As its title implies, not only is it a full-length portrait of Mary Todd Lincoln but, in reality, a double biography of Abraham and his hitherto misunderstood and much maligned wife.” Harry J. Carman, The American Historical Review Many people in history have claimed that Abraham Lincoln never loved Mary Todd Lincoln, and that in fact his love was focused upon Anne Rutledge. They have claimed that his wife hurt him politically though she drove him to the Presidency, that she embarrassed him financially as well as socially and inflicted on him the agony of adjustment to her psychopathic personality. Yet, is there any truth to any of these claims? Ruth Painter Randall’s brilliant biography of Mary and Abraham Lincoln sheds new light upon their marriage and dispels the myths that have surrounded it. By using a huge quantity of material, including long-lost telegrams and letters, Randall has reconstructed what the marriage was truly like and provided a picture of Mary Lincoln without any prejudice or unsupported evidence. This book rehabilitates the reputation of Mary Lincoln and deserves to be read by all those who wish to find the truth about the remarkable relationship between Mary and her husband and the impact that she made on him throughout his years in office. “Never has such a story seemed better worth telling or better told.” Saturday Review "Out of the most searching scrutiny ever leveled on the Lincolns' family affairs comes the picture of a tempestuous yet essentially happy marriage." New York Herald Tribune "This is a very moving book. It is also a nice example of what a first-rate historian can do with a difficult subject." The New Yorker "It is a book that can be recommended without reservation: A combination of profound research and fine prose style, it meets both the requirements of the Lincoln scholar and the casual reader who is looking for a truly fascinating story." San Francisco Chronicle "A miracle of sound scholarship, graceful writing, and feminine understanding." Chicago Sunday Tribune ". . . documented fact far more absorbing than any fiction that has lately come my way." Christian Science Monitor “A passionate defense of Mary Lincoln and a revelation conclusively documented of a marriage rooted in unremitting devotion and mutual love.” Kirkus Review “a vivid portrayal of mid-nineteenth-century life in Illinois and at Washington, as it confronted a sensitive, warm-hearted, cultivated, ill-balanced personality eventually thrust into an environment beyond her powers of understanding or of self-control.” Jeannette P. Nichols, The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography Ruth Painter Randall was an American biographer who focused upon the lives of the Lincoln family. Her other books include Lincoln's Sons and Colonel Elmer Ellsworth: a biography of Lincoln's friend and first hero of the Civil War. Mary Lincoln: Biography of a Marriage was first published in 1953 and Randall passed away in 1971.

    French priests enter a war zone where captured Westerners are paraded before their captors, tortured, and then beheaded. Their desecrated bodies get dumped by the roadside. Iraq in 2007? The Gaza Strip? Western Afghanistan? No. A place more dangerous: Canada in the 1600s. On rivers and in forests, Iroquois slaughter Huron and Europeans kill for land and power. It s a landscape of blood and horror whose viciousness eclipses the terrorism that shocks us today. Into this iniquitous land go dozens of stouthearted Jesuits, the purest examples of Roman Catholic virtue our Western continent has ever seen. Their purpose? To baptize souls and preach the gospel to savages whose degraded, vicious lives cry out for the light of Christ. Many of these Jesuits were murdered, and today eight of them are saints. Six were priests: Isaac Jogues, Jean de Brebeuf, Gabriel Lalemant, Antoine Daniel, Charles Garnier, and Noel Chabanel; two were lay assistants: Rene Goupil and Jean Lalande. They are the Jesuit Martyrs of North America, and this is their story. From letters these brave men wrote to their superiors by the light of Indian campfires or while skimming lovely waters in swift canoes, John A. O Brien has crafted the terrifying, inspiring, and true tale of the dangerous struggle they engaged in for enormous stakes: the salvation of countless souls mired in darkness. O Brien shows that in the best of times, these good men were surrounded by lasciviousness, pandemonium and demonic rituals. Bad times brought bloody war, upraised tomahawks, the shrieks of victims, and knowledge that their superstitious hosts might turn against them without warning, and bury a tomahawk in their skull. Patient, charitable, and heedless of their own lives, these eight Jesuits spoke constantly of Jesus, baptized thousands, and even in the shadow of death brought them the consoling graces of the Sacraments. Between times they cared for souls dying of smallpox, cleaned festering wounds, and day in and day out returned love for hatred, blessings for curses, and prayers for abuse. Ultimately, all were murdered. Some died from a sudden blow; the rest were mutilated and tortured until, with forgiveness in their hearts and Jesus name on their lips, they died in flames their persecutors had set around them. Saints of the American Wilderness tells of these good men who sought nothing less than the conversion of a continent. Their zeal won for them the imperishable crown of martyrdom and sanctified with their holy blood the soil of North America. Truly, they are models for those who would be saints in bloody times like ours.

    One of two genuine classics of American nature writing now in paperback; the other is A Natural History of Trees of Eastern and Central North America.

    

    The University of Oklahoma Press is especially pleased to introduce such an invaluable and delightfully written book to a new generation of researchers and Americans entranced by the Ozarks and the folkways of the past.Until World War II the backwoodsmen living in the Ozark Mountains of southern Missouri, northern Arkansas, and eastern Oklahoma were the most deliberately "unprogressive" people in the United States. The descendants of pioneers from the southern Appalachians, they changed their way of life very little during the whole span of the nineteenth century and were able to preserve their customs and traditions in an age of industrialism.When the many attractions of the Ozarks were discovered by "outlanders," the tourists—and television—reached the hinterlands, and the old patterns of speech and life began to fade.In this perceptive book, Vance Randolph, who first visited the Ozarks country in 1899, and his collaborator, George P. Wilson, recapture the speech of the people who lived "down in the holler." Randolph, closely identified with the region for many years, hunted possums with its people and shared their table at the House of Lords (a "kind of tavern" in Joplin). Through the years his hobby became a profession, and he spent years recording the various aspects of Ozark folk speech.

    Unequaled in the amount of information contained within a single volume & designed as a narrative, it chronicles all the essential facts, from government & politics to science, thought & culture. The Encyclopedia is divided onto four parts: Part 1: "THE BASIC CHRONOLOGY" presents political & military events, beginning with the era of discovery. Part 2: "THE TOPICAL CHRONOLOGY" records the nonpolitical aspects of American life. A few of the topics covered in this section are the fine arts, religion, medicine, education, tv, radio, immigration, population, expansion & Supreme Court decisions. Part 3: "NOTABLE AMERICAN BIOGRAPHIES" contains profiles of influential Americans. Part 4: "THE STRUCTURE OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT" includes tables of Presidents & their cabinets, party strength in Congress from 1789, & Supreme Court justices, as well as complete texts of the Declaration of Independence & the Constitution.

    

    Frank Dobie’s history of the “mustang”—from the Spanish mesteña, an animal belonging to (but strayed from) the Mesta, a medieval association of Spanish farmers—tells of its impact on the Spanish, English, and Native cultures of the West.

    Novel based on the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti who were convicted of murder,and wrongfully executed.

    

    PrefaceIntroductionThe CircumstancesThe MenThe HeritageConclusionNotesIndex