up black in Mississippi in the forties an fifties -- and to have survived with pride and courage intact.In this now classic autobiography, she details the sights, smells, and suffering of growing up in a racist society and candidily reveals the soul of a black girl who had the courage to challenge it. The result is a touchstone work: an accurate, authoritative portrait of black family life in the rural South and a moving account of a woman's indomitable heart.

" . . . the stories are good enough to make you wish you'd heard them told aloud."--True West " . . . offers insights into the lives of characters in a society far different from our own--mail-order brides, prostitutes, the Ku Klux Klan, and, for spice, a hermit who became a bank...  more

" . . . the stories are good enough to make you wish you'd heard them told aloud."--True West " . . . offers insights into the lives of characters in a society far different from our own--mail-order brides, prostitutes, the Ku Klux Klan, and, for spice, a hermit who became a bank president--all riding the wave of the rough and tumble frontier. . . . "--Bloomsbury Review Malcolm Vernon's stories--delightfully and poignantly retold by his granddaughter--are of a fifteen-year-old boy heading west alone, working the range, recovering stolen stock, seeing men killed over card games and buckets of buttermilk, and, most of all, growing to manhood on the Texas frontier.

The image of the Baron de Steuben training Washington's ragged, demoralized troops in the snow at Valley Forge is part of the iconography of our Revolutionary heritage, but most history fans know little more about this fascinating figure. In the first book on Steuben since 1937, Paul Lockhart,...  more

The image of the Baron de Steuben training Washington's ragged, demoralized troops in the snow at Valley Forge is part of the iconography of our Revolutionary heritage, but most history fans know little more about this fascinating figure. In the first book on Steuben since 1937, Paul Lockhart, an expert in European military history, finally explains the significance of Steuben's military experience in Europe. Steeped in the traditions of the Prussian army of Frederick the Great?the most ruthlessly effective in Europe?he taught the soldiers of the Continental Army how to fight like Europeans. His guiding hand shaped the army that triumphed over the British at Monmouth, Stony Point, and Yorktown. And his influence did not end with the Revolution. Steuben was instrumental in creating West Point, and in writing the "Blue Book"?the first official regulations of the American army. His principles have guided the American armed forces to this day. Steuben's life is also a classic immigrant story. A failure in midlife, he uprooted himself from his native Europe to seek one last chance at glory and fame in the New World. In America he managed to reinvent himself?making his background quite a bit more glamorous than was the reality?but redeeming himself by his exceptional service and becoming, in a sense, the man he claimed to be.

**WINNER OF THE 2007 UNITED STATES MARITIME LITERATURE AWARD**In the 1830s, Mexico endured a tragic era of internal political instability. Meanwhile, bold American frontiersmen sought their fortunes beyond the borders of the United States, with many settling in the Mexican territory of Texas. In...  more

**WINNER OF THE 2007 UNITED STATES MARITIME LITERATURE AWARD**In the 1830s, Mexico endured a tragic era of internal political instability. Meanwhile, bold American frontiersmen sought their fortunes beyond the borders of the United States, with many settling in the Mexican territory of Texas. In 1835, these transplanted Americans led a revolt against Texas's embattled rulers in Mexico City. Lone Star Navy chronicles the little fleet of wooden warships, bought on credit by an impoverished band of revolutionaries and sent to sea on a singular mission: to win Texas's independence from Mexico. Beginning with four small sailing vessels, the upstart flotilla became a vital counterpart to Texan armies fighting for an independent republic. Indeed, Capt. Jeremiah Brown's naval battle off Matamoros in April 1836 helped save the fledgling republic from a premature end. But even as it battled for independence on the Gulf of Mexico, the Texas navy came under attack from unexpected enemies. The same fierce individuality that led Texans to shake off their Mexican rulers also stymied their efforts to govern themselves with any consensus. Lauded by its advocates as strategically vital and ridiculed by its detractors as a farcical waste of money, the navy became a flashpoint in a clash of visions. Denied adequate funding, sailors and officers suffered long periods without pay, and their vessels fell into chronic disrepair, but they still defended their small nation's fortunes.The decrepit remains of the battle-scarred fleet finally fell into American hands when Texas, in need of a strong ally, was annexed by the United States in 1845. The Mexican government prophesied that relinquishing Texas would lead to the loss of its other northern territories. And, indeed, the Mexican War and the U.S. acquisition of New Mexico, Arizona, California, and parts of Utah, Colorado, and Nevada soon followed.

On April 16, 1947, a small fire broke out among bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer in the hold of the ship Grandcamp as it lay docked at Texas City, Texas. Despite immediate attempts to extinguish the fire, it rapidly intensified until the Grandcamp exploded in a blast that caused massive loss...  more

On April 16, 1947, a small fire broke out among bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer in the hold of the ship Grandcamp as it lay docked at Texas City, Texas. Despite immediate attempts to extinguish the fire, it rapidly intensified until the Grandcamp exploded in a blast that caused massive loss of life and property. In the ensuing chaos, no one gave much thought to the ship in the next slip, the High Flyer. It exploded sixteen hours later. The story of the Texas City explosions--America's worst industrial disaster in terms of casualties--has never been fully told until now. In this book, Hugh W. Stephens draws on official reports, newspaper and magazine articles, personal letters, and interviews with several dozen survivors to provide the first full account of the disaster at Texas City. Stephens describes the two explosions and the heroic efforts of Southeast Texans to rescue survivors and cope with extensive property damage. At the same time, he explores why the disaster occurred, showing how a chain of indifference and negligence made a serious industrial accident almost inevitable, while a lack of emergency planning allowed it to escalate into a major catastrophe. This gripping, cautionary tale holds important lessons for a wide reading public.

"No recent work of history...has presented such a distinctive—and beautifully resonant—authorial voice."—John Demos, Yale UniversityThe colonial communities of eighteenth-century America were perhaps the most racially, ethnically, and religiously mixed societies on earth....  more

"No recent work of history...has presented such a distinctive—and beautifully resonant—authorial voice."—John Demos, Yale UniversityThe colonial communities of eighteenth-century America were perhaps the most racially, ethnically, and religiously mixed societies on earth. Lutherans and Presbyterians, Quakers, Catholics, and Covenentors, the Irish, the German, the French, the Welsh—groups that rarely intermingled in Europe—were thrown together when they confronted the American countryside. Rather than embracing the inescapable and ever-increasing diversity, the European settler communities had their very existence threatened by the tensions and fears among their own groups. Only through "Indian-hating"—in both military and rhetorical forms—could the splintered colonists find a common ground.In potent, graceful prose that sensitively unearths the social complexity and tangled history of colonial relations, Peter Silver gives us an astonishingly vivid picture of eighteenth-century America. He straddles cultural history, political history, social history, and ethnohistory to offer groundbreaking insights into the seminal forces that continue to shape the United States today. 13 illustrations; 2 maps.

On the night of September 21,1938, news on the radio was full of the invasion of Czechoslovakia. There was no mention of any severe weather. By the time oceanfront residents noticed an ominous color in the sky, it was too late to escape. In an age before warning systems and the ubiquity of...  more

On the night of September 21,1938, news on the radio was full of the invasion of Czechoslovakia. There was no mention of any severe weather. By the time oceanfront residents noticed an ominous color in the sky, it was too late to escape. In an age before warning systems and the ubiquity of television, this unprecedented storm caught the Northeast off guard, obliterated coastal communities, and killed seven hundred people.The Great Hurricane: 1938 is a spellbinding hour-by-hour reconstruction of one of the most destructive and powerful storms ever to hit the United States. With riveting detail, Burns weaves together the countless personal stories of loved ones lost and lives changed forever — from those of the Moore family, washed to sea on a raft formerly their attic floor, to Katharine Hepburn, holed up in her Connecticut mansion, watching her car take to the air like a bit of paper.

Stonewall Jackson depended on him; General Lee complimented him; Union soldiers admired him; and ladies adored him--this dashing, handsome, young Henry Kyd Douglas. He rode with Stonewall. He fought at the side of Ashby. He lived, joked and courted with Jeb Stuart. From his meeting with John...  more

Stonewall Jackson depended on him; General Lee complimented him; Union soldiers admired him; and ladies adored him--this dashing, handsome, young Henry Kyd Douglas. He rode with Stonewall. He fought at the side of Ashby. He lived, joked and courted with Jeb Stuart. From his meeting with John Brown, shortly before Harper's Ferry, through the long bitter years of the Civil War, he clung to the Southern cause. He fought its battles and endured its defeats. And he captured it all, in a resonant prose, in his diaries. Douglas was born in 1840, became a laywer and was the youngest member of Stonewall Jackson's staff. At the close of the war he was in command of the Light Brigade. After the war he pratices law, rose to prominence in Maryland, and died in 1903.

