A well-digger and policeman in a bleak New Hampshire town, he is a former high-school star gone to beer fat, a loner with a mean streak. It is a mark of Russell Banks' artistry and understanding that Wade comes to loom in one's mind as a blue-collar American Everyman afflicted by the dark secret of the macho tradition. Told by his articulate, equally scarred younger brother, Wade's story becomes as spellbinding and inexorable as a fuse burning its way to the dynamite.

    Shares personal accounts of what it was like to live under slavery.

    A hilarious and fascinating look at the great middle of our nation. With his unique blend of intrepidity, tongue-in-cheek humor, and wide-eyed wonder, Ian Frazier takes us on a journey of more than 25,000 miles up and down and across the vast and myth-inspiring Great Plains. A travelogue, a work of scholarship, and a western adventure, Great Plains takes us from the site of Sitting Bull's cabin, to an abandoned house once terrorized by Bonnie and Clyde, to the scene of the murders chronicled in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. It is an expedition that reveals the heart of the American West.

    Available in book form or as an unabridged audio cassette read by Sams.

    History, on the other hand, has come to regard him as the figure who gave political cogency to the liberating ideas of the Enlightenment. His great pamphlets, Rights of Man and Common Sense, are now recognized for what they are–classic arguments in defense of the individual’s right to assert his or her freedom in the face of tyranny.(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

    Collecting found stories as part of her ongoing “People Pieces” series, she has created a remarkable distillation of the rhythms and nuances of a specific landscape that proves common to us all. These fifty-four monologues and dialogues are statements of life from the region of the heart.“The pieces all come from people. I never sat my desk and made them up. I heard the heart of each of them somewhere. A grocery store line. A beauty shop. The emergency room. A neighbor across her clothesline to another neighbor. I am an eavesdropper and I practiced being invisible to get them.” – Jo Carson, from the Preface.JO CARSON is an author of poems, plays, short stories and essays who lives and works in Johnson City, Tennessee. She has toured internationally with Stories I Ain’t Told Nobody Yet and her play, Daytrips, has been widely produced. Ms. Carson has been a regular commentator on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.”

    L. Mencken published a reminiscence of his Baltimore boyhood in The New Yorker. With this modest beginning, Mencken embarked on what would become the Days trilogy, a long and magnificent adventure in autobiography by America’s greatest journalist. Finding it “always agreeable to ponder upon the adventures of childhood” (as he wrote in his diary), Mencken created more of these masterful novelistic evocations of a bygone era, eventually collected in Happy Days (1940). The book was an immediate critical and popular success, surprising many of its readers with its glimpses of a less curmudgeonly Mencken.Urged by New Yorker editor Harold Ross to send yet more pieces, Mencken moved on from his childhood to revisit the beginnings of his legendary career. Newspaper Days (1941) charts the rise of the brilliant, ambitious young newspaperman, in an astonishingly short time, from cub reporter to managing editor of the Baltimore Herald. Among the book’s memorable episodes are the display of Mencken’s “talent for faking” in his invented dispatches of the Battle of Tsushima in the Russo-Japanese War—accounts that largely turned out to be accurate—and his riveting narrative of the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904. “In my day a reporter who took an assignment was wholly on his own until he got back to the office, . . . today he tends to become only a homunculus at the end of a telephone wire.”The final volume of the published trilogy, Heathen Days (1943), recounts his varied excursions as one of America’s most famous men, and one who, by his own account, “enjoyed himself immensely,” including his bibulous adventures during Prohibition and his reporting of the 1925 Scopes trial over the teaching of evolution.Until now, however, the story told in Mencken’s beloved Days books has been incomplete. In the 1940s, Mencken began making extensive notes about the published books, commenting on what he had written and adding new material—but stipulating that these writings were not to be made public until twenty-five years after his death. Days Revisited presents more than two hundred pages of this material for the first time. Commentaries are keyed to the main text they gloss with subtle marks in the margin (the volume includes two ribbons to allow readers to flip back to the notes), and they are supplemented by rare photographs, many taken by Mencken himself. Here is Mencken’s classic autobiography as it has never been seen before.

    Baker rose steadily, from newsboy to college paper, from police reporter to rewrite man, from White House correspondent to Washington columnist. In outline these stages read like a successful resume, but it is Baker's recall of detail that make the story live.Nothing was easy. Success never is. Behind every triumph lies a pitfall, behind every joy a hard lesson. Baker tells it all from the mean streets of Baltimore to a seat at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, and from watching Ike fish to sharing LBJ's secrets."I am going to think of Russ Baker's new book simply as `Russell Baker Continued,' and I never want to stop." --Harrison E. Salisbury

    Corral has excited the imaginations of Western enthusiasts ever since that chilly October afternoon in 1881 when Doc Holliday and the three fighting Earps strode along a Tombstone, Arizona, street to confront the Clanton and McLaury brothers. When they met, Billy Clanton and the two McLaurys were shot to death; the popular image of the Wild West was reinforced; and fuel was provided for countless arguments over the characters, motives, and actions of those involved.And Die in the West presents the first fully detailed, objective narrative of the celebrated gunfight, of the tensions leading up to it, and the bitter, bloody events that followed. Paula Mitchell Marks places the events surrounding the gunfight against a larger backdrop of a booming Tombstone and the fluid, frontier environment of greed, factions and violence. In the process, Marks strips away many of the myths associated with the famous gunfight and of the West in general.

