Best of
19th-Century

2008

Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861


Harold Holzer - 2008
    Though Lincoln has been criticized by many historians for failing to appreciate the severity of the secession crisis that greeted his victory, Harold Holzer shows that the presidentelect waged a shrewd and complex campaign to prevent the expansion of slavery while vainly trying to limit secession to a few Deep South states.During this most dangerous White House transition in American history, the country had two presidents: one powerless (the president-elect, possessing no constitutional authority), the other paralyzed (the incumbent who refused to act). Through limited, brilliantly timed and crafted public statements, determined private letters, tough political pressure, and personal persuasion, Lincoln guaranteed the integrity of the American political process of majority rule, sounded the death knell of slavery, and transformed not only his own image but that of the presidency, even while makinginevitable the war that would be necessary to make these achievements permanent.Lincoln President-Elect is the first book to concentrate on Lincoln's public stance and private agony during these months and on the momentous consequences when he first demonstrated his determination and leadership. Holzer recasts Lincoln from an isolated prairie politician yet to establish his greatness, to a skillful shaper of men and opinion and an immovable friend of freedom at a decisive moment when allegiance to the founding credo "all men are created equal" might well have been sacrificed.

Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West


Ethan Rarick - 2008
    After months of grueling travel, the 81 men, women and children would be trapped for a brutal winter with little food and only primitive shelter. The conclusion is known: by spring of the next year, the Donner Party was synonymous with the most harrowing extremes of human survival. But until now, the full story of what happened, what it tells us about human nature and about America's westward expansion, remained shrouded in myth.Drawing on fresh archaeological evidence, recent research on topics ranging from survival rates to snowfall totals, and heartbreaking letters and diaries made public by descendants a century-and-a-half after the tragedy, Ethan Rarick offers an intimate portrait of the Donner party and their unimaginable ordeal: a mother who must divide her family, a little girl who shines with courage, a devoted wife who refuses to abandon her husband, a man who risks his life merely to keep his word. But Rarick resists both the gruesomely sensationalist accounts of the Donner party as well as later attempts to turn the survivors into archetypal pioneer heroes. The Donner Party, Rarick writes, is a story of hard decisions that were neither heroic nor villainous. Often, the emigrants displayed a more realistic and typically human mixture of generosity and selfishness, an alloy born of necessity.A fast-paced, heart-wrenching, clear-eyed narrative history, A Desperate Hope casts new light on one of America's most horrific encounters between the dream of a better life and the harsh realities such dreams so often must confront.

Abraham Lincoln: A Life


Michael Burlingame - 2008
    Incorporating the field notes of earlier biographers, along with decades of research in multiple manuscript archives and long-neglected newspapers, this remarkable work will both alter and reinforce current understanding of America’s sixteenth president.Volume 1 covers Lincoln’s early childhood, his experiences as a farm boy in Indiana and Illinois, his legal training, and the political ambition that led to a term in Congress in the 1840s. In volume 2, Burlingame examines Lincoln’s life during his presidency and the Civil War, narrating in fascinating detail the crisis over Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s own battles with relentless office seekers, hostile newspaper editors, and incompetent field commanders. Burlingame also offers new interpretations of Lincoln’s private life, discussing his marriage to Mary Todd and the untimely deaths of two sons to disease.But through it all—his difficult childhood, his contentious political career, a fratricidal war, and tragic personal losses—Lincoln preserved a keen sense of humor and acquired a psychological maturity that proved to be the North’s most valuable asset in winning the Civil War.Published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth, this landmark publication establishes Burlingame as the most assiduous Lincoln biographer of recent memory and brings Lincoln alive to modern readers as never before.

Without Dogma


Henryk Sienkiewicz - 2008
    This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Slagtebænk Dybbøl - 18. april 1864 - historien om et slag


Tom Buk-Swienty - 2008
    Prussian troops lay siege to an outpost in the far south of Denmark. The conflict is over control of the Duchy of Schleswig, recently annexed by Denmark to the alarm of its largely German-speaking inhabitants. Danish troops make a valiant attempt to hold out but are overrun by the might of the Prussian onslaught. Of little strategic importance, the struggle for Schleswig foreshadowed the same forces that, fifty years later, would tear Europe apart. Prussia's victory would not only rejuvenate its nascent militarism, but help it claim leadership of the new German Empire. Told in rich detail through first-hand accounts, Tom Buk-Swienty's magisterial account of the Schleswig conflict tells the story of this pivotal war. 1864 shows how a minor regional conflict foreshadowed the course of diplomacy that led to the First World War and brutally presaged the industrialised future of warfare. But most of all, in its human detail, from touching letters between husbands and wives to heartbreaking individual stories of loss, 1864 is a gripping, epic human drama that shows the effect all wars have on the soldiers, on families and on the individual men and women who must live its realities.

The Collected Novels of the Brontë Sisters


Anne Brontë - 2008
    Both Charlotte's Jane Eyre and Emily's Wuthering Heights have won lofty places in the pantheon and stirred the romantic sensibilities of generations of readers. For the first time ever, Penguin Classics unites these two enduring favorites with the lesser known but no less powerful work by their youngest sister, Anne. Drawn from Anne's own experiences as a governess, Agnes Grey offers a compelling view of Victorian chauvinism and materialism. Its inclusion makes The Brontë Sisters a must-have volume for anyone fascinated by this singularly talented family. @HeathBar The house is now mine. Since the neighbor has Catherine, I’ll seduce his sister. We’ll see how brave he is when she’s got Heathcock in her. Girl is preggers. Catherine is dead. My world is over. I’ve become an evil, evil man. Naming my son Heathcliff Jr. From Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less

The Training Ground: Grant, Lee, Sherman, and Davis in the Mexican War, 1846-1848


Martin Dugard - 2008
    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.

I Am Apache


Tanya Landman - 2008
    Though some men, like envious Keste, wish to see Siki fail, she passes test after test, and her skills grow under the guidance of her tribe's greatest warrior, Golahka. But Keste begins to whisper about Siki's father's dishonorable death, and even as Siki earns her place among the warriors, she senses a dark secret in her past — one that will throw into doubt everything she knows. Taking readers on a sweeping and suspenseful journey through the nineteenth-century American Southwest, Tanya Landman draws on historical accounts to imagine the Black Mountain Apache as a tribe in a fight for survival against the devastating progress of nations.

Jack Tar: The Extraordinary Lives of Ordinary Seamen in Nelson's Navy


Roy A. Adkins - 2008
    Drawn from all over Britain and beyond, often unwillingly, these ordinary men made the navy invincible through skill, courage and sheer determination. They cast a long shadow, with millions of their descendants alive today, and many of their everyday expressions, such as 'skyscraper' and 'loose cannon', continuing to enrich our language. Yet their contribution is frequently overlooked, while the officers became celebrities. JACK TAR gives these forgotten men a voice in an exciting, enthralling, often unexpected and always entertaining picture of what their life was really like during this age of sail. Through personal letters, diaries and other manuscripts, the emotions and experiences of these people are explored, from the dread of press-gangs, shipwreck and disease, to the exhilaration of battle, grog, prize money and prostitutes. JACK TAR is an authoritative and gripping account that will be compulsive reading for anyone wanting to discover the vibrant and sometimes stark realities of this wooden world at war.