Combining rich historical detail and a harrowing, pulse-pounding narrative, Close to Shore brilliantly re-creates the summer of 1916, when a rogue Great White shark attacked swimmers along the New Jersey shore, triggering mass hysteria and launching the most extensive shark hunt in history....  more

Combining rich historical detail and a harrowing, pulse-pounding narrative, Close to Shore brilliantly re-creates the summer of 1916, when a rogue Great White shark attacked swimmers along the New Jersey shore, triggering mass hysteria and launching the most extensive shark hunt in history. During the summer before the United States entered World War I, when ocean swimming was just becoming popular and luxurious Jersey Shore resorts were thriving as a chic playland for an opulent yet still innocent era's new leisure class, Americans were abruptly introduced to the terror of sharks. In July 1916 a lone Great White left its usual deep-ocean habitat and headed in the direction of the New Jersey shoreline. There, near the towns of Beach Haven and Spring Lake-and, incredibly, a farming community eleven miles inland-the most ferocious and unpredictable of predators began a deadly rampage: the first shark attacks on swimmers in U.S. history. For Americans celebrating an astoundingly prosperous epoch much like our own, fueled by the wizardry of revolutionary inventions, the arrival of this violent predator symbolized the limits of mankind's power against nature. Interweaving a vivid portrait of the era and meticulously drawn characters with chilling accounts of the shark's five attacks and the frenzied hunt that ensued, Michael Capuzzo has created a nonfiction historical thriller with the texture of Ragtime and the tension of Jaws. From the unnerving inevitability of the first attack on the esteemed son of a prosperous Philadelphia physician to the spine-tingling moment when a farm boy swimming in Matawan Creek feels the sandpaper-like skin of the passing shark, Close to Shore is an undeniably gripping saga. Heightening the drama are stories of the resulting panic in the citizenry, press and politicians, and of colorful personalities such as Herman Oelrichs, a flamboyant millionaire who made a bet that a shark was no match for a man (and set out to prove it); Museum of Natural History ichthyologist John Treadwell Nichols, faced with the challenge of stopping a mythic sea creature about which little was known; and, most memorable, the rogue Great White itself moving through a world that couldn't conceive of either its destructive power or its moral right to destroy. Scrupulously researched and superbly written, Close to Shore brings to life a breathtaking, pivotal moment in American history. Masterfully written and suffused with fascinating period detail and insights into the science and behavior of sharks, Close to Shore recounts a breathtaking, pivotal moment in American history with startling immediacy.

Richard Gatling, the one-time philanthropist, had been stung by growing competition. In 1881 he published a forthright challenge in the Army & Navy Journal.The Gatling GunMany articles have recently appeared in the press, claiming the superior advantages of the Gardner and other machine guns...  more

Richard Gatling, the one-time philanthropist, had been stung by growing competition. In 1881 he published a forthright challenge in the Army & Navy Journal.The Gatling GunMany articles have recently appeared in the press, claiming the superior advantages of the Gardner and other machine guns over the Gatling gun. In order to decide which is the best gun, the undersigned offers to fire his gun against any other gun, on the following wagers, viz.: First, $500 that the Gatling can fire more shots in a given time, say one minute.Second, $500 that the Gatling can give more hits on a target, firing, say one minute-at a range of 800 or 1,000 yards. The winner to contribute the money won to some charitable object. The time and place for the trials to be mutually agreed upon.R.J. Gatling of Hartford, Conn.No one took up the challenge, possibly because the various purchasers of these guns had made up their own minds about the merits of the rival weapons. Nevertheless, of all the rapid-firing guns in business at the time, the Gatling had pride of place. It was seeing service all over the world, and perhaps Gatling should not have bothered to express such apparent nervousness. What he did not know, and could not then know, was that an electrician working out of New York City would soon serve as the greatest rival of them all. Three years after that gamble had been published in the Journal, Hiram Stevens Maxim would be travelling to Europe. There he would appreciate quite how many nations were rattling sabres at each other, and hear his friend's advice that, if he wished to make money, he should help their citizens kill each other. And that is what he did. The 'greatest mechanician of all' would change warfare dramatically, and the first fully automatic machine gun would eclipse all others.

Convincing proof that Canadian history is anything but dull, this book recounts the action-filled careers of some of the country's most successful and violent adventurers, licit and illicit.From Elizabethan privateers seeking fortune off the coasts of Newfoundland to the courtly warriors of...  more

Convincing proof that Canadian history is anything but dull, this book recounts the action-filled careers of some of the country's most successful and violent adventurers, licit and illicit.From Elizabethan privateers seeking fortune off the coasts of Newfoundland to the courtly warriors of Acadia, from the wildly successful letter-of-marque ships of Liverpool, Nova Scotia to the vicious sea fights of the War of 1812, Horwood and Butts reconstruct the lives of the country's finest fighting seamen. Inland, they consider the less reputable careers of the gangs who fought for control of gold and timber in the raw frontier settlements that would one day be Canada.Featuring plently of fast-paced action Bandits and Privateers brings the excitement of Canadian history to life.

This monumental book is the enthralling story of one of the greatest events in our nation's history, during the Age of Optimism -- a period when Americans were convinced in their hearts that all things were possible. In the years around 1870, when the project was first undertaken, the...  more

This monumental book is the enthralling story of one of the greatest events in our nation's history, during the Age of Optimism -- a period when Americans were convinced in their hearts that all things were possible. In the years around 1870, when the project was first undertaken, the concept of building an unprecedented bridge to span the East River between the great cities of Manhattan and Brooklyn required a vision and determination comparable to that which went into the building of the great cathedrals. Throughout the fourteen years of its construction, the odds against the successful completion of the bridge seemed staggering. Bodies were crushed and broken, lives lost, political empires fell, and surges of public emotion constantly threatened the project. But this is not merely the saga of an engineering miracle; it is a sweeping narrative of the social climate of the time and of the heroes and rascals who had a hand in either constructing or exploiting the surpassing enterprise.  

In the middle of the nineteenth century more than 7,000 Germans migrated to Central Texas -- most to Comal, Gillespie, and Llano counties.  For the next three quarters of a century, the Germans of Central Texas retained much of their ethnicity:  they were taught German in the schools,...  more

In the middle of the nineteenth century more than 7,000 Germans migrated to Central Texas -- most to Comal, Gillespie, and Llano counties.  For the next three quarters of a century, the Germans of Central Texas retained much of their ethnicity:  they were taught German in the schools, there were German-language newspapers, and ties to the Fatherland remained strong.  But with the coming of World War I, many of the Hill Country Germans began slipping away from the old ways.  The generation that grew up between the two world wars became more and more Americanized. In Tales from the Sunday House, Minetta Altgelt Goyne gives us glimpses into the real lives of this between-the-wars generation.  Sometimes incomplete, sometimes apparently pointless, sometimes merely addenda to previously told tales, these eleven stories are the kind of tales family members told other -- often younger -- members of the family as they sat by the fireside or on the porches of their "Sunday Houses" structures peculiar to the German Texans, built on lots so that farmers and their families would have a place to rest when conducting business in town, attending to medical needs, or attending church services. Tales from the Sunday House immerses us in the personal, private and sometimes public lives of the Kreutz and Bracht families, and by the final chapter, these quiet and simple stories have given us an insight into the culture established by the early German immigrants and altered by the growing Americanness of younger generations.

This riveting true story is the first major narrative detailing the exploration of North America by Spanish conquistadors (1528-1536). The author, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, was a fortune-seeking Spanish nobleman and the treasurer of an expedition sent to claim for Spain a vast area...  more

This riveting true story is the first major narrative detailing the exploration of North America by Spanish conquistadors (1528-1536). The author, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, was a fortune-seeking Spanish nobleman and the treasurer of an expedition sent to claim for Spain a vast area of today's southern United States. In simple, straightforward prose, Cabeza de Vaca chronicles the nine-year odyssey endured by the men after a shipwreck forced them to make a westward journey on foot from present-day Florida through Louisiana and Texas into California. In thirty-eight brief chapters, Cabeza de Vaca describes the scores of natural and human obstacles they encountered as they made their way across an unknown land. Cabeza de Vaca's gripping account offers a trove of ethnographic information, including descriptions and interpretations of native cultures, making it a powerful precursor to modern anthropology. With an introduction by Ilan Stavans.

Compiling eyewitness accounts of the American Civil War, a new history of that conflict presents an intimate chronicle of war, from the opening shots at Fort Sumter to Lee's surrender at Appomattox. This was the Civil War, as it was fought and suffered, seen and recorded, by the men and...  more

Compiling eyewitness accounts of the American Civil War, a new history of that conflict presents an intimate chronicle of war, from the opening shots at Fort Sumter to Lee's surrender at Appomattox. This was the Civil War, as it was fought and suffered, seen and recorded, by the men and women on both sides of the conflict. These searingly vivid eyewitness reports form a continuous narrative of the war on all fronts, in the east and west, on land and sea, in battle and behind the lines in both South and North, from the first guns fired at Fort Sumter to the final stillness at Appomattox. The voices belong to the leaders and the generals, common soldiers and ordinary civilians, all caught up in the tumult and tidal movement of vast events. The result is the Civil War as it really was and what it really meant to America and Americans.

From 1831 to 1837, George Catlin traveled extensively among the native peoples of North America—from the Muskogee and Miccosukee Creeks of the Southeast to the Lakota, Mandan, and Pawnee of the West, and from the Winnebagos and Menominees of the North to the Comanches of eastern Texas....  more

From 1831 to 1837, George Catlin traveled extensively among the native peoples of North America—from the Muskogee and Miccosukee Creeks of the Southeast to the Lakota, Mandan, and Pawnee of the West, and from the Winnebagos and Menominees of the North to the Comanches of eastern Texas. Studying their habits, customs, and modes of life, he made copious notes and numerous sketches of ceremonies, buffalo hunts, symbols, and totems. Catlin’s unprecedented fieldwork culminated in more than five hundred oil paintings and his now-legendary journals, which, as Peter Matthiessen writes in his introduction, "taken together... constitute the first, last, and only ‘complete’ record of the Plains Indians ever made at the height of their splendid culture, so soon destroyed by traders’ liquor and disease, rapine and bayonets."