    Congress authorized the organization of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (later renamed Women's Army Corps) in 1942, and hundreds of women were able to join in the war effort. Charity Edna Adams became the first black woman commissioned as an officer. Black members of the WAC had to fight the prejudices not only of males who did not want women in their "man's army," but also of those who could not accept blacks in positions of authority or responsibility, even in the segregated military. With unblinking candor, Charity Adams Earley tells of her struggles and successes as the WAC's first black officer and as commanding officer of the only organization of black women to serve overseas during World War II. The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion broke all records for redirecting military mail as she commanded the group through its moves from England to France and stood up to the racist slurs of the general under whose command the battalion operated. The Six Triple Eight stood up for its commanding officer, supporting her boycott of segregated living quarters and recreational facilities. This book is a tribute to those courageous women who paved the way for patriots, regardless of color or gender, to serve their country.

    Now he presents the dramatic rise and fall of the "peculiar institution," as the abolitionist movement rose into a powerful political force that pulled down a seemingly impregnable system.

    The Jump-Off Creek gives readers an intimate look at the hardships of frontier life and a courageous woman determined to survive.

    E. D. Hirsch, author of the best-selling Cultural Literacy and co-author of The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, has updated his popular children's version for a generation that needs not only a solid grounding in the arts and sciences but a clear understanding of the world around them - from world geography to the World Wide Web. Inviting and informative, the book is organized by subject, including mythology, history, religion and philosophy, music, art, geography, medicine, technology, and many more. No other book gives children so much of the world, from ancient history to current technology, in one engaging volume.

    The narrative is well done, often with bits of dialogue take from contemporary sources."--BooklistWith over 1000 entries and 400 illustrations, this volume is the most fact-packed history of the West ever assembled. Crime historian extraordinaire Jay Robert Nash has left no stone unturned in his search for the gunmen, train robbers, gangs, desperadoes, range warriors, gamblers, and lawmen that roamed the frontier. Contrary to popular myth, the Wild West was not a glamorous land where chivalry and courage were the custom and a man died with his boots on. It was a land of incredible hardships--brutal weather, hunger and disease, and the constant threat of violent death. Everyone carried a six-shooter, neutrality was impossible, and violence unavoidable; lawmen and outlaws lived side by side, and often there was no telling one from the other. Into this land came pioneers lured by promises of great fortunes, ex-Confederate soldiers embittered by the outcome of the war, greedy cattle barons, and merchant princes. It was truly an explosive mixture.Included in this volume are all the great Western legends--Billy the Kid, Jesse and Frank James, Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Judge Roy Bean, "Wild Bill" Hickock--and a host of lesser-known figures who, though they may have missed notoriety, were equally lethal. And while the West was very much a man's world, several women managed to shoot, steal, or gamble their way to fame--including Belle Starr, Pearl Hart, and Calamity Jane.A compelling read, Encyclopedia of Western Lawmen & Outlaws will be the standard reference for years to come. In addition to alphabetical listings, it offers a glossary of lawmen and a glossary of outlaws, a magnificent photo and illustration appendix, and an extensive bibliography of books on the American West.

    From Indiana to British Columbia, from Arkansas to Texas, from Utah to Mexico, he was part of the grand hobo tradition that has all but passed away from American life.He camped in hobo jungles, slept under bridges and in sand houses at railroad yards, ate rattlesnake meat, fresh California grapes, and fish speared by the Indians of the Northwest. He quickly learned both the beauty and the dangers of his chosen way of life. One lesson learned early on was that there are distinct differences among hoboes, tramps, and bums. As the all-time king of hoboes, Jeff Davis, used to say, "Hoboes will work, tramps won't, and bums can't."Tales of an American Hobo is a lasting legacy to conventional society, teaching about a bygone era of American history and a rare breed of humanity who chose to live by the rails and on the road.

    When Loren Paul spends too much time contemplating the meaning of life, his gorgeous, headstrong wife Lana Sue drives South to meet some cowboys. While Lana Sue drinks and flirts in country bars, Loren soul searches and starves in the Wyoming mountains. Loren and Lana Sue couldn't be on more different paths, but they're both steering toward the same surprising truth: maybe they deserve each other.

    "Bat" Masterson was one such character who cast a long shadow across the pages of western history as it has been routinely depicted."A legend in his own time," he was called in a television series produced in the 1960's. A legend he has become—one firmly fixed in the popular imagination. But in his own time W.B. Masterson was a man, a less-than-perfect creature subject to the same temptations and vices as his fellows, albeit one who, through circumstance and inclination, led an exciting life in an exciting time and place. As buffalo hunter, army scout, peace officer, professional gambler, sportsman, promoter, and newspaperman, Masterson's career was stormy and eventful.Surprising to many readers will be the account of Masterson's career after his peace officer days, during his employment as a sports writer and columnist. The gun-toting western peace officer reputed to have killed more men than Billy the Kid (not so, says DeArment) spent his last years happily in New York City, writing for a nationally known newspaper.This book, the product of more than twenty years of research, separates fact from fiction to extricate the story of his life from the legend that has enmeshed it. It is the most complete biography of Bat Masterson ever written.

    His visitors included H.G.Wells, Stephen Crane, Ford Madox Ford and Joseph Conrad. Miranda Seymour is a literary reviewer for the London "Evening Standard" and the "TLS". She was written several children's books and novels including "Carrying On".

    A collection of short stories features the business of horsetrading, a boy's first hunting experience, and a group effort to re-roof a church.

    In Mysterious America, a fun and compulsively readable guidebook to America's most popular local legends, he prepares readers for their own adventure -- where to find the unbelievable spectacles on their journey, including: Phantom panthers haunting eastern North America Bay State ghosts and spirits Mad gassers in Illinois Champ, the famous Lake Champlain monster The Minnesota Iceman The Missouri Momo and the infamous Eastern Bigfoot And many more! Coleman's witty insight and astonishing experiences will captivate followers of Charles Fort and just-plain-curious readers alike. For, as Coleman frankly reveals, these strange creatures and unimaginable wonders may lie just beyond your own backyard....