Becoming Queen


Kate Williams - 2008
    That, of course, is a matter of opinion. And there are other layers to the story.With a combination of novelistic flair and historical accuracy, Kate Williams begins by relating the heartbreaking story of Princess Charlotte, the Queen who never was, and her impact on the young Victoria. Our perception of Victoria the Queen is coloured by portraits of her older, widowed self - her dour expression embodying the repressive morality propagated in her time. But Becoming Queen reveals an energetic and vibrant woman, determined to battle for power. It also documents the Byzantine machinations behind Victoria's quest to occupy the throne, and shows how her struggles did not end when finally the crown was placed on her head.In the late eighteenth century, monarchies were in crisis across Europe. Discontented with their mad King, George III, and his spendthrift offspring, the English pinned their hopes on the only legitimate grandchild: Princess Charlotte, daughter of George, Prince of Wales. But Charlotte died at the age of twenty-two, a few hours after giving birth to a stillborn son. A grieving nation immediately began venerating her as someone who would have made an ideal Queen while Charlotte's rackety uncles embarked on a race to produce the next heir.No one thought that little Victoria, daughter of the Duke of Kent, would ascend the throne. She, in turn, became increasingly determined to take control of her own destiny, and clashed constantly not only with her hugely ambitious mother but with her protégé and household comptroller, the Irish adventurer, John Conroy. After she became Queen, ministers, even her beloved Prince Albert, still attempted to steal power away from her.Revealing how Charlotte's death shaped Victoria's reign and laying bare the passions that swirled around the throne, Becoming Queen is an absorbingly dramatic tale of secrets, sexual repression and endless conflict. After her lauded biography of Emma Hamilton, England's Mistress, Kate Williams has produced a most original and intimate portrait of Great Britain's longest reigning monarch.

Sun Going Down


Jack Todd - 2008
    The cast includes a grizzled Mississippi steamboat merchant, two horse-thieving brothers, five Annie Oakley-like sisters who can outride any cowboy, a half-Sioux bride who demands her new family claim her heritage, and a courageous daughter who defies her father and braves the West alone. The Paint family must battle both internal and external elements, and learn to live with spirit and wit.Letters and diaries from the author's own family archives form the basis for all the events and characters for richly detailed authenticity and deep emotional power. Reach spans Vicksburg up through Montana and the Dakotas, four generations from the Civil War to the Great Depression.

Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era 1829-1877


Walter A. McDougall - 2008
    McDougall's Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era, 1829-1877 throws off sparks like a flywheel. This eagerly awaited sequel to Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History, 1585-1828 carries the saga of the American people's continuous self-reinvention from the inauguration of President Andrew Jackson through the eras of Manifest Destiny, Civil War, and Reconstruction, America's first failed crusade to put "freedom on the march" through regime change and nation building.But Throes of Democracy is much more than a political history. Here, for the first time, is the American epic as lived by Germans and Irish, Catholics and Jews, as well as people of British Protestant and African American stock; an epic defined as much by folks in Wisconsin, Kansas, and Texas as by those in Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia; an epic in which Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, showman P. T. Barnum, and circus clown Dan Rice figure as prominently as Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and Henry Ward Beecher; an epic in which railroad management and land speculation prove as gripping as Indian wars. Walter A. McDougall's zesty, irreverent narrative says something new, shrewd, ironic, or funny about almost everything as it reveals our national penchant for pretense—a predilection that explains both the periodic throes of democracy and the perennial resilience of the United States.

Seven Miles to Freedom: The Robert Smalls Story


Janet Halfmann - 2008
    The true story of Robert Smalls, a slave steamboat wheelman who commandeered a Confederate ship during the Civil War and escaped with his family and crew to freedom.

Commander of the Faithful: The Life and Times of Emir Abd el-Kader (1808-1883)


John W. Kiser - 2008
    . . any number of episodes could inspire novels . . . impossible to read without thinking of more current events."—The New York Times"A valuable and timely reminder . . . of that rare figure: a bridge between East and West."—Times Literary SupplementThis well-researched and compelling biography of the Muslim warrior-saint who led the Algerian resistance to French colonization in the mid-nineteenth century sheds light on current US involvement with a global Islam. The most famous "jihadist" of his time, Abd el-Kader was known equally for his military brilliance and his moral authority. His New York Times obituary called him "one of the few great men of the century."

Devil's Gate: Brigham Young and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy


David Roberts - 2008
     • Dramatic re-telling of a terrible but little-known tragedy: In 1856, 220 Mormons traveling west to Utah, pushing and pulling their belongings in handcarts, died of malnutrition and hypothermia. Roberts draws on contemporary letters and diaries to re-create the drama and suffering. • A powerful indictment of Brigham Young: Young had been warned that the pilgrims were at risk from winter storms; he could have waited until the next year or sent aid eastward sooner but failed to do so until it was too late. Not only have Young’s biographers ignored or minimized this tragic and preventable event, they’ve tacitly accepted the official version of the story, which casts it as an unavoidable act of God that tested—and proved—the faith and steadfastness of the Mormon spirit. • Follows the success of other books about the Mormons: Devil’s Gate will appeal to the same readers that made Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven and Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith’s The Mormon Murders into explosive, national bestsellers.

Vienna 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made War, Peace, and Love at the Congress of Vienna


David King - 2008
    With the feared Napoleon Bonaparte presumably defeated and exiled to the small island of Elba, heads of some 216 states gathered in Vienna to begin piecing together the ruins of his toppled empire. Major questions loomed: What would be done with France? How were the newly liberated territories to be divided? What type of restitution would be offered to families of the deceased? But this unprecedented gathering of kings, dignitaries, and diplomatic leaders unfurled a seemingly endless stream of personal vendettas, long-simmering feuds, and romantic entanglements that threatened to undermine the crucial work at hand, even as their hard-fought policy decisions shaped the destiny of Europe and led to the longest sustained peace the continent would ever see.Beyond the diplomatic wrangling, however, the Congress of Vienna served as a backdrop for the most spectacular Vanity Fair of its time. Highlighted by such celebrated figures as the elegant but incredibly vain Prince Metternich of Austria, the unflappable and devious Prince Talleyrand of France, and the volatile Tsar Alexander of Russia, as well as appearances by Ludwig van Beethoven and Emilia Bigottini, the sheer star power of the Vienna congress outshone nearly everything else in the public eye.An early incarnation of the cult of celebrity, the congress devolved into a series of debauched parties that continually delayed the progress of peace, until word arrived that Napoleon had escaped, abruptly halting the revelry and shrouding the continent in panic once again.Vienna, 1814 beautifully illuminates the intricate social and political intrigue of this history-defining congress–a glorified party that seemingly valued frivolity over substance but nonetheless managed to drastically reconfigure Europe’s balance of power and usher in the modern age.