Big Horn and the Yellowstone Expedition from reporter John Finerty's observation

This regiment was involved in the Wilderness, the Wilson Railroad Raid, the Shenandoah Valley Campaign, and Waynesboro. It includes the diary of Seth M. Hall, Private, Co. M, who died at Salisbury Prison.

The Mexican-American War of the 1840s, precipitated by border disputes and the U.S. annexation of Texas, ended with the military occupation of Mexico City by General Winfield Scott. In the subsequent treaty, the United States gained territory that would become California, Nevada, New Mexico,...  more

The Mexican-American War of the 1840s, precipitated by border disputes and the U.S. annexation of Texas, ended with the military occupation of Mexico City by General Winfield Scott. In the subsequent treaty, the United States gained territory that would become California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado. In this highly readable account, John S. D. Eisenhower provides a comprehensive survey of this frequently overlooked war.

In this first-hand account of the Revolutionary War, Joseph Plumb Martin narrates his true adventures as an eighteen-year-old private in the Continental Army-and gives a rare glimpse of the earthy beginnings of our nation's history.

In April 1586, Queen Elizabeth I acquired a new and exotic title. A tribe of North American Indians had made her their weroanza - 'big chief'. The news was received with great joy, both by the Queen and her favourite, Sir Walter Ralegh. His first American expedition had brought back a...  more

In April 1586, Queen Elizabeth I acquired a new and exotic title. A tribe of North American Indians had made her their weroanza - 'big chief'. The news was received with great joy, both by the Queen and her favourite, Sir Walter Ralegh. His first American expedition had brought back a captive, Manteo, whose tattooed face had enthralled Elizabethan London. Now Manteo was returned to his homeland as Lord and Governor. Ralegh's gamble would result in the first English settlement in the New World, but it would also lead to a riddle whose solution lay hidden in the forests of Virginia. A tale of heroism and mystery, BIG CHIEF ELIZABETH is illuminated by first-hand accounts to reveal a remarkable and long-forgotten story.

Few historical figures are as inextricably linked as Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. But less than two decades before they faced each other as enemies at Appomattox, they had been brothers--both West Point graduates, both wearing blue, and both fighting in the same cadre in the Mexican War....  more

Few historical figures are as inextricably linked as Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. But less than two decades before they faced each other as enemies at Appomattox, they had been brothers--both West Point graduates, both wearing blue, and both fighting in the same cadre in the Mexican War. They were not alone: Sherman, Davis, Jackson-nearly all of the Civil War's greatest soldiers had been forged in the heat of Vera Cruz and Monterrey.The Mexican War has faded from our national memory, but it was a struggle of enormous significance: the first U.S. war waged on foreign soil; and it nearly doubled our nation. At this fascinating juncture of American history, a group of young men came together to fight as friends, only years later to fight as enemies. This is their story. Full of dramatic battles, daring rescues, secret missions, soaring triumphs and tragic losses, THE TRAINING GROUND is history at its finest.

On August 5, 1949, a crew of fifteen of the United States Forest Service's elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Two hours after their jump, all but three of these men were dead or mortally burned. Haunted by...  more

On August 5, 1949, a crew of fifteen of the United States Forest Service's elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Two hours after their jump, all but three of these men were dead or mortally burned. Haunted by these deaths for forty years, Norman Maclean puts back together the scattered pieces of the Mann Gulch tragedy.Young Men and Fire won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992."A magnificent drama of writing, a tragedy that pays tribute to the dead and offers rescue to the living.... Maclean's search for the truth, which becomes an exploration of his own mortality, is more compelling even than his journey into the heart of the fire. His description of the conflagration terrifies, but it is his battle with words, his effort to turn the story of the 13 men into tragedy that makes this book a classic."--from New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, Best Books of 1992"A treasure: part detective story, part western, part tragedy, part elegy and wholly eloquent ghost story in which the dead and the living join ranks cheerfully, if sometimes eerily, in a search for truth and the rest it brings."--Joseph Coates, Chicago Tribune"An astonishing book. In compelling language, both homely and elegant, Young Men and Fire miraculously combines a fascinating primer on fires and firefighting, a powerful, breathtakingly real reconstruction of a tragedy, and a meditation on writing, grief and human character.... Maclean's last book will stir your heart and haunt your memory."--Timothy Foote, USA Today"Beautiful.... A dark American idyll of which the language can be proud."--Robert M. Adams, The New York Review of Books"Young Men and Fire is redolent of Melville. Just as the reader of Moby Dick comes to comprehend the monstrous entirety of the great white whale, so the reader of Young Men and Fire goes into the heart of the great red fire and comes out thoroughly informed. Don't hesitate to take the plunge."--Dennis Drabelle, Washington Post Book World"Young Men and Fire is a somber and poetic retelling of a tragic event. It is the pinnacle of smokejumping literature and a classic work of 20th-century nonfiction."--John Holkeboer, The Wall Street Journal"Maclean is always with the brave young dead. . . . They could not have found a storyteller with a better claim to represent their honor. . . . A great book."--James R. Kincaid, New York Times Book Review

After her Uncle's suicide, Terese Svoboda investigates his stunning claim that MPs may have executed their own men during the occupation of Japan after World war II [Our captain] commended us for being good soldiers and doing our job well and having a minimum of problems. Then he dropped a bomb....  more

After her Uncle's suicide, Terese Svoboda investigates his stunning claim that MPs may have executed their own men during the occupation of Japan after World war II [Our captain] commended us for being good soldiers and doing our job well and having a minimum of problems. Then he dropped a bomb. He said the prison was getting overcrowded, terribly overcrowded.As a child Terese Svoboda thought of her uncle as Superman, with ?Black Clark Kent glasses, grapefruit-sized biceps.? At eighty, he could still boast a washboard stomach, but in March 2004, he became seriously depressed. Svoboda investigates his terrifying story of what happened during his time as an MP, interviewing dozens of elderly ex-GIs and visiting Japan to try to discover the truth.In Black Glasses Like Clark Kent, winner of the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, Svoboda offers a striking and carefully wrought personal account of an often painful search for information. She intersperses excerpts of her uncle?s recordings and letters to his wife with her own research, and shows how the vagaries of military justice can allow the worst to happen and then be buried by time and protocol

John Harris Behan, as author Bob Alexander so capably demonstrates, was a true frontiersman of the early Arizona Territory. Long portrayed as a villain in the Tombstone conflicts, and the nemesis of Wyatt Earp, "Sacrificed Sheriff" presents the story of a 40-year lawman and public servant who...  more

John Harris Behan, as author Bob Alexander so capably demonstrates, was a true frontiersman of the early Arizona Territory. Long portrayed as a villain in the Tombstone conflicts, and the nemesis of Wyatt Earp, "Sacrificed Sheriff" presents the story of a 40-year lawman and public servant who was skilled with gun and horse, yet who consistently fought crime and arrested bad guys without killing anyone. Behan also was a Civil War volunteer, twice a Territorial Legislator, and Yuma Prison Superintendent. At an age when some Western "heroes" were mouthing memoirs to journalists, Behan served in the Spanish American War and the Boxer Rebellion. This is the Western lawman that everyone has heard of but no one knows. With rigorous research, copious footnotes, and a lively style, Bob Alexander gives us Johnny Behan in the round.

The story of a seventy-year-old man, three thousand reindeer, and a fifteen-hundred-mile trail drive across Alaska.

What fierce motivation drives warriors to commit themselves to a last stand against a more powerful and better-armed enemy? The reasons are countless: anger, fear, brotherhood, personal glory, and survival. These 13 examples of persistence against incredible odds come from two centuries worth of...  more

What fierce motivation drives warriors to commit themselves to a last stand against a more powerful and better-armed enemy? The reasons are countless: anger, fear, brotherhood, personal glory, and survival. These 13 examples of persistence against incredible odds come from two centuries worth of combat in Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America. Follow glorious battles from Napoleon and Wellington at Hougoumont to the bloody Civil War battle at Antietam to Pork Chop Hill in Korea.

From the 1880s to the 1950s, the Harvey Girls went west to work in Fred Harvey's restaurants along the Santa Fe railway. At a time when there were "no ladies west of Dodge City and no women west of Albuquerque," they came as waitresses, but many stayed and settled, founding the...  more

From the 1880s to the 1950s, the Harvey Girls went west to work in Fred Harvey's restaurants along the Santa Fe railway. At a time when there were "no ladies west of Dodge City and no women west of Albuquerque," they came as waitresses, but many stayed and settled, founding the struggling cattle and mining towns that dotted the region. Interviews, historical research, and photographs help re-create the Harvey Girl experience. The accounts are personal, but laced with the history the women lived: the dust bowl, the depression, and anecdotes about some of the many famous people who ate at the restaurants---Teddy Roosevelt, Shirley Temple, Bob Hope, to name a few. The Harvey Girls was awarded the winner of the 1991 New Mexico PressWomen's ZIA award.

