Trial documents and contemporary narratives are used in this discussion of the practice of witchcraft in seventeenth-century New England.

    In 1789 a small band of Indians attacked the Wiley cabin and killed Jennie’s three older children and her brother. Jennie was taken captive along with her baby son.Quickly the Indians and their captives moved westward into what is now Kentucky. Jennie’s only hope for herself and her child was to keep pace with her captors. The Indians moved northwest into the Big Sandy Valley of Kentucky. Unable to cross the flooded Ohio River, they retreated to a series of winter camps in present-day Carter, Lawrence and Johnson (Kentucky) Counties.With only a rock bluff for shelter Jennie spent the winter laboring as a slave. After almost a year in captivity Jennie escaped, miraculously evading pursuit as she made her way to a small settlement at Harman’s Station on John’s Creek where settlers helped her return to her husband.The author Arville Wheeler was inspired to write this book because his grandmother told him the story of Jennie Wiley when he was a child.

    Within two years, twenty men and women are hanged or pressed to death and over a hundred others imprisoned and impoverished. In The Salem Witch Trials Reader, Frances Hill provides and astutely comments upon the actual documents from the trial--examinations of suspected witches, eyewitness accounts of "Satanic influence," as well as the testimony of those who retained their reason and defied the madness. Always drawing on firsthand documents, she illustrates the historical background to the witchhunt and shows how the trials have been represented, and sometimes distorted, by historians--and how they have fired the imaginations of poets, playwrights, and novelists. For those fascinated by the Salem witch trials, this is compelling reading and the sourcebook.

    From the Philippines to the Arctic, the comet became a sensation and a symbol, a warning of doom or a promise of salvation. Two years later, as the Pilgrims prepared to sail across the Atlantic on board the Mayflower, the atmosphere remained charged with fear and expectation. Men and women readied themselves for war, pestilence, or divine retribution. Against this background, and amid deep economic depression, the Pilgrims conceived their enterprise of exile.Within a decade, despite crisis and catastrophe, they built a thriving settlement at New Plymouth, based on beaver fur, corn, and cattle. In doing so, they laid the foundations for Massachusetts, New England, and a new nation. Using a wealth of new evidence from landscape, archaeology, and hundreds of overlooked or neglected documents, Nick Bunker gives a vivid and strikingly original account of the Mayflower project and the first decade of the Plymouth Colony. From mercantile London and the rural England of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I to the mountains and rivers of Maine, he weaves a rich narrative that combines religion, politics, money, science, and the sea.The Pilgrims were entrepreneurs as well as evangelicals, political radicals as well as Christian idealists. Making Haste from Babylon tells their story in unrivaled depth, from their roots in religious conflict and village strife at home to their final creation of a permanent foothold in America.

    In stark contrast to the experience of most Deaf people in our own society, the Vineyarders who were born Deaf were so thoroughly integrated into the daily life of the community that they were not seen--and did not see themselves--as handicapped or as a group apart. Deaf people were included in all aspects of life, such as town politics, jobs, church affairs, and social life. How was this possible?On the Vineyard, hearing and Deaf islanders alike grew up speaking sign language. This unique sociolinguistic adaptation meant that the usual barriers to communication between the hearing and the Deaf, which so isolate many Deaf people today, did not exist.

    January 15, 1919, started off as a normal day in Boston’s North End. Workers took a break for lunch, children played in the park, trains made trips between North and South Stations. Then all of a sudden a large tank of molasses exploded, sending shards of metal hundreds of feet away, collapsing buildings, and coating the harborfront community with a thick layer of sticky-sweet sludge. Deborah Kops takes the reader through this bizarre and relatively unknown disaster, including the cleanup and court proceedings that followed. What happened? Why did the tank explode? Many people died or were injured in the accident—who was to blame? Kops focuses on several individuals involved in the events of that day, creating a more personal look at this terrible tragedy.

    Working from government reports, manuscripts, and the diaries and letters of those persons—both white and Indian—who knew him, Margaret Coel has developed an unusually readable, interesting, and closely documented account of his life and the life of his tribe during the fateful years of the mid-1800s.It was in these years that thousands of gold-seekers on their way to California and Oregon burst across the plains, first to traverse the territory consigned to the Indians and then, with the discovery of gold in 1858 on Little Dry Creek (formerly the site of the Southern Arapaho winter campground  and presently Denver, Colorado), to settle.Chief Left Hand was one of the first of his people to acknowledge the inevitability of the white man’s presence on the plain, and thereafter to espouse a policy of adamant peacefulness —if not, finally, friendship—toward the newcomers.Chief Left Hand is not only a consuming story—popular history at its best—but an important work of original scholarship. In it the author:Clearly establishes the separate identities of the original Left Hand, the subject of her book, and the man by the same name who succeeded Little Raven in 1889 as the principal chief of the Southern Arapahos in Oklahoma—a longtime source of confusion to students of western history;Lays to rest, with a series of previously unpublished letters by George Bent, a century-long dispute among historians as to Left Hand’s fate at Sand Creek;Examines the role of John A. Evans, first governor of Colorado, in the Sand Creek Massacre. Colonel Chivington, commander of the Colorado Volunteers, has always (and justly) been held responsible for the surprise attack. But Governor Evans, who afterwards claimed ignorance and innocence of the colonel’s intentions, was also deeply involved. His letters, on file in the Colorado State Archives, have somehow escaped the scrutiny of historians and remain, for the most part, unpublished. These Coel has used extensively, allowing the governor to tell, in his own words, his real role in the massacre. The author also examines Evans’s motivations for coming to Colorado, his involvement with the building of the transcontinental railroad, and his intention of clearing the Southern Arapahos from the plains —an intention that abetted Chivington’s ambitions and led to their ruthless slaughter at Sand Creek.