My Fantoms


Théophile Gautier - 2008
    In My Fantoms Richard Holmes, the celebrated biographer of Shelley and Coleridge, has found a brilliantly effective new way to bring this great but too-little-known writer into English. My Fantoms assembles seven stories spanning the whole of Gautier’s career into a unified work that captures the essence of his adventurous life and subtle art. From the erotic awakening of “The Adolescent” through “The Poet,” a piercing recollection of the mad genius Gérard de Nerval, the great friend of Gautier’s youth, My Fantoms celebrates the senses and illuminates the strange disguises of the spirit, while taking readers on a tour of modernity at its most mysterious. ”What ever would the Devil find to do in Paris?” Gautier wonders. “He would meet people just as diabolical as he, and find himself taken for some naïve provincial…”Tapestries, statues, and corpses come to life; young men dream their way into ruin; and Gautier keeps his faith in the power of imagination: “No one is truly dead, until they are no longer loved.”

New York Times: The Complete Front Pages: 1851-2008


Richard Bernstein - 2008
    From wars and political assassinations to social movements and space exploration, all the news that is fit to print—or download—can be found in this extraordinary book-and-DVD set.More than 300 of the most significant New York Times front pages have been carefully selected and beautifully reproduced in the book. Read the headlines and stories covering such world-changing events as Abraham Lincoln's assassination, Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight, Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, and the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Ten foldouts present twenty key front pages at their magnificent full size. News summaries throughout highlight the most significant events of each era and put the front pages into a historical context. Seventeen insightful essays by prominent Times writers comment on pivotal moments, including "The End of Slavery" by William Safire, "Women’s Suffrage" by Gail Collins, and "The Age of Television" by Frank Rich.The 3 DVDs include each of the 54,266 front pages printed by the Times over the past 157 years. Completely searchable and user-friendly, the disks are designed to provide access to the full stories that made front-page news each day since the paper’s founding in 1851. Click on a page—the day you were born, for example—and you're instantly transported to the Times' online archive.The New York Times: The Complete Front Pages is the ultimate gift for history buffs, news junkies, students, and anyone who strives to be well-informed.DVD-ROMs run on a PC (Windows 2000/XP or later) or Mac (OSX I0.4.8 or later) with Adobe 8.o or later.  Free download available on the DVD-ROMs.

Disunion!: The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859


Elizabeth R. Varon - 2008
    As Elizabeth Varon shows, disunion connoted the dissolution of the republic--the failure of the founders' effort to establish a stable and lasting representative government. For many Americans in both the North and the South, disunion was a nightmare, a cataclysm that would plunge the nation into the kind of fear and misery that seemed to pervade the rest of the world. For many others, however, disunion was seen as the main instrument by which they could achieve their partisan and sectional goals. Varon blends political history with intellectual, cultural, and gender history to examine the ongoing debates over disunion that long preceded the secession crisis of 1860-61.

White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson


Brenda Wineapple - 2008
    As the Civil War raged, an unlikely friendship was born between the reclusive poet Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a literary figure who ran guns to Kansas and commanded the first Union regiment of black soldiers. When Dickinson sent Higginson four of her poems, he realized he had encountered a wholly original genius; their intense correspondence continued for the next quarter century.In White Heat, Brenda Wineapple tells an extraordinary story about poetry, politics, and love -- one that sheds new light on her subjects, and on the roiling America they shared.

Wanted - The Half Breed: She Knows He Is Innocent


Bobbi Smith - 2008
    When he is sentenced for a murder he did not commit, he escapes and asks for help from his only friend in town, Veronica Reynolds. She has known Wind Walker since they were kids together in school. THE PURSUED MAN When Veronica sees Wind Walker at the door of her family ranch, wounded and scared, she knows in her heart he didn’t do it. She is willing to risk everything to join him and track down the real murderer. THEIR ETERNAL BOND The handsome half-breed hates to put Veronica in harm's way, but worse still would be going to his grave without hearing her whisper his name one last time and having the sweet taste of her lips on his just once more… BONUS This edition contains a bonus excerpt from DESERT HEART by Bobbi Smith. REVIEWS OF WANTED - THE HALF-BREED 4.1 average rating all editions, 87 ratings, 8 reviews, added by 223 people, 17 to-reads, 94% of people like it–Goodreads4.9 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)—Amazon"Ms. Smith has a gift at creating likeable characters." —Old Book Barn Gazette… a very enjoyable re-read! Loved reading it the first time and it only gets better 2nd time around!”—Vicki, Goodreads“One more fun read. Just the right mix of gun smoke and romance. Bobbie always creates a story that is fun without a complex, hard to follow plot.”—Dalton D., Amazon"Bobbi Smith is a terrific storyteller whose wonderful characters, good dialogue and compelling plot will keep you up all night!"—RT BOOKclub ABOUT BOBBI SMITH Bobbi Smith is a New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author with more than 6 million books in print. She has been awarded the prestigious Romantic Times Storyteller of the Year Award and two Career Achievement Awards. Since she sold her first book, Rapture’s Rage, in 1982 she has published more than 38 books and contributed to six collections of short stories. When she’s not on deadline, Bobbi teaches writing at The Write Stuff at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, and is a frequent guest speaker for writer’s groups. Her western historical romances appeal to readers of C. J. Petit, Shirleen Davies, and Judith E. French. Bobbi Smith is the mother of two sons and lives in St. Charles, Missouri, with her husband and three dogs.

George Washington's Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior: And Other Writings


George Washington - 2008
    . .nor with mouth open; go not upon the toes nor in a dancing fashion." George Washington was known as a remarkably modest and courteous man. Humility and flawless manners were so ingrained in his character that he rarely if ever acted without them. The "Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior" that governed Washington's etiquette were by turns practical, inspirational and curious. These rules are as instructive and invaluable today as they were hundreds of years ago. George Washington's Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior includes the complete text of the rules, as well as famous Washington writings such as: -Farewell to the Armies speech-Inaugural Address-Retirement Address-Address at the End of His Presidency

Most Beautiful Princess


Christina Croft - 2008
    Petersburg to the back streets of Moscow. Through intrigues, assassination, war and revolution, to the tragedy of her own horrific murder, she remained true to her calling to bring beauty into the world. Based on the true story of 'the most beautiful princess in Europe', this novel is written in tribute to a remarkable and courageous woman.

The Barefoot Emperor: An Ethiopian Tragedy


Philip Marsden - 2008
    A fascinating excursion into a bizarre episode in 19th century Ethiopian and British imperial history, The Barefoot Emperor recalls the reign of the Emperor Theodore, who defended his mountain-top stronghold with a massive 70-ton gun.

Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life


Paul L. Mariani - 2008
    Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) may well have been the most original and innovative poet writing in the English language during the nineteenth century. Yet his story of personal struggle, doubt, intense introspection, and inward heroism has never been told fully. As a Jesuit priest, Hopkins's descent into loneliness and despair and his subsequent recovery are a remarkable and inspiring spiritual journey that will speak to many readers, regardless of their faith or philosophies. Paul Mariani, an award-winning poet himself and author of a number of biographies of literary figures, brilliantly integrates Hopkins's spiritual life and his literary life to create a rich and compelling portrait of a man whose work and life continue to speak to readers a century after his death.

Passion's Furies


AlTonya Washington - 2008
    Set against the backdrop of the Denmark Vesey rebellion in 1860s Charleston, this passionate tale follows a black woman who is determined to be part of the uprising, and the man who vows to keep her safe.

J.W. Waterhouse: The Modern Pre-Raphaelite


Elizabeth Prettejohn - 2008
    In this brilliantly illustrated  survey, edited by a leading Waterhouse scholar, the painter's seductive vision of femininity is captured in sumptuous reproductions and illuminated by an engaging and informative text.Published to accompany an important exhibition of the artist's work, the book explores Waterhouse's creative responses to such contemporary concerns as medievalism, the classical tradition, and spiritualism. A comprehensive examination of his life and work, including his well-known painting The Lady of Shallott, this volume explores also the artist's connection to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and his engagement with French art of the period.

The Blackest Streets: The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum


Sarah Wise - 2008
    A maze of rotting hundred-year-old houses, the Old Nichol suffered rampant crime and a death rate four times that of London. Among the more piquant discoveries of an 1887 government inquiry was that the owners of these fetid dwellings included lords, lawyers, even churchmen.Drawing on a rich archival store, Sarah Wise reconstructs the Old Nichol and the lives of its 6,000 inhabitants—the woodworkers, fish smokers, and dog dealers, whose tiny rooms doubled as workshops and farmyards. She depicts as well the eugenicists, anarchists, and philanthropists who ventured into the Old Nichol to "save" the poor with such theories as emigration and sterilization. The winning solution was demolition: the Old Nichol was replaced with a new, hygienic settlement—in which only eleven of the original residents could afford to live. Widely praised as a sensitive chronicler of the poor, Wise captures the moment when the poor turned from public nuisance into social experiment.

Bram Stoker's Notes for Dracula: An Annotated Transcription and Comprehensive Analysis


Elizabeth Russell Miller - 2008
    Until now, few of the 124 pages have been transcribed or analyzed. This comprehensive work reproduces the handwritten notes both in facsimile and in annotated transcription. It also includes Stoker's typewritten research notes and thoroughly analyzes all of the materials, which range from Stoker's thoughts on the novel's characters and settings to a nine-page calendar of events that includes most of the now-familiar story. The coauthors draw on their extensive knowledge of Dracula and vampires to guide readers through the construction of the novel, and the changes that were made to its structure, plot, setting and characters. Nine appendices provide insight into Stoker's personal life, his other works and his early literary influences.

Saved by Grace: The Holy Spirit's Work in Calling and Regeneration


Herman Bavinck - 2008
    While both groups had much in common, there remained fundamental points of disagreement, which erupted into controversies over such doctrines as immediate regeneration and presumptive regeneration. In Saved by Grace, Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) discusses God's gracious work in bringing fallen sinners to new life and salvation. He provides a careful historical analysis that shows how Reformed theologians have wrestled to understand the Holy Spirit's work in calling and regeneration since the seventeenth century. Bavinck brings exegetical precision and theological clarity to the discussion, carefully avoiding the errors of undervaluing and overvaluing the use of means in the work of salvation. This book, therefore, takes up questions with which every new generation of Reformed writers must grapple.

Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends


John Keats - 2008
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

The Masque of the Red Death


Edgar Allan Poe - 2008
    But, in their immodest comfort, the Prince and his guests are not as safe as they hope from the horrors of the outside world ...

Imagining Head-Smashed-In: Aboriginal Buffalo Hunting on the Northern Plains


Jack W. Brink - 2008
    Archaeologist Jack Brink has written a major study of the mass buffalo hunts and the culture they supported before and after European contact. By way of example, he draws on his 25 years excavating at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in southwestern Alberta, Canada – a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Slavery in Massachusetts


Henry David Thoreau - 2008
    www.forgottenbooks.orgForgotten Books is about sharing knowledge, not about making money. Our books are priced at wholesale prices. We print in large sans-serif font, which is proven to make the text easier to read and put less strain on your eyes. Happy reading!

Reasoning Together: The Native Critics Collective


Craig S. WomackCheryl Suzack - 2008
    Cheryl Suzack situates feminist theories within Native culture with an eye to applying them to subjugated groups across Indian Country; Christopher B. Teuton organizes Native literary criticism into three modes based on community awareness; Sean Teuton opens up new sites for literary performance inside prisons with Native inmates; Robert Warrior wants literary analysis to consider the challenges of eroticism; Craig S. Womack introduces the book by historicizing book-length Native-authored criticism published between 1986 and 1997, and he concludes the volume with an essay on theorizing experience.Reasoning Together proposes nothing less than a paradigm shift in American Indian literary criticism, closing the gap between theory and activism by situating Native literature in real-life experiences and tribal histories. It is an accessible collection that will suit a wide range of courses—and will educate and energize anyone engaged in criticism of Native literature.

Ingres


Andrew Carrington Shelton - 2008
    Book by Shelton, Andrew

The Other Half: The Life of Jacob Riis and the World of Immigrant America


Tom Buk-Swienty - 2008
    Born in 1849 in rural Denmark, Riis immigrated to America in 1870 following a devastating romantic breakup. Penniless and starving, Riis stumbled into journalism, eventually becoming a charismatic police reporter for the New York Tribune, where he befriended Theodore Roosevelt and witnessed firsthand the appalling tenement conditions of late nineteenth-century New York. His resulting exposé, How the Other Half Lives, was the first major American muckraking book. It brought Americans in touch with their lost humanity, establishing a precedent for Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, Jane Addams, and Upton Sinclair. Described by Roosevelt as "the ideal American," Riis died in 1914, mourned by millions, a celebrated hero. Tom Buk-Swienty's long-awaited biography, a superb evocation of the muckraking era, is a compelling work, designed with 55 haunting images from Riis's own photographic oeuvre.

Montgomery Ward Co. Catalogue and Buyers' Guide 1895


Skyhorse Publishing - 2008
    catalogue. He had a gift for understatement. At its zenith from the 1880s to the 1940s, Montgomery Ward, like its cross-town Chicago rival, Sears, sold virtually everything the average American could think of or desire—and by mail. This was a revolution, and Ward's fired the first shot. To buy spittoons, books of gospel hymns, hat pins, rifles, wagons, violins, birdcages, or portable bathtubs, purchases that used to require many separate trips to specialist merchants, suddenly all the American shopper had to do was lick a stamp. This unabridged facsimile of the retail giant's 1895 catalogue showcases some 25,000 items, from the necessities of life (flour, shirts) to products whose time has passed (ear trumpets). It is an important resource for antiquaries, students of Americana, writers of historical fiction, and anyone who wants to know how much his great-grandfather paid for his suspenders. It is a true record of an era.