In a stunning work of forgotten history, Walter Edgar takes the American Revolution far beyond Lexington and Concord, recreating pivotal months in a nation's struggle for freedom. Gripping, fascinating, and meticulously researched, Edgar's masterful history captures the heat, the fury,...  more

In a stunning work of forgotten history, Walter Edgar takes the American Revolution far beyond Lexington and Concord, recreating pivotal months in a nation's struggle for freedom. Gripping, fascinating, and meticulously researched, Edgar's masterful history captures the heat, the fury, and the intense human drama of Britain's ruthless South Carolina campaign. It is a story of military brilliance and of devastating blunders---and the courage of an impossibly outnumbered force of demoralized patriots who suffered terribly at the hands of a merciless enemy, yet slowly gained confidence through a series of small triumphs that convinced them their war could be won. Alive with incident and color, Partisans and Redcoats presents unforgettable portraits of real-life heroes and villains, Britons and Americans alike, as it chronicles two remarkable years in the fiery birth of a nation.

In 1911 two wealthy British heiresses, Claire and Dora Williamson, came to a sanatorium in the forests of the Pacific Northwest to undergo the revolutionary ?fasting treatment? of Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard. It was supposed to be a holiday for the two sisters. But within a month of arriving at...  more

In 1911 two wealthy British heiresses, Claire and Dora Williamson, came to a sanatorium in the forests of the Pacific Northwest to undergo the revolutionary ?fasting treatment? of Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard. It was supposed to be a holiday for the two sisters. But within a month of arriving at what the locals called Starvation Heights, the women were emaciated shadows of their former selves, waiting for death. They were not the first victims of Linda Hazzard, a quack doctor of extraordinary evil and greed who would stop at nothing short of murder to achieve her ambitions. As their jewelry disappeared and forged bank drafts began transferring their wealth to Hazzard?s accounts, Dora Williamson sent a last desperate plea to a friend in Australia, begging her to save them from the brutal treatments and lonely isolation of Starvation Heights. In this true story?a haunting saga of medical murder set in an era of steamships and gaslights?Gregg Olsen reveals one of the most unusual and disturbing criminal cases in American history.

On March 25, 1911, as workers were getting ready to leave for the day, a fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York's Greenwich Village. Within minutes it spread to consume the building's upper three stories. Firemen at the scene were unable to rescue those trapped...  more

On March 25, 1911, as workers were getting ready to leave for the day, a fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York's Greenwich Village. Within minutes it spread to consume the building's upper three stories. Firemen at the scene were unable to rescue those trapped inside: their ladders weren't tall enough. People on the street watched in horror as desperate workers jumped to their deaths. 146 people died — 123 of them women. It was the worst disaster in the city's history. Not only a chronicle of the fire, but also a vibrant portrait of an entire age, this book follows the waves of Jewish and Italian immigration that inundated New York in the early century, filling its slums and supplying its garment factories with cheap labor. It portrays the work conditions that led to a massive waist-workers' strike in which an unlikely coalition of socialists, socialites, and suffragettes took on bosses, police, and magistrates. Von Drehle puts a human face on those who died in the fire, and shows how popular revulsion at the Triangle catastrophe led to an unprecedented alliance between idealistic labor reformers and the supremely pragmatic politicians of the Tammany machine.

Originally published in 1904, Indian Fights and Fighters regularly appears in bibliographies of significant works on the history of the American West. Embracing almost three decades of Plains history, it contains not only Brady's clear, fast-paced accounts of the Plains wars, but also a number...  more

Originally published in 1904, Indian Fights and Fighters regularly appears in bibliographies of significant works on the history of the American West. Embracing almost three decades of Plains history, it contains not only Brady's clear, fast-paced accounts of the Plains wars, but also a number of eyewitness accounts, most of which were written especially for him and which are almost impossible to find elsewhere. The Powder River Expedition, the tragedy at Fort Phil Kearny, the Wagon Box Fight, the defense of Beecher's Island, the Fetterman Massacre, the battles of Washita and Summit Springs, and the campaigns of Crook, Custer, and Miles against the Sioux all are fully treated. The introduction by James T. King sketches Brady's career and evaluates his sources.

In an attempt to stop the legendary Barbary Pirates of North Africa from hijacking American ships, William Eaton set out on a secret mission to overthrow the government of Tripoli. The operation was sanctioned by President Thomas Jefferson, who at the last moment grew wary of intermeddling in a...  more

In an attempt to stop the legendary Barbary Pirates of North Africa from hijacking American ships, William Eaton set out on a secret mission to overthrow the government of Tripoli. The operation was sanctioned by President Thomas Jefferson, who at the last moment grew wary of intermeddling in a foreign government and sent Eaton off without proper national support. Short on supplies, given very little money and only a few men, Eaton and his mission seemed doomed from the start. He triumphed against all odds, recruited a band of European mercenaries in Alexandria, and led them on a march across the Libyan Desert. Once in Tripoli, the ragtag army defeated the local troops and successfully captured Derne, laying the groundwork for the demise of the Barbary Pirates. Now, Richard Zacks brings this important story of Americas first overseas covert op to life.

A legendary CIA spy and counterterrorism expert tells the spellbinding story of his high-risk, action-packed career while illustrating the growing importance of America's intelligence officers and their secret missionsFor a crucial period, Henry Crumpton led the CIA's global covert ...  more

A legendary CIA spy and counterterrorism expert tells the spellbinding story of his high-risk, action-packed career while illustrating the growing importance of America's intelligence officers and their secret missionsFor a crucial period, Henry Crumpton led the CIA's global covert operations against America's terrorist enemies, including al Qaeda. In the days after 9/11, the CIA tasked Crumpton to organize and lead the Afghanistan campaign. With Crumpton's strategic initiative and bold leadership, from the battlefield to the Oval Office, U.S. and Afghan allies routed al Qaeda and the Taliban in less than ninety days after the Twin Towers fell. At the height of combat against the Taliban in late 2001, there were fewer than five hundred Americans on the ground in Afghanistan, a dynamic blend of CIA and Special Forces. The campaign changed the way America wages war. This book will change the way America views the CIA.The Art of Intelligence draws from the full arc of Crumpton's espionage and covert action exploits to explain what America's spies do and why their service is more valuable than ever. From his early years in Africa, where he recruited and ran sources, from loathsome criminals to heroic warriors; to his liaison assignment at the FBI, the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, the development of the UAV Predator program, and the Afghanistan war; to his later work running all CIA clandestine operations inside the United States, he employs enthralling storytelling to teach important lessons about national security, but also about duty, honor, and love of country.No book like The Art of Intelligence has ever been written-not with Crumpton's unique perspective, in a time when America faced such grave and uncertain risk. It is an epic, sure to be a classic in the annals of espionage and war.

The story of the Magruder murder in one of the greatest stories of the Old West. The infamous robbery of Lewiston merchant Lloyd Magruder and his companions during the 1860s gold rush is legendary in Idaho.

"Company Aytch is one of my favorite Civil War books, ever."--Ken BurnsAmong the plethora of books about the Civil War Company Aytch stands out for its uniquely personal view of the events as related by a most engaging writer--a man with Twain-like talents who served as a foot soldier for four...  more

"Company Aytch is one of my favorite Civil War books, ever."--Ken BurnsAmong the plethora of books about the Civil War Company Aytch stands out for its uniquely personal view of the events as related by a most engaging writer--a man with Twain-like talents who served as a foot soldier for four long years in the Confederate army. Originally published in 1881 as a series of articles in the Columbia, Tennessee, Herald, Sam Watkins's account has long been recognized by historians as one of the most lively and witty accounts of the war. Parallels between this text and The Red Badge of Courage suggest that Stephen Crane was also among Private Watkins's readers. This edition of Company Aytch also contains six previously uncollected articles by Sam Watkins, plus other valuable supplementary materials, including a map and period illustrations, a glossary of technical and military terms, a chronology of events, a concise history of Watkins's regiment, a biographical directory of individuals mentioned in the narrative, and geographic and topical indexes. This new edition of a Civil War classic is bound to become the edition of choice for students, military buffs, and general readers alike.

The Banana Wars: United States Intervention in the Caribbean, 1898-1934-Revised Edition offers a sweeping panorama of America's tropical empire in the age spanned by the two Roosevelts and a detailed narrative of U.S. military intervention in the Caribbean and Mexico. In this new edition,...  more

The Banana Wars: United States Intervention in the Caribbean, 1898-1934-Revised Edition offers a sweeping panorama of America's tropical empire in the age spanned by the two Roosevelts and a detailed narrative of U.S. military intervention in the Caribbean and Mexico. In this new edition, Professor Langley provides an updated introduction, placing the scholarship in current historical context. From the perspective of the Americans involved, the empire carved out by the banana warriors was a domain of bickering Latin American politicians, warring tropical countries, and lawless societies that the American military-army, navy, and marines-had been dispatched to police and tutor. Beginning with the Cuban experience, Langley examines the motives and consequences of two military occupations and the impact of those interventions on a professedly antimilitaristic American government and on its colonial agents in the Caribbean, the American military. The result of the Cuban experience, Langley argues, was reinforcement of the view that the American people did not readily accept prolonged military occupation of Caribbean countries. In Nicaragua and Mexico, from 1909 to 1915, where economic and diplomatic pressures failed to bring the results desired in Washington, the American military became the political arbiters; in Hispaniola, bluejackets and marines took on the task of civilizing the tropics. In the late 1920s, with an imperial force largely of marines, the American military waged its last banana war in Nicaragua against a guerrilla leader named Augusto C. Sandino. Langley not only narrates the history of America's tropical empire, but fleshes out the personalities of this imperial era, including Leonard Wood and Fred Funston, U.S. Army, who left their mark on Cuba and Vera Cruz; William F. Fullam and William Banks Caperton, U.S. Navy, who carried out their missions imbued with old-school beliefs about their role as policemen in disorderly places; Smedley Butler and L.W.T. Waller, Sr., U.S.M.C., who left the most lasting imprint of American empire; and dozens of Caribbean and Mexican political figures caught up in America's tropical experiment. Finally, the author speaks to current debates about unrest and conflict in the Caribbean with some disturbing reminders about earlier American experiences. A lively survey of a volatile period in inter-American relations, The Banana Wars is an excellent supplemental text for courses in U.S. diplomatic history, Latin American history, and U.S.-Latin American relations.