    the Passamaquoddies and Penobscots of Maine and the Micmacs of New Brunswick. Most of this material was gathered directly from Indian narrators by Charles G. Leland (1824-1903), a brilliant and gifted Philadelphia-born journalist, essayist, and folklorist.In compiling the work, Leland noted interesting affinities between the myths of the Northeastern tribes and those of the Eskimos, and striking similarities between the myths of the Algonquins and the Eddas, sagas and popular tales of Scandinavia. For example, may of the stories in this book deal with Glooskap, a divinity with strong resemblances to such Norse gods as Thor and Odin. We learn how Glooskap made man from an ash tree, named the animals, gave gifts to men, went to England and France and made America known to the Europeans, and performed many other curious deeds. Here too are the merry tales of Lox, the Mischief-maker, who bears a strong resemblance to Loki of Scandinavian mythology. Also included are the amazing adventures of Master Rabbit, the Chenoo legends, stories of At-o-sis the serpent, the story of the Three Strong Men, the Weewillmekq', tales of magic, and more.Myths and legends provide unique and authentic sources of knowledge about our deepest instincts and ways of interpreting the world and our place in it. This volume remains one of the most powerful and revealing studies of the Algonquin versions of such myths, a thorough, comprehensive collection that will prove invaluable to any student of American Indian culture or myth, folklore, and religion. General readers will also find these tales highly readable and delightfully entertaining.

    He resolved to make a career out of the first attraction and to keep the second a secret. Now, sixty years later, his sexual orientation is widely accepted, while his belief in government is embattled. Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage is one man's account of the country's transformation--and the tale of a truly momentous career. Many Americans recall Frank's lacerating wit, whether it was directed at the Clinton impeachment ("What did the president touch, and when did he touch it?") or the pro-life movement (some people believe "life begins at conception and ends at birth"). But the contours of his private and public lives are less well-known. For more than four decades, he was at the center of the struggle for personal freedom and economic fairness. From the battle over AIDS funding in the 1980s to the debates over "big government" during the Clinton years to the 2008 financial crisis, the congressman from Massachusetts played a key role. In 2010, he coauthored the most far-reaching and controversial Wall Street reform bill since the era of the Great Depression, and helped bring about the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. In this feisty and often moving memoir, Frank candidly discusses the satisfactions, fears, and grudges that come with elected office. He recalls the emotional toll of living in the closet and how his public crusade against homophobia conflicted with his private accommodation of it. He discusses his painful quarrels with allies; his friendships with public figures, from Tip O'Neill to Sonny Bono; and how he found love with his husband, Jim Ready, becoming the first sitting member of Congress to enter a same-sex marriage. He also demonstrates how he used his rhetorical skills to expose his opponents' hypocrisies and delusions. Through it all, he expertly analyzes the gifts a successful politician must bring to the job, and how even Congress can be made to work. Frank is the story of an extraordinary political life, an original argument for how to rebuild trust in government, and a guide to how political change really happens--composed by a master of the art.

    Nearly four centuries later, George O'Connor brings Harmen van den Bogaert's journal of his travels to life with simple and striking artwork.

    Simon Targett roll back the clock to reveal that America had been in the making for seventy years before the Mayflower sailed.And while religion played a role, the driving impulse of the American initiative was commercial. Yes, America was the most ambitious start-up ever attempted.New World, Inc. is neither a straight history nor a conventional business book. Through the stories of this extraordinary group of pioneers--which have been all but forgotten--Butman and Targett show that the America of today--what it is and what it isn't--was largely created in those years before the Mayflower even set sail.

    Bethany Tudor relates the story of her mother's life through a smooth-flowing narrative, old and contemporary photographs and samples of the artist's work.

    As mayor of Boston, as a United States congressman, as governor of Massachusetts, Curley rose from the slums of South Boston in a career extending from the Progressive Era of Teddy Roosevelt to the ascendancy of the Kennedy sons. While Curley lived, he represented both the triumph of Irish Americans and the birth of divisive politics of ethnic and racial polarization; when he died, over one million mourners turned out to pay their respects in the largest wake Boston had ever seen.Nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography, Beatty's spellbinding story of "the Kingfish of Massachusetts" is also an epic of his city, its immigrant people, and its turbulent times. It is simply biography at its best."Beatty's book is a delight--rich, witty, flowing, and full of insight about the nature of political corruption."--Constance Casey, Los Angeles Times"A panoramic, exquisitely incisive biography that illuminates the triumphs, debacles, and personal sorrows of the irrepressible man known as Boston's 'Mayor of the Poor.'"--Robert Wilson, USA Today

    In addition to Emerson, a philosopher, there was Amos Bronson Alcott, an educator; Henry David Thoreau, a naturalist and rebel; and Nathaniel Hawthorne, a novelist. This book is the story of that unique and influential friendship in action, of the lives the friends led, and their work that resulted in an enduring change in their nation's direction.""--From the Prologue

    CONTENTS: Scenes of My Childhood Seeking an Education The Law and Politics In National Politics On Entering and Leaving the Presidency Some of the Duties of the President Why I Did Not Choose to Run