Magnificence of the Tsars: Ceremonial Men's Dress of the Russian Imperial Court, 1721-1917


Svetlana Amelekhina - 2008
    The luxurious, opulent lifestyles enjoyed by the Russian tsars, their families, and courts were among the world’s most extravagant for nearly two centuries, continue to be a source of endless fascination today. In this exquisitely illustrated collection, the grandeur of Imperial Russia is displayed in full. Starting in the 1730s with exquisitely embroidered coats and elaborately patterned silks from the wardrobe of Tsar Peter II these resplendent garments document a unique dialogue between military uniform, court dress, European fashion, and traditional Russian dress.

The Ultimate Experience: Battlefield Revelations and the Making of Modern War Culture, 1450-2000


Yuval Noah Harari - 2008
    In the period 1750-1850 war became much more than a test: it became a secular revelation. This new understanding of war as revelation completely transformed Western war culture, revolutionizing politics, the personal experience of war, the status of common soldiers, and the tenets of military theory.

The Beagle Letters


Charles Darwin - 2008
    Brought together here in chronological order, the letters he wrote and received during his trip provide a first-hand account of a voyage of discovery that was as much personal as intellectual. We follow Darwin s adventures as he prepares for his travels, lands on his first tropical island, watches an earthquake level a city, and learns how to catch ostriches from a running horse. We witness slavery, political revolution, and epidemic disease, and share the otherworldly experience of landing on the Galapagos Islands and collecting specimens. His letters are counterpoised by replies from family and friends that record a comfortable, intimate world back in England. Original watercolors by the ship s artist Conrad Martens vividly bring to life Darwin s descriptions of his travels.

Night of Weeping and Morning of Joy


Horatius Bonar - 2008
    The second part of the book shows how God leads believers to rejoice in the present and future joys of the living church in fellowship with the resurrected Christ.

Tomboys: A Literary and Cultural History


Michelle Ann Abate - 2008
    Michelle Abate uncovers the origins, charts the trajectory, and traces the literary and cultural transformations that the concept of "tomboy" has undergone in the United States. Abate focuses on literature including Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and Carson McCullers's The Member of the Wedding and films such as Peter Bogdanovich's Paper Moon and Jon Avnet's Fried Green Tomatoes. She also draws on lesser-known texts like E.D.E.N. Southworth's once wildly popular 1859 novel The Hidden Hand, Cold War lesbian pulp fiction, and New Queer Cinema from the 1990s.

The Pope's Legion: The Multinational Fighting Force that Defended the Vatican


Charles A. Coulombe - 2008
    Motivated by wanderlust, a sense of duty and the call of faith, some 20,000 Catholic men from around the world rallied to Vatican City to defend her gates against Sardinian marauders. Volunteers came from France, Belgium, Spain, Ireland, Austria, and many other countries, including the United States. The battles that ensued lasted over 10 years, among a shifting array of allies and enemies and are among history’s most fascinating yet largely overlooked episodes. Napoleon, Pius IX, and Bismarck all make appearances in the story, but at the center were the Zouaves--steeped in a knightly code of honor, and unflinching in battle as any modern warrior--as the Church they vowed to defend to the death teetered at the brink of destruction.

Imagining Anne: The Island Scrapbooks of L.M. Montgomery


Elizabeth Rollins Epperly - 2008
    In Imagining Anne, over 100 pages of the scrapbooks are fully and beautifully reproduced in colour, and the significance of the souvenirs and clippings Montgomery collected are explained by Elizabeth Rollins Epperly. This beautiful gift book is a must-have for all Montgomery fans, lovers of Canadian history, and scrapbook enthusiasts.

King Dan: The Rise of Daniel O'Connell 1775 - 1829


Patrick M. Geoghegan - 2008
    This biography concentrates on O'Connell's glory period, culminating in 1829.

Napoleon & Betsy: Recollections of the Emperor Napoleon on St Helena


Betsy Balcombe - 2008
    It is the first modern edition of this classic text. Napoleon and Betsy, a major Hollywood film, is currently in production starring Al Pacino as Napoleon and Emma Watson as Betsy.

The Illustrated Alamo 1836: A Photographic Journey


Mark Lemon - 2008
    For more than 170 years, the true nature and appearance of the Alamo, the cradle of Texas liberty, has eluded historians and artists alike. Partially demolished soon after the famous battle, the mission/fortress's appearance grew more and more indistinct. Even more recently, Hollywood has itself compounded the problem by redesigning the place to suit the artistic purposes of the dramatic script. But the truth was lurking all along, in old sketches, plats, diagrams, and later archeological digs. Now for the first time, all of the available sources have been meticulously consulted and brought together to create the most accurate illustrated book on the true appearance of the Alamo in 1836 ever produced. The reader is taken through the entire compound, inside and out, room to room, and shown areas never before depicted. For clarity, the compound is divided into sectors, each chapter covering a sector, which is then explored in detail. Through extremely realistic photo- illustrations, as well as dramatic original artwork with explanatory text, the author breathes new life into the 1836 Alamo, and makes it real. Scholars, students, artists, and readers of history all will find this a fascinating journey back in time.

A Mormon Mother


Annie Clark Tanner - 2008
    

All Things Austen: A Concise Encyclopedia of Austen's World


Kirstin Olsen - 2008
    More than 70 alphabetically arranged entries provide rich and fascinating historical details on the form and function of everyday and obscure objects that are mentioned in her novels. A selection of illustrations accompany the lively and often humorous entries that bring her fiction to life.Jane Austen's first readers would have needed no help in understanding references to their everyday lives. But early nineteenth-century card games, dining habits, social etiquette, occupations and dozens of other topics are not immediately clear to her readers nearly two hundred years later. In this encyclopedia, students and devotees of Jane Austen will become familiar with what her characters ate, wore and did for recreation. Impeccably researched information is presented about domestic items, the social scene, the workplace, the church, special events and rituals, and everyday customs that constituted life in Jane Austen's England.Readers can find citations of specific works by Austen, or they can look up terms or concepts. A bibliography arranged according to broad subjects lists major works for further reading.

Sedan 1870: The Eclipse of France


Douglas Fermer - 2008
    For the French it was a defeat more complete and humiliating than Waterloo.Douglas Fermer's fresh study of this traumatic moment in European history reconsiders how the mutual fear and insecurity of two rival nations tempted their governments to seek a solution to domestic tensions by waging war against each other. His compelling narrative shows how war came about, and how the dramatic campaign of summer 1870 culminated in a momentous clash of arms at Sedan. He gives fascinating insights into the personalities and aims of the politicians and generals involved, but focuses too on the experiences of ordinary soldiers and civilians.