A master spy's memoir of playing the game in the most strategically influential country in 1960s Africa. Larry Devlin arrived as the new chief of station for the CIA in the Congo five days after the country had declared its independence, the army had mutinied, and governmental authority had...  more

A master spy's memoir of playing the game in the most strategically influential country in 1960s Africa. Larry Devlin arrived as the new chief of station for the CIA in the Congo five days after the country had declared its independence, the army had mutinied, and governmental authority had collapsed. As he crossed the Congo River in an almost empty ferry boat, all he could see were lines of people trying to travel the other way--out of the Congo. Within his first two weeks he found himself on the wrong end of a revolver as militiamen played Russian-roulette, Congo style, with him. During his first year, the charismatic and reckless political leader, Patrice Lumumba, was murdered and Devlin was widely thought to have been entrusted with (he was) and to have carried out (he didn't) the assassination. Then he saved the life of Joseph Desire Mobutu, who carried out the military coup that presaged his own rise to political power. Devlin found himself at the heart of Africa, fighting for the future of perhaps the most strategically influential country on the continent, its borders shared with eight other nations. He met every significant political figure, from presidents to mercenaries, as he took the Cold War to one of the world's hottest zones. This is a classic political memoir from a master spy who lived in wildly dramatic times.

A remarkable piece of forgotten history—the story of how thousands of Americans were lured to Soviet Russia by the promise of jobs and better lives only to meet a tragic, and until now forgotten, endThe Forsaken starts with a photograph of a baseball team. The year is 1934, the image black and...  more

A remarkable piece of forgotten history—the story of how thousands of Americans were lured to Soviet Russia by the promise of jobs and better lives only to meet a tragic, and until now forgotten, endThe Forsaken starts with a photograph of a baseball team. The year is 1934, the image black and white: two rows of young men, one standing, the other crouching with their arms around one another’s shoulders. They are all somewhere in their late teens or twenties, in the peak of health. We know most, if not all, of their names: Arthur Abolin, Walter Preeden, Victor Herman, Eugene Peterson. They hail from ordinary working families from across America—Detroit, Boston, New York, San Francisco. Waiting in the sunshine, they look just like any other baseball team except, perhaps, for the Russian lettering on their uniforms. These men and thousands of others, their wives, and children were possibly the least heralded migration in American history. Not surprising, maybe, since in a nation of immigrants few care to remember the ones who leave behind the dream. The exiles came from all walks of life. Within their ranks were Communists, trade unionists, and radicals of the John Reed school, but most were just ordinary citizens not overly concerned were politics. What united them was the hope that drives all emigrants: the search for a better life. And to any one of the millions of unemployed Americans during the Great Depression, even the harshest Moscow winter could sustain that promise. Within four years of that June day in Gorky Park, many of the young men in that photograph will be arrested and along with them unaccounted numbers of their fellow countrymen. As foreign victims of Stalin’s Terror, some will be executed immediately in basement cells or at execution grounds outside the main cities. Others will be sent to the “corrective labor” camps, where they will be starved and worked to death, their bodies buried in the snowy wasteland. Two of the baseball players who survive and whose stories frame this remarkable work of history will be inordinately lucky. This book is the story of these mens’ lives—The Forsaken who lived and those who died. The result of years of groundbreaking research in American and Russian archives, The Forsaken is also the story of the world inside Russia at the time of Terror: the glittering obliviousness of the U.S. embassy in Moscow, the duplicity of the Soviet government in its dealings with Roosevelt, and the terrible finality of the Gulag system. In the tradition of the finest history chronicling genocide in the twentieth century, The Forsaken offers new understanding of timeless questions of guilt and innocence that continue to plague us today.

In 1874 when Martha Dunham Summerhayes came as a bride from the coast of Nantucket to Fort Russell in Wyoming Territory, she learned the hard facts of army life at Forts Whipple, McDowell, Apache, Yuma, Lowell and a summer in Ehrenberg, all in Arizona. She also spent time in other parts of the...  more

In 1874 when Martha Dunham Summerhayes came as a bride from the coast of Nantucket to Fort Russell in Wyoming Territory, she learned the hard facts of army life at Forts Whipple, McDowell, Apache, Yuma, Lowell and a summer in Ehrenberg, all in Arizona. She also spent time in other parts of the country where Santa Fe was her favorite. Her enthralling story told by actress Jane Merrifield-Beecher, gives episodes of traveling the Colorado River, using the red river water for bathing, rearing a baby in the isolation of the forts without the amenities she was use to in Nantucket and surviving the desert heat. This is three hours abridged.

Americans often think of the Civil War as the conflict that consolidated the United States, including its military values and practices. But there was another, earlier, and more protracted struggle between “North” and “South,” beginning in the 1600s and lasting for more than two centuries, that...  more

Americans often think of the Civil War as the conflict that consolidated the United States, including its military values and practices. But there was another, earlier, and more protracted struggle between “North” and “South,” beginning in the 1600s and lasting for more than two centuries, that shaped American geopolitics and military culture. Here, Eliot A. Cohen explains how the American way of war emerged from a lengthy struggle with an unlikely enemy: Canada. In Conquered into Liberty, Cohen describes how five peoples—the British, French, Americans, Canadians, and Indians—fought over the key to the North American continent: the corridor running from Albany to Montreal dominated by the Champlain valley and known to Native Americans as the “Great Warpath.” He reveals how conflict along these two hundred miles of lake, river, and woodland shaped the country’s military values, practices, and institutions. Through a vivid narration of a series of fights— woodland skirmishes and massacres, bloody frontal assaults and fleet actions, rear-guard battles and shadowy covert actions—Cohen explores how a distinctively American approach to war developed along the Great Warpath. He weaves together tactics and strategy, battle narratives, and statecraft, introducing readers to such fascinating but little-known figures as Justus Sherwood, loyalist spy; Jeduthan Baldwin, self-taught engineer; and La Corne St. Luc, ruthless partisan leader. And he reintroduces characters we thought we knew—an admirable Benedict Arnold, a traitorous Ethan Allen, and a devious George Washington. A gripping read grounded in serious scholarship, Conquered into Liberty will enchant and inform readers for decades to come.

At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, The River of Doubt is the true story of Theodore Roosevelt’s harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth. The River of Doubt—it is a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon...  more

At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, The River of Doubt is the true story of Theodore Roosevelt’s harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth. The River of Doubt—it is a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon that snakes through one of the most treacherous jungles in the world. Indians armed with poison-tipped arrows haunt its shadows; piranhas glide through its waters; boulder-strewn rapids turn the river into a roiling cauldron. After his humiliating election defeat in 1912, Roosevelt set his sights on the most punishing physical challenge he could find, the first descent of an unmapped, rapids-choked tributary of the Amazon. Together with his son Kermit and Brazil’s most famous explorer, Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Roosevelt accomplished a feat so great that many at the time refused to believe it. In the process, he changed the map of the western hemisphere forever. Along the way, Roosevelt and his men faced an unbelievable series of hardships, losing their canoes and supplies to punishing whitewater rapids, and enduring starvation, Indian attack, disease, drowning, and a murder within their own ranks. Three men died, and Roosevelt was brought to the brink of suicide. The River of Doubt brings alive these extraordinary events in a powerful nonfiction narrative thriller that happens to feature one of the most famous Americans who ever lived. From the soaring beauty of the Amazon rain forest to the darkest night of Theodore Roosevelt’s life, here is Candice Millard’s dazzling debut. Includes 16 pages of B&W photographs, Notes - pages 355-393, Bibliography - pages 395-402, Acknowledgments - pages 403-408, Index - pages 409-416.

A tale of terrorism, espionage, and an epic struggle for justice in an America on the verge--sparked by a massive and mysterious explosion in New York Harbor in 1916. In 1916, while the Allied and Central forces waged war in Europe, a group of German saboteurs blew up Black Tom Island, a spit...  more

A tale of terrorism, espionage, and an epic struggle for justice in an America on the verge--sparked by a massive and mysterious explosion in New York Harbor in 1916. In 1916, while the Allied and Central forces waged war in Europe, a group of German saboteurs blew up Black Tom Island, a spit of land in New York Harbor within earshot of downtown Manhattan. The subsequent hail of missiles and gunpowder devastated much of lower Manhattan. The attack--so massive that as far away as Maryland people could feel the ground shake--had been shockingly easy. America was littered with networks of German agents, hiding in full daylight, an enemy within plotting further, deadlier attacks. All the way up to the president, officials had known something like this could happen, and yet nothing had been done. Twenty years later, the German government had still managed to evade responsibility for the crime--and probably would have continued to, were it not for the determination of three lawyers named McCloy, Peaslee, and Martin. These men--most crucially the young John McCloy--made it their mission to solve a mystery that began during the first World War and barely ended before the second. THE DETONATORS is a fascinating portrait of these men and their time, an era in which the rising American establishment engaged the world. It is also the dramatic love story of John and Ellen McCloy, and the first full accounting of a crime and a cover-up that resonates strongly in a post-9/11 America.