Dorset Murders (True Crime History)


Nicola Sly - 2008
    These include arguments between lovers with fatal consequences, family murders, child murders and mortal altercations at Dorset's notorious Portland Prison. The entire country thrilled to the scandalous cases of Alma Rattenbury and Charlotte Bryant who, in the 1930s, found living with their husbands so difficult that both found a terminal solution to the problem. In 1856, Elizabeth Browne rid herself of a husband and, in doing so, became the inspiriation for Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. The mystery of the Coverdale Kennels at Tarrant Keynston, where not one, but two kennel managers died in suspicious circumstances, remains unsolved to this day. And it was in Bournemouth that Neville Heath committed the second of his two murders, which led to his arrest and eventual execution in 1946. Illustrated with fifty intriguing illustrations, Dorset Murders will appeal to anyone interested in the shady side of the county's history.

Somerset Murders


Nicola Sly - 2008
    They include the cases of Elizabeth and Betty Branch, a mother and daughter who beat a young servant girl to death in Hemington in 1740; 13-year-old Betty Trump, whose throat was cut while walking home at Buckland St Mary in 1823; factory worker Joan Turner, battered to death in Chard in 1829; George Watkins, killed in a bare knuckle fight outside the Running Horse pub in Yeovil in 1843; Mary Fisher, stabbed to death by her husband in Weston-super-Mare in 1844; and elderly landlady, Mrs Emily Bowers, strangled in bed in Middlezoy in 1947. This carefully researched, well-illustrated and enthralling text will appeal to anyone interested in the shady side of Somerset's history.

Landscape of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art


Angela D. Mack - 2008
    Through eighty-three color plates, nineteen black-and-white illustrations, and six thematic essays, the collection examines depictions of plantation structures, plantation views, and related slave imagery and art in the context of the American landscape tradition, addressing the impact of these works on race relations in the United States. Created by artists as diverse as Thomas Coram, Louis R�my Mignot, Dave The Potter Drake, Eastman Johnson, Winslow Homer, Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, Thomas Hart Benton, Hale Woodruff, Aaron Douglas, Juan Logan, Joyce Scott, Carrie Mae Weems, Radcliffe Bailey, and Kara Walker, the wide range of objects discussed includes paintings, drawings, photographs, statuary, ceramics, and items of folk art.A genre predominantly tied to the American South, the plantation view has received slight attention in the study of American landscape art. Regarded by art historians as derivative of the early-eighteenth-century British estate view, the plantation image straddles the aesthetic boundary between topographical depiction and landscape painting. In recent years, however, plantation views have increasingly attracted the attention of social and cultural historians who have identified the genre as a rich source for exploring themes of wealth, power, race, memory, nostalgia, and conflict. Landscape of Slavery provides a comprehensive and interdisciplinary examination of the aesthetic motives and social uses of this art in the shaping of Southern history and culture. The contributors analyze depictions of white dominion, Southern affluence, and the idealizing nostalgia of the post-Civil War era as well as the black aesthetic that has developed as a dissident counterpoint to this tradition.Serving as a companion to a traveling exhibit of the same name, the volume includes a foreword by Todd D. Smith, executive director of the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, South Carolina; an introduction by editor and chief curator Angela D. Mack; and essays by John Michael Vlach, Roberta Sokolitz, Leslie King-Hammond, Maurie D. McInnis, Alexis L. Boylan, and Michael D. Harris.

The Way We Live Now Vol. II


Anthony Trollope - 2008
    Trollope is described as the quintessential Victorian novelist.

Bergson-Deleuze Encounters: Transcendental Experience and the Thought of the Virtual


Valentine Moulard-leonard - 2008
    It explores the major diffraction between the two thinkers, conveys a sense of the irreducible originality of Deleuze's thought, and offers a detailed account of Bergson's "Copernican Revolution." In so doing, it presents an explanation of thought and experience that contrasts with the dominant account of the phenomenological tradition. Valentine Moulard-Leonard argues that Bergson and Deleuze share a novel conception of the transcendental--which they call the Virtual--that marks a new era in thinking, in which what is ultimately at stake is a new vision of time, experience, and materiality. The Virtual provides an indispensable alternative to the totalizing systems spawned by the traditional transcendent image of thought--be they systems of idealism, scientific positivism, nationalism, racism, sexism, or dogmatism.

For the Royal Table: Dining at the Palace


Kathryn Jones - 2008
    An illustrated behind-the-scenes look at 350 years of royal banquets, from Charles II to the present day.

Adam Mickiewicz


Roman Koropeckyj - 2008
    In chronicling the events of his life his travels, numerous loves, a troubled marriage, years spent as a member of a heterodox religious sect, and friendships with such luminaries of the time as Aleksandr Pushkin, James Fenimore Cooper, George Sand, Giuseppe Mazzini, Margaret Fuller, and Aleksandr Herzen Roman Koropeckyj draws a portrait of the Polish poet as a quintessential European Romantic.Spanning five decades of one of the most turbulent periods in modern European history, Mickiewicz's life and works at once reflected and articulated the cultural and political upheavals marking post-Napoleonic Europe. After a poetic debut in his native Lithuania that transformed the face of Polish literature, he spent five years of exile in Russia for engaging in Polish "patriotic" activity. Subsequently, his grand tour of Europe was interrupted by his country's 1830 uprising against Russia; his failure to take part in it would haunt him for the rest of his life. For the next twenty years Mickiewicz shared the fate of other Polish emigres in the West. It was here that he wrote Forefathers' Eve, part 3 (1832) and Pan Tadeusz (1834), arguably the two most influential works of modern Polish literature. His reputation as his country's most prominent poet secured him a position teaching Latin literature at the Academy of Lausanne and then the first chair of Slavic Literature at the College de France. In 1848 he organized a Polish legion in Italy and upon his return to Paris founded a radical French-language newspaper. His final days were devoted to forming a Polish legion in Istanbul.This richly illustrated biography the first scholarly biography of the poet to be published in English since 1911 draws extensively on diaries, memoirs, correspondence, and the poet's literary texts to make sense of a life as sublime as it was tragic. It concludes with a description of the solemn transfer of Mickiewicz's remains in 1890 from Paris to Cracow, where he was interred in the Royal Cathedral alongside Poland's kings and military heroes."

Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men's Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality


Marilyn Lake - 2008
    E. B. DuBois prophesied that the colour line would be the key problem of the twentieth-century and he later identified one of its key dynamics: the new religion of whiteness that was sweeping the world. Whereas most historians have confined their studies of race-relations to a national framework, this book studies the transnational circulation of people and ideas, racial knowledge and technologies that under-pinned the construction of self-styled white men's countries from South Africa, to North America and Australasia. Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds show how in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century these countries worked in solidarity to exclude those they defined as not-white, actions that provoked a long international struggle for racial equality. Their findings make clear the centrality of struggles around mobility and sovereignty to modern formulations of both race and human rights.