Outlaws on Horseback concentrates on the long, unbroken chain of crime that began in the late 1850s with the Missouri-Kansas border warfare and ended in Arkansas in 1921 with the killing of Henry Starr, the last of the authentic desperadoes. Harry Sinclair Drago shows links among the men and...  more

Outlaws on Horseback concentrates on the long, unbroken chain of crime that began in the late 1850s with the Missouri-Kansas border warfare and ended in Arkansas in 1921 with the killing of Henry Starr, the last of the authentic desperadoes. Harry Sinclair Drago shows links among the men and women who terrorized the Midwest while he squelches the most outlandish tales about them. The guerrilla warfare led by the evil William Quantrill was training for Frank and Jesse James and Cole and Jim Younger. Drago puts their bloody careers in perspective and tracks down the truth about Belle Starr the Bandit Queen, Cherokee Bill, Rose of the Cimarron, and the gangs, including the Daltons and Doolins, that infested the Oklahoma hills. The action moves from the sacking of Lawrence to the raid on Northfield to the shootout at Coffeyville.

In The Big Rich, bestselling author and Vanity Fair special correspondent Bryan Burrough chronicles the rise and fall of one of the great economic and political powerhouses of the twentieth century?Texas oil. By weaving together the epic sagas of the industry?s four greatest fortunes, Burrough...  more

In The Big Rich, bestselling author and Vanity Fair special correspondent Bryan Burrough chronicles the rise and fall of one of the great economic and political powerhouses of the twentieth century?Texas oil. By weaving together the epic sagas of the industry?s four greatest fortunes, Burrough has produced an enthralling tale of money, family, and power in the American century. Known in their day as the Big Four, Roy Cullen, H. L. Hunt, Clint Murchison, and Sid Richardson were all from modest backgrounds, and all became patriarchs of the wealthiest oil families in Texas. As a class they came to be known as the Big Rich, and together they created a new legend in America?the swaggering Texas oilman who owns private islands, sprawling ranches and perhaps a football team or two, and mingles with presidents and Hollywood stars. The truth more than lives up to the myth. Along with their peers, the Big Four shifted wealth and power in America away from the East Coast, sending three of their state?s native sons to the White House and largely bankrolling the rise of modern conservatism in America. H. L. Hunt became America?s richest man by grabbing Texas?s largest oilfield out from under the nose of the man who found it; he was also a lifelong bigamist. Clint Murchison entertained British royalty on his Mexican hacienda and bet on racehorses?and conducted dirty deals?with J. Edgar Hoover. Roy Cullen, an elementary school dropout, used his millions to revive the hapless Texas GOP. And Sid Richardson, the Big Four?s fun-loving bachelor, was a friend of several presidents, including, most fatefully, Lyndon Johnson. The Big Four produced offspring who frequently made more headlines, and in some cases more millions, than they did. With few exceptions, however, their fortunes came to an end in a swirl of bitter family feuds, scandals, and bankruptcies, and by the late 1980s, the era of the Big Rich was over. But as Texas native Bryan Burrough reveals in this hugely entertaining account, the profound economic, political, and cultural influence of Texas oil is still keenly felt today.

A woman who went West with her husband in the 1840s must have expected hardships and privation, but during the 1940s, when Etta Koch stopped off in Big Bend with her young family and a 23-foot travel trailer in tow, she anticipated no more than a civilized camping trip between her old home in...  more

A woman who went West with her husband in the 1840s must have expected hardships and privation, but during the 1940s, when Etta Koch stopped off in Big Bend with her young family and a 23-foot travel trailer in tow, she anticipated no more than a civilized camping trip between her old home in Ohio and a new one in Arizona. It was only when she found herself moving into an old rock house without plumbing or electricity in the new Big Bend National Park that Etta realized, "From the sheltered life of a city girl of moderate circumstances, I too would have to face the reality of frontier living." In this book based on her journals and letters, Etta Koch and her daughter June Cooper Price chronicle their family's first years (1944-1946) in the Big Bend. Etta describes how her photographer husband Peter Koch became captivated by the region as a place for natural history filmmaking--and how she and their three young daughters slowly adapted to a pioneer lifestyle during his months' long absences on the photo-lecture circuit. In vivid, often humorous anecdotes, she describes making the rock house into a home, getting to know the Park Service personnel and other neighbors, coping with the local wildlife, and, most of all, learning to love the rugged landscape and the hardy individuals who call it home.

A thrilling account of a pivotal moment in American history. In June 1846, General Stephen Watts Kearny rode out of Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, with two thousand cavalrymen bound for California. James Polk had recently won the presidency by threatening England over the borders in Oregon, while...  more

A thrilling account of a pivotal moment in American history. In June 1846, General Stephen Watts Kearny rode out of Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, with two thousand cavalrymen bound for California. James Polk had recently won the presidency by threatening England over the borders in Oregon, while Congress had just voted, in defiance of the Mexican government, to annex Texas. After Mexico declared war on the United States, Kearny?s Army was sent out, carrying orders to occupy Mexican territory. When his expedition ended a year later, the nation had doubled in size and stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. Winston Groom recounts the amazing adventure and danger that Kearny and his troops encountered on the trail. Their story intertwines with those of Kit Carson, Brigham Young and his Mormon followers, and the infamous Donner Party. Together, they come across fierce Indians, political intrigue, gold rushes, and landgrabs. Some returned in glory, others in shackles. But they all saw America fulfill her destiny. Distilling a wealth of letters, journals, and military records, Groom gives us a powerful account that enlivens our understanding of the exciting, if unforgiving, business of country-making.

On July 27, 1859, U.S. Army Capt. George E. Pickett’s Company D, 9th Infantry had arrived on San Juan Island with a mission to protect United States citizens from the British government on Vancouver Island. The reason? An American settler had shot a pig belonging to the Hudson’s Bay...  more

On July 27, 1859, U.S. Army Capt. George E. Pickett’s Company D, 9th Infantry had arrived on San Juan Island with a mission to protect United States citizens from the British government on Vancouver Island. The reason? An American settler had shot a pig belonging to the Hudson’s Bay Company. Everyone overreacted, particularly U.S. Department of Oregon commander, Brigadier General William S. Harney, who had issued Pickett his orders. Thus began the "San Juan Imbroglio" of 1859, better known today as the "Pig War." The Pig War: Standoff at Griffin Bay explores how this incident nearly touched off a war between Great Britain and United States Obviously, more was involved than just a dead pig. For nearly 50 years, the two nations had been contending over the international boundary in the Oregon Country, a vast expanse of land consisting of the present states of Washington, Oregon and Idaho, portions of Montana and Wyoming and the province of British Columbia. The Oregon Treaty of 1846 had given the United States undisputed possession of the Pacific Northwest south of the 49th parallel, extending the boundary to the "middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver’s Island; and thence southerly through the middle of said channel and of Fuca’s straits to the Pacific Ocean." But while the treaty settled the larger boundary question, it created additional problems because its wording left unclear who owned San Juan Island. As Mr. Vouri points out, the difficulty arose over treaty language that referred to the boundary as the "middle of the channel." There were actually two channels, Haro Strait nearest Vancouver Island, and Rosario Strait, nearer the mainland. San Juan island lies between the two. Britain insisted on the Rosario Strait; the U.S., Haro Strait. Thus, both sides claimed San Juan Island. To solidify the British claim, the Hudson’s Bay Company occupied the southern end of San Juan, first with a salmon-salting station in 1850, followed by a sheep ranch -- Bellevue Farm -- three years later. The Americans, meanwhile, declared the island within the limits of first Oregon (1848) then Washington Territory (1853). By 1859, about 18 Americans had settled on San Juan Island in anticipation of official American possession. The British did not recognize their rights. The U.S. did. Neither group acknowledged the jurisdiction or taxing authority of the other. Tempers grew short. And Charles Griffins black Berkshire boar wandered into Lyman Cutlar's potato patch. Soon 500 soldiers would occupy San Juan, their presence monitored and threatened by three warships of the Royal Navy. It would require 12 years and binding arbitration before the issue was settled. Mr. Vouri utilizes official documents, newspaper accounts, letters and period photographs to spin his yarn about one of the most intriguing footnotes in North American history.

Stackpole is proud to introduce the Frontier Classics, a new series that aims to resurrect long out-of-print gems of frontier history. Antiquarian and rare book dealers have previously been the only source for these books, providing first editions for premium prices. Now, these books are...  more

Stackpole is proud to introduce the Frontier Classics, a new series that aims to resurrect long out-of-print gems of frontier history. Antiquarian and rare book dealers have previously been the only source for these books, providing first editions for premium prices. Now, these books are available in affordable, quality paperback editions, with new historical introductions written by a leading expert in the field. Jacob Lee Humfreville was a Civil War veteran who earned a Regular Army commission as a lieutenant in the 9th U.S. Cavalry, the "Buffalo Soldiers," in 1866. In this beautifully illustrated work, Humfreville offers his observations on all aspects of Plains Indian life. His views were sometimes simplistic, but unfailingly sympathetic.

A brilliant, authoritative, and fascinating history of America?s most puzzling era, the years 1920 to 1933, when the U.S. Constitution was amended to restrict one of America?s favorite pastimes: drinking alcoholic beverages. From its start, America has been awash in drink. The sailing vessel...  more

A brilliant, authoritative, and fascinating history of America?s most puzzling era, the years 1920 to 1933, when the U.S. Constitution was amended to restrict one of America?s favorite pastimes: drinking alcoholic beverages. From its start, America has been awash in drink. The sailing vessel that brought John Winthrop to the shores of the New World in 1630 carried more beer than water. By the 1820s, liquor flowed so plentifully it was cheaper than tea. That Americans would ever agree to relinquish their booze was as improbable as it was astonishing. Yet we did, and Last Call is Daniel Okrent?s dazzling explanation of why we did it, what life under Prohibition was like, and how such an unprecedented degree of government interference in the private lives of Americans changed the country forever. Writing with both wit and historical acuity, Okrent reveals how Prohibition marked a confluence of diverse forces: the growing political power of the women?s suffrage movement, which allied itself with the antiliquor campaign; the fear of small-town, native-stock Protestants that they were losing control of their country to the immigrants of the large cities; the anti-German sentiment stoked by World War I; and a variety of other unlikely factors, ranging from the rise of the automobile to the advent of the income tax. Through it all, Americans kept drinking, going to remarkably creative lengths to smuggle, sell, conceal, and convivially (and sometimes fatally) imbibe their favorite intoxicants. Last Call is peopled with vivid characters of an astonishing variety: Susan B. Anthony and Billy Sunday, William Jennings Bryan and bootlegger Sam Bronfman, Pierre S. du Pont and H. L. Mencken, Meyer Lansky and the incredible?if long-forgotten?federal official Mabel Walker Willebrandt, who throughout the twenties was the most powerful woman in the country. (Perhaps most surprising of all is Okrent?s account of Joseph P. Kennedy?s legendary, and long-misunderstood, role in the liquor business.) It?s a book rich with stories from nearly all parts of the country. Okrent?s narrative runs through smoky Manhattan speakeasies, where relations between the sexes were changed forever; California vineyards busily producing ?sacramental? wine; New England fishing communities that gave up fishing for the more lucrative rum-running business; and in Washington, the halls of Congress itself, where politicians who had voted for Prohibition drank openly and without apology. Last Call is capacious, meticulous, and thrillingly told. It stands as the most complete history of Prohibition ever written and confirms Daniel Okrent?s rank as a major American writer.

From 1870 until 1886 Captain John O. Bourke served on the staff of General George Crook, who Sherman described as the greatest Indian fighter the army ever had, a man whose prowess was demon-strated "from British America to Mexico, from the Missouri River to the Pacific...  more

From 1870 until 1886 Captain John O. Bourke served on the staff of General George Crook, who Sherman described as the greatest Indian fighter the army ever had, a man whose prowess was demon-strated "from British America to Mexico, from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean." But On the Border with Crook is far more than a first-hand account of Crook's campaigns during the Plains Indian wars and in the Southwest. Alert, curious, and perceptive, Bourke brings to life the whole frontier scene. In crisp descriptions and telling anecdotes he recreates the events and landscapes through which he moved; he sketches sharp action-pictures not only of Crook and his fellow cavalrymen but also of such great leaders as Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Geronimo. Perhaps most important, Bourke shows us how General Crook was able to achieve his most remarkable victory -- how this man of war won and deserved the trust of the tribes he had subjugated.

This book grew out of a manuscript left by Andrew Garcia on his death in 1942. Ben Stein acquired the manuscript and edited it to tell Garcia's story of the 1877 war between the U.S. government and the Nez Perce people, the end of the buffalo herds and other historic events in western life.

'Krist does wonders . . . [He] describes the frantic rescue efforts . . . and the malevolent, unending storm. In a thrilling, climactic chapter, he conjures forth the avalanche.'-The New York Times In February 1910, a monstrous, record-breaking blizzard hit the Northwest. Nowhere was the danger...  more

'Krist does wonders . . . [He] describes the frantic rescue efforts . . . and the malevolent, unending storm. In a thrilling, climactic chapter, he conjures forth the avalanche.'-The New York Times In February 1910, a monstrous, record-breaking blizzard hit the Northwest. Nowhere was the danger more terrifying than near a tiny town called Wellington, perched high in the Cascade Mountains, where a desperate situation evolved: two trainloads of cold, hungry passengers and their crews found themselves marooned. For days, an army of the Great Northern Railroad's most dedicated men worked to rescue the trains, but just when escape seemed possible, the unthinkable occurred-a colossal avalanche tumbled down, sweeping the trains over the steep slope and down the mountainside. Centered on the astonishing spectacle of our nation's deadliest avalanche, The White Cascade is the masterfully told story of a never-before-documented tragedy.

This is the true story of Edward Lee Howard, for 2 years a member of the CIA, who in the autumn of 1985 defected to Moscow.  Once there he betrayed the methods used by the CIA to contact spies, which lead to the arrest and execution of Soviet Defense Researcher Adolf G.Tolkachev and was...  more

This is the true story of Edward Lee Howard, for 2 years a member of the CIA, who in the autumn of 1985 defected to Moscow.  Once there he betrayed the methods used by the CIA to contact spies, which lead to the arrest and execution of Soviet Defense Researcher Adolf G.Tolkachev and was responsible for the break up of the then CIA network in Moscow. Howard's case exposed major flaws inside the CIA.  The Agency hired a man they knew drank heavily and used drugs.  It ignored early warnings on his first polygraph test.  It selected him for Moscow, its most sensitive post, despite a lack of experience.  Howard is the only CIA agent to have got away.  He now lives in Moscow.  His wife, Mary, who was also a full time employee of the CIA, still lives in the USA.  

This is the first full-length account of the CIA's coup d'etat in Iran in 1953—a covert operation whose consequences are still with us today. Written by a noted New York Times journalist, this book is based on documents about the coup (including some lengthy internal CIA reports) that have...  more

This is the first full-length account of the CIA's coup d'etat in Iran in 1953—a covert operation whose consequences are still with us today. Written by a noted New York Times journalist, this book is based on documents about the coup (including some lengthy internal CIA reports) that have now been declassified. Stephen Kinzer's compelling narrative is at once a vital piece of history, a cautionary tale, and a real-life espionage thriller.

Renowned for ferocity in battle, legendary for an uncanny ability to elude capture, feared for the violence of his vengeful raids, the Apache fighter Geronimo captured the public imagination in his own time and remains a figure of mythical proportion today. This thoroughly researched biography...  more

Renowned for ferocity in battle, legendary for an uncanny ability to elude capture, feared for the violence of his vengeful raids, the Apache fighter Geronimo captured the public imagination in his own time and remains a figure of mythical proportion today. This thoroughly researched biography by a renowned historian of the American West strips away the myths and rumors that have long obscured the real Geronimo and presents an authentic portrait of a man with unique strengths and weaknesses and a destiny that swept him into the fierce storms of history.Historian Robert Utley draws on an array of new sources and his own lifelong research on the mountain West and white-Indian conflicts of the late nineteenth century to create an updated, accurate, and highly exciting narrative of Geronimo's life. Utley unfolds the story through the alternating perspectives of whites and Apaches, and he arrives at a more nuanced understanding of Geronimo's character and motivation than ever before. What it was like to be an Apache fighter-in-training, why Indians as well as whites feared Geronimo, how Geronimo maintained his freedom, and why he finally surrendered?the answers to these questions and many more fill the pages of this irresistable volume.

Dust jacket notes: "Here is the first complete history of the long forgotten Buffalo War of 1874 - fought between the United States Government and warriors of the Cheyenne, Comanche, and Kiowa Indian tribes of the South Plains. At the time of its completion, General Phil Sheridan called it the...  more

Dust jacket notes: "Here is the first complete history of the long forgotten Buffalo War of 1874 - fought between the United States Government and warriors of the Cheyenne, Comanche, and Kiowa Indian tribes of the South Plains. At the time of its completion, General Phil Sheridan called it the most usccessful Indian campaign ever waged - and many of its incidents have become frontier legends. But until now, the whole extraordinary episode has never been chronicled in full, in all its intricate and amazing detail. James Haley has carefully analyzed the causes of Indian unrest centering around the great buffalo slaughter by white hunters from the north that threatened to destroy forever the whole foundation of Indian life. He describes the competing factions - within the Indian tribes, within the U.S. Army, and within the government bureaucracy - which shaped the course of events. And he outlines the battle strategies and engagements that made the Buffalo War such a curious blend of savagery, heroics, accidents, and confusion - on both sides of the fight. Mr. Haley's extensive research draws heavily on contemporary letters and reports, and his many new findings overturn a number of myths and prejudices which have grown up around the Red River uprising over the past one hundred years. The result is an exciting, authentic narrative filled with the colorful events and personalities of a crucial time in the history of the American frontier. Included are fifty-eight rare photographs of the Indian leaders, buffalo hunters, Army officers, and Indian agents who each played a part in the story of the Buffalo War."