Excursions in Identity: Travel and the Intersection of Place, Gender, and Status in Edo Japan


Laura Nenzi - 2008
    The wayfarers of the time, however, discovered that travel provided the opportunity to escape from the confines of the everyday. Cultured travelers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries wrote travel memoirs to celebrate their profession as belle-lettrists. For women in particular the open road and the blank page of the diary offered a precious opportunity to create personal hierarchies defined less by gender and more by culture and refinement. After the mid-eighteenth century--which saw the popularization of culture and the rise of commercial printing--textbooks, guides, comical fiction, and woodblock prints allowed not a few commoners to acquaint themselves with the historical, lyrical, or artistic pedigree of Japan's famous sites. By identifying themselves with famous literary and historical icons of the past, some among these erudite commoners saw an opportunity to rewrite their lives and re-create their identities in the pages of their travel diaries.The chapters in Part One, "Re-creating Spaces," introduce the notion that the spaces of travel were malleable, accommodating reconceptualization across interpretive frames. Laura Nenzi shows that, far from being static backgrounds, these travelscapes proliferated in a myriad of loci where one person's center was another's periphery. In Part Two, "Re-creating Identities," we see how, in the course of the Edo period, educated persons used travel to, or through, revered lyrical sites to assert and enhance their roles and identities. Finally, in Part Three, "Purchasing Re-creation," Nenzi looks at the intersection between recreational travel and the rising commercial economy, which allowed visitors to appropriate landscapes through new means: monetary transactions, acquisition of tangible icons, or other forms of physical interaction.

Race and Nature from Transcendentalism to the Harlem Renaissance


Paul Outka - 2008
    Drawing on theories of sublimity and trauma the book offers a critical and cultural history of the racial fault line in American environmentalism that to this day divides largely white wilderness preservation groups and the largely minority environmental justice movement. Outka offers a detailed exploration of the historically fraught relation between the construction of natural experience and of white and black racial identity. In denaturalizing race and racializing nature, the book bridges race theory and ecocriticism in a way vitally important to both disciplines.

The Sand-Man and other Night Pieces


E.T.A. Hoffmann - 2008
    Hoffmann was Germany's greatest author of fantastic and supernaturalist fiction, a composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist. He was himself the subject of Offenbach's opera "The Tales of Hoffmann", and his work inspired Tchaikovsky's ballet "The Nutcracker" (1892) and Delibes' ballet "Coppelia" (1870). Hoffmann's fiction, exploring the darker side of the human spirit, influenced Poe, Dickens, Baudelaire and Kafka. His highly readable, entertaining and eerie stories are thick with references to ghosts, madness and hypnotic influence. Supernatural and sinister characters appear in the lives of his heroes and heroines, exposing the tragic and grotesque. "The Sand-Man and Other Night Pieces" is the definitive collection of Hoffmann's stories of the supernatural, including classic translations by J.T. Bealby, A. Ewing and Thomas Carlyle, and adding important, more recent translations by Everett Bleiler and Helen Grant. It is edited and introduced by Jim Rockhill.

Calvinistic Methodist Fathers of Wales: 2 Volume Set


John Morgan Jones - 2008
    

Abe Lincoln Loved Animals


Ellen Jackson - 2008
    One day, Abraham shoots a wild turkey. The sight of the dying bird fills him with such sorrow that he vows to never again hunt large animals. Full color.

The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802-1856


Ralph O'Connor - 2008
    But just fifty years later, it was the most celebrated of Victorian sciences. Ralph O’Connor tracks the astonishing growth of geology’s prestige in Britain, exploring how a new geohistory far more alluring than the standard six days of Creation was assembled and sold to the wider Bible-reading public.Shrewd science-writers, O’Connor shows, marketed spectacular visions of past worlds, piquing the public imagination with glimpses of man-eating mammoths, talking dinosaurs, and sea-dragons spawned by Satan himself. These authors—including men of science, women, clergymen, biblical literalists, hack writers, blackmailers, and prophets—borrowed freely from the Bible, modern poetry, and the urban entertainment industry, creating new forms of literature in order to transport their readers into a vanished and alien past.In exploring the use of poetry and spectacle in the promotion of popular science, O’Connor proves that geology’s success owed much to the literary techniques of its authors. An innovative blend of the history of science, literary criticism, book history, and visual culture, The Earth on Show rethinks the relationship between science and literature in the nineteenth century.

A Hundred Years of Music


Gerald Abraham - 2008
    It covers a period of exceptional interest. The last hundred years coincide roughly with the rise and decline of Romanticism, include the various nationalist movements, and extend to the advent of "neo-classicism," the twelve-tone system, and still more modern techniques. Abraham devotes ample space to modernist and avant garde music, in which he explains the difficulties we experience in listening to the work of such composers as Schönberg, Bartók, and Berg. He also throws new light on many more familiar topics. In its earlier editions, One Hundred Years of Music became a standard work on this subject; it has since been brought updated to include coverage of later developments. Abraham approaches his subject as an historian of style rather than an esthetic critic. Rather than pass judgment on particular works or composers, he shows how music has developed, and thus provides a clear and connected history that is more substantial than most books of musical appreciation. An extensive chronology and a full bibliography and index add to the usefulness of the book for students, professionals and musical laymen alike. This third edition incorporates some corrections of fact, further enlarges the bibliography and chronology, and adds commentary on developments in music techniques. In order to correct the historical perspective, the author has included a "prelude" and three "interludes," giving rough sketches of general conditions in the musical world at intervals of thirty years. As the reader’s sense of chronology is very apt to get confused when a number of simultaneous streams of development have to be described, the author has inserted the date of composition or performance (both if they are widely separated) of each work at the first mention of it.

The Way We Live Now Vol. I


Anthony Trollope - 2008
    Trollope is described as the quintessential Victorian novelist.

Tour of Duty: Samurai, Military Service in Edo, and the Culture of Early Modern Japan


Constantine Nomikos Vaporis - 2008
    This text renders alternate attendance as a lived experience, for not only the daimyo but also the samurai retainers who accompanied them.

Louisiana Purchase


Elaine Landau - 2008
    Originally charged with only securing the Port of New Orleans and access to the Mississippi River, they soon were presented with the deal of a lifetimethe purchase of the whole Louisiana Territory. With no time to contact the president, they had to make the decision themselves. What would you do if faced with the same decision? Author Elaine Landau poses this and other exciting questions to the reader in this lively account of the Louisiana Purchase.

Weep, Grey Bird, Weep: The Paraguayan War 1864-1870


Roger Kohn - 2008
    The war saw the tiny republic of Paraguay fighting against the combined forces of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. By the time the war ended, in March 1870, Paraguay's population had been reduced by more than half, and 80 per cent of the male population had been killed. Paraguay's leader in this war was Francisco Solano Lopez and by his side was his devoted lover, a girl from Ireland called Eliza Lynch. He was killed on the last day of the war and she buried him and their eldest son, who died trying to protect her, with her bare hands.

The Long Journey Home: A Novel of the Post-Civil War Plains


Laurel Means - 2008
    Pioneer and Civil War veteran Henry Morgan sets out on a dramatic journey that takes him through mazes, river currents, down dangerous trails, and up against dead ends. From an unlikely beginning, Morgan's hasty marriage to the young and illiterate Agnes Guyette has unforeseen consquences. As they attempt to claim a government land grant two hundred miles away in Green Prairie, MN, they must fight local Indians, hostile wilderness, and desperados determined to steal their land. Filled with nonstop action and unexpected plot twists and turns, this novel is a roller coaster ride of action, intrigue and high adventure.