THE TRUE STORY OF WILLIAM EATON AND THE UNITED STATES’ FIRST ATTEMPT AT REGIME CHANGEApril 27, 1805. The impasse in the four-year war between the Barbary pirate state of Tripoli and the United States is about to be broken. William Eaton has led his ragtag army of Greeks, Arabs, and U.S....  more

THE TRUE STORY OF WILLIAM EATON AND THE UNITED STATES’ FIRST ATTEMPT AT REGIME CHANGEApril 27, 1805. The impasse in the four-year war between the Barbary pirate state of Tripoli and the United States is about to be broken. William Eaton has led his ragtag army of Greeks, Arabs, and U.S. Marines across five hundred grueling miles of sun-scorched desert from Alexandria, Egypt, to Tripoli’s heavily defended port fortress of Derna. Outnumbered ten to one, the exhausted, thirsty men carry out Eaton’s daring charge on the pirate fortress–and enter the history books and anthem of the U.S. Marines.David Smethurst vividly chronicles America’s Barbary War and the pivotal role of William Eaton–firebrand, soldier, and statesman. From the former army captain’s appointment as consul to the Barbary Coast in 1799 to the enemy’s capture of the USS Pennsylvania and her three hundred sailors to Eaton’s valiant attack and its stunning aftermath, Tripoli is a fascinating tale of polished diplomacy, raw heroism, and a man as fearless and independent as the young nation he represented.

San Francisco Chronicle : "In the figure of the old-time gamblin? man and cold killer, John Myers has found a subject perfectly suited to his talents and his methods. . . . The result is a solid though lively biography. . . . As for the general reader, interested in the old West, he?ll eat...  more

San Francisco Chronicle : "In the figure of the old-time gamblin? man and cold killer, John Myers has found a subject perfectly suited to his talents and his methods. . . . The result is a solid though lively biography. . . . As for the general reader, interested in the old West, he?ll eat this up and beg for more."?San Francisco Chronicle Chicago Sunday Tribune : "Adds an authentic shaft of light to the dark history of gun play in the West."?Chicago Sunday Tribune Dallas Times Herald : "John Myers Myers has written Doc?s story with a skill that matches the sureness of a bullet from Doc?s gun. It is a bull?s-eye hit."?Dallas Times Herald

Robert Young Pelton first became aware of the phenomenon of hired guns in the War on Terror when he met a covert team of contractors on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border in the fall of 2003. Pelton soon embarked on a globe-spanning odyssey to penetrate and understand this shadowy world, ultimately...  more

Robert Young Pelton first became aware of the phenomenon of hired guns in the War on Terror when he met a covert team of contractors on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border in the fall of 2003. Pelton soon embarked on a globe-spanning odyssey to penetrate and understand this shadowy world, ultimately delivering stunning insights into the way private soldiers are used.Enter a blood-soaked world of South African mercenaries and tribal fighters backed by ruthless financiers. Drop into Baghdad’s Green Zone, strap on body armor, and take a daily high-speed ride with a doomed crew of security contractors who dodge car bombs and snipers just to get their charges to the airport. Share a drink in a chic hotel bar with wealthy owners of private armies who debate the best way to stay alive in war zones.Licensed to Kill spans four continents and three years, taking us inside the CIA’s dirty wars; the brutal contractor murders in Fallujah and the Alamo-like sieges in Najaf and Al Kut; the Deep South contractor training camps where ex–Special Operations soldiers and even small town cops learn the ropes; the contractor conventions where macho attendees swap bullet-punctuated tales and discuss upcoming gigs; and the grim Central African prison where contractors turned failed mercenaries pay a steep price.The United States has encouraged the use of the private sector in all facets of the War on Terror, placing contractors outside the bounds of functional legal constraints. With the shocking clarity that can come only from firsthand observation, Licensed to Kill painstakingly deconstructs the most controversial events and introduces the pivotal players. Most disturbingly, it shows that there are indeed thousands of contractors—with hundreds more being produced every month—who’ve been given a license to kill, their services available to the highest bidder.From the Hardcover edition.

History and culture of the cowboy. The author's fine illustrations accompany an equally intriguing survey of cowboy lore; from the makings of a cow-horse to the phenomenon of cattle rustlers.

The Apache Indians and the white settlers came face to face after the Mexican War, when the migrations across the continent reached the Southwest. In depicting the long, bitter resistance of the Apaches, "Death in the Desert" reveals incidents that provoked their undying hatred of...  more

The Apache Indians and the white settlers came face to face after the Mexican War, when the migrations across the continent reached the Southwest. In depicting the long, bitter resistance of the Apaches, "Death in the Desert" reveals incidents that provoked their undying hatred of whites. This rousing narrative history begins in 1837 with the rise to tribal leadership of Mangas Coloradas and ends in 1886 with the surrender of Geronimo. For a half century the dust never settles as U. S. troops fight the Apaches in Arizona and New Mexico and defeat the single uprisings of the Navajos and Pueblos. Two chapters describe the Modoc War in northern California from 1871 to 1873.

The Natchez Trace has as dark and bloody a history as any thoroughfare since the beginning of our nation. The whole dramatic story of the Natchez Trace in fascinating detail.

In this landmark book, Robert D. Kaplan, veteran correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly and author of Balkan Ghosts, shows how American imperialism and the Global War on Terrorism are implemented on the ground, mission by mission, in the most exotic landscapes around the world. Given...  more

In this landmark book, Robert D. Kaplan, veteran correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly and author of Balkan Ghosts, shows how American imperialism and the Global War on Terrorism are implemented on the ground, mission by mission, in the most exotic landscapes around the world. Given unprecedented access, Kaplan takes us from the jungles of the southern Philippines to the glacial dust bowls of Mongolia, from the forts of Afghanistan to the forests of South America–not to mention Iraq–to show us Army Special Forces, Marines, and other uniformed Americans carrying out the many facets of U.S. foreign policy: negotiating with tribal factions, storming terrorist redoubts, performing humanitarian missions and training foreign soldiers. In Imperial Grunts, Kaplan provides an unforgettable insider’s account not only of our current involvement in world affairs, but also of where America, including the culture of its officers and enlisted men, is headed. This is the rare book that has the potential to change the way readers view the men and women of the military, war, and the global reach of American imperialism today.As Kaplan writes, the only way to understand America’s military is “on foot, or in a Humvee, with the troops themselves, for even as elites in New York and Washington debated imperialism in grand, historical terms, individual marines, soldiers, airmen, and sailors–all the cultural repositories of America’s unique experience with freedom–were interpreting policy on their own, on the ground, in dozens upon dozens of countries every week, oblivious to such faraway discussions. . . . It was their stories I wanted to tell: from the ground up, at the point of contact.”Never before has America’s overarching military strategy been parsed so incisively and evocatively. Kaplan introduces us to lone American servicemen whose presence in obscure countries is largely unknown, and concludes with a heart-stopping portrait of marines in the first battle in Fallujah. Extraordinary in its scope, beautifully written, Imperial Grunts, the first of two volumes, combines first-rate reporting with the sensitivity and insights of an acclaimed writer steeped in history, literature, and philosophy, to deliver a masterly account of America’s global role in the twenty-first century. • Imperial Grunts paints a vivid picture of how defense policy is implemented at the grassroots level.• Kaplan travels throughout the world where U.S. forces are located. This is not just a book about Iraq or Afghanistan. • Rather than debate imperialism, Kaplan relies on a keen understanding of history, philosophy, and in-the-field reporting to show how it actually works on the ground.• Imperial Grunts escapes Washington and shows us what it’s like to live with the grunts day to day.Praise for Imperial Grunts“One of the most important books of the last several years. Robert Kaplan uses his prodigious energy and matchless reporting skills to takes us on to the front lines with the new warrior-diplomats who use weapons, imagination, and personal passion to protect and advance the interests of the United States. This is a generation every American should come to know.”–Tom Brokaw“Robert Kaplan has brilliantly captured the story of today’s U.S. military operating in far-flung places on strange missions. Imperial Grunts is the most insightful and superbly written account of soldiering in the New World Disorder to date. It is a must read for all Americans.”–General Anthony C. Zinni, United States Marine Corps (Ret.)“Kaplan infuses us with a sense of hope about the future. Through astonishing observations, truths, and stories, Imperial Grunts introduces a brand-new way of thinking about the enduring virtue of the American spirit.”–George Crile, author of Charlie Wilson’s War“No recent book so well or so vividly portrays the challenges of the modern United States military. With an impressive grasp of the complexities of military missions worldwide, Robert Kaplan exposes the reader to the world of the modern soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine. A must read for both civilian and military leaders.”–General Barry R. McCaffrey, United States Army (Ret.), Bradley Distinguished Professor of International Security Studies, United States Military Academy“Imperial Grunts is vintage Robert Kaplan, combining a deep appreciation of history and wonderfully vivid writing with an infectious wanderlust.”–Max Boot, Senior Fellow, National Security Studies, the Council on Foreign Relations, author of The Savage Wars of Peace“Splendid! This is the finest work in print about today’s American fighting men and the challenges they face around the globe. Kaplan’s courage in researching this book under combat conditions is complemented by his integrity and great literary skill. Imperial Grunts simply could not be better.”–Ralph Peters, author of Beyond Baghdad

An account of the author's childhood in a small North Carolina farming village evokes a lost world of rural community experiences while describing a coming-of-age awareness of racism that leads to a painful confrontation. Reprint. LJ. NYT.