Romantic Europe and the Ghost of Italy


Joseph Luzzi - 2008
    Ranging across European and international borders, he examines the metaphors, facts, and fictions about Italy that were born in the Romantic age and continue to haunt the global literary imagination.The themes of the book include the emergence of Italy as the “world’s university” (Goethe) and “mother of arts” (Byron), the influence of Dante’s Commedia on Romantic autobiography, and the representation of the Italian body politic as a woman at home and abroad. Luzzi also provides a critical reevaluation of the three crowns of Italian Romantic letters—Ugo Foscolo, Giacomo Leopardi, and Alessandro Manzoni—profoundly influential writers largely undiscovered in Anglo-American criticism. Reaching out to academic and general readers alike, the book offers fresh insights into the influence of Italian literary, cultural, and intellectual traditions on the foreign imagination from the Romantic age to the present.

Colloquium of the Seven about Secrets of the Sublime


Jean Bodin - 2008
    His works on political and legal thought set him apart as one of the most brilliant minds of the period. Although he is perhaps less known for his writing on religious questions of his day, his Colloquium remains a unique contribution to religious dialogue. It circulated in its Latin manuscript form, but it was not published until the nineteenth century. Marion Leathers Kuntz offers the first English translation of this masterpiece. Structured as a conversation between a Catholic, a Jew, a Lutheran, a Calvinist, a Muslim, a skeptic, and a philosophical naturalist, the Colloquium encourages religious tolerance and poses challenging questions for anyone interested in the nature of religious and philosophical thought. Kuntz's introduction, translation, and annotations situate the volume both as a historical work and as a timeless chronicle of the tensions among religion, philosophy, science, faith, doubt, and empirical evidence.

Anonymous Life: Romanticism and Dispossession


Jacques Khalip - 2008
    In the last two decades, these models have been the focus of critiques of Romanticism's purported self-absorption and alienation from politics. While such critiques have proven useful, they often draw attention to the conceptual or material tensions of romantic subjectivity while accepting a conspicuous, autonomous subject as a given, thus failing to appreciate the possibility that Romanticism sustains an alternative model of being, one anonymous and dispossessed, one whose authority is irreducible to that of an easily recognizable, psychologized persona. In Anonymous Life, Khalip goes against the grain of these dominant critical stances by examining anonymity as a model of being that is provocative for writers of the era because it resists the Enlightenment emphasis on transparency and self-disclosure. He explores how romantic subjectivity, even as it negotiates with others in the social sphere, frequently rejects the demands of self-assertion and fails to prove its authenticity and coherence.

Chinese Dress: From the Qing Dynasty to the Present


Valery M. Garrett - 2008
    Chapters include:Dress of the Qing Manchu Rulers 1644-1911Dress of the Manchu Consorts 1644-1911Attire of Mandarins and MerchantsAttire of Chinese WomenRepublican Dress 1912-1949Clothing of the Lower ClassesClothing for ChildrenDress in New China 1950-2006From Imperial robes to foot binding to the cheongsam, Chinese Dress spotlights traditional Chinese dress against a background of historical, cultural and social change, opening a fascinating window for anyone seeking to deepen their understanding of China, Chinese culture and Chinese fashion history.

Black Frankenstein: The Making of an American Metaphor


Elizabeth Young - 2008
    In Black Frankenstein, Elizabeth Young identifies and interprets the figure of a black American Frankenstein monster as it appears with surprising frequency throughout nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S. culture, in fiction, film, essays, oratory, painting, and other media, and in works by both whites and African Americans.Black Frankenstein stories, Young argues, effect four kinds of racial critique: they humanize the slave; they explain, if not justify, black violence; they condemn the slaveowner; and they expose the instability of white power. The black Frankenstein's monster has served as a powerful metaphor for reinforcing racial hierarchy--and as an even more powerful metaphor for shaping anti-racist critique. Illuminating the power of parody and reappropriation, Black Frankenstein tells the story of a metaphor that continues to matter to literature, culture, aesthetics, and politics.

The Three Cities Trilogy


Émile Zola - 2008
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

The World of the Haitian Revolution


David P. Geggus - 2008
    Although a central event in the history of the French in the New World, the full significance of the revolution has yet to be realized. These essays deepen our understanding of Haiti during the period from 1791 to 1815. They consider the colony's history and material culture; its "free people of color"; the events leading up to the revolution and its violent unfolding; the political and economic fallout from the revolution; and its cultural representations.

African Cherokees in Indian Territory: From Chattel to Citizens


Celia E. Naylor - 2008
    Celia E. Naylor vividly charts the experiences of enslaved and free African Cherokees from the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma's entry into the Union in 1907. Carefully extracting the voices of former slaves from interviews and mining a range of sources in Oklahoma, she creates an engaging narrative of the composite lives of African Cherokees. Naylor explores how slaves connected with Indian communities not only through Indian customs--language, clothing, and food--but also through bonds of kinship.Examining this intricate and emotionally charged history, Naylor demonstrates that the red over black relationship was no more benign than white over black. She presents new angles to traditional understandings of slave resistance and counters previous romanticized ideas of slavery in the Cherokee Nation. She also challenges contemporary racial and cultural conceptions of African-descended people in the United States. Naylor reveals how black Cherokee identities evolved reflecting complex notions about race, culture, blood, kinship, and nationality. Indeed, Cherokee freedpeople's struggle for recognition and equal rights that began in the nineteenth century continues even today in Oklahoma.

The Fog of Gettysburg: The Myths and Mysteries of the Battle


Kenneth L. Allers Jr. - 2008
    And even more have looked at the action in particular areas of the battlefield, at certain aspects of the conflict, or at the actions of various units or individuals. Until now, no book has focused on the confusion of the battle and the many unanswered questions that continue to this day. The Fog of Gettysburg covers the myths, misunderstandings, and mysteries of the battle, the episodes that still provoke questions about what happened or why.Now readers will the answers to such questions as: Were the people of Gettysburg unaware that a battle was brewing, or were they awaiting it? Was George Sandoe the first casualty of Gettysburg? Was Jennie Wade a Southern sympathizer? Why did the war start west of town instead of elsewhere? Was John F. Reynolds killed by a sharpshooter or by friendly fire? What were Robert E. Lee's exact orders to Jeb Stuart? Who gave the order to attack at sunrise on July 1? Did Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain win Gettysburg on July 2? Who ordered the flank attack on July 3? How did George A. Custer defeat Stuart? How many people actually died? How many civilians were killed? Who buried the Confederates? The Fog of Gettysburg is divided into five sections, each with approximately ten episodes, covering the period leading up to the battle, the three days of battle, and the period following the battle. Containing four maps and more than twenty-five photographs, the book is a valuable resource for anyone who is fascinated by the issues about Gettysburg that continue to this day.