It vividly documents the Pilgrims' adventures: their first stop in Holland, the harrowing transatlantic crossing aboard the Mayflower, the first harsh winter in the new colony, and the help from friendly Native Americans that saved their lives.No one was better equipped to report on the affairs of the Plymouth community than William Bradford. Revered for his patience, wisdom, and courage, Bradford was elected to the office of governor in 1621, and he continued to serve in that position for more than three decades. His memoirs of the colony remained virtually unknown until the nineteenth century. Lost during the American Revolution, they were discovered years later in London and published after a protracted legal battle. The current edition rendered into modern English and with an introduction by Harold Paget, remains among the most readable books from seventeenth-century America.

    Antonia Fraser called it "a grisly read and an engrossing one."

    While global warming has brought several such routes into existence, until recently these channels were hopelessly choked by impassible ice. Voyagers faced unimaginable horrors—entire ships crushed, mass starvation, disabling frostbite, even cannibalism—in pursuit of a futile goal. In Arctic Labyrinth, Glyn Williams charts the entire sweep of this extraordinary history, from the tiny, woefully equipped vessels of the first Tudor expeditions to the twentieth-century ventures that finally opened the Passage. Williams’s thrilling narrative delves into private letters and journals to expose the gritty reality behind the often self-serving accounts of those in charge. An important work of maritime history and exploration—and as exciting a tale of heroism and fortitude as readers will find—Arctic Labyrinth is also a remarkable study in human delusion.

    But we dug a little deeper and found all kinds of local legends, bizarre beasts, surprising cemeteries, and uncovered the best kept secrets from all over the Bay State. Our state certainly celebrates more than just tea parties, the Red Sox and Patriots; folks from Massachusetts cherish their weird history too. Our brave and valiant author, Jeff Belanger, toured the state with camera and notepad in hand as he waded through cranberry bogs and trudged up the Berkshires to uncover the state's odd and offbeat. If it's unusual or unexplainable or fantastic, and in the Bay State, you'll find it all here in Weird Massachusetts. See how the world's biggest elephant now fits into a peanut butter jar and why it brings good luck to students, listen for those unexplained booms in Nashoba, discover the hidden secrets at Wizard's Glen and Altar Rock, escape from the Sea Witch and the Cape Cod Mermaid, check out the Museum of Burnt Food, or eat an apple from one of Isaac Newton's famous apple trees';but whatever you do, don't pick up a red-headed hitchhiker on Route 44. With so many places named after the devil, it's a wonder we're not called the Devil State or the Witch State, but see for yourself at the Witch Museum, dedicated to educating the public on what witchcraft was, and is today; for the really daring, unlock some of the spooky secrets at the Houghton Mansion or stay a night at the Concord's Colonial Inn. Look out for the Pukwudgees, circle around haunted trees in cemeteries, and enjoy one of the longest-named lakes in the world, or try climbing Dighton Rock and unravel the messages in its centuries-old carvings. It's all here. It's all weird and it's all in Massachusetts. A brand-new entry in the best-selling Weird U.S. series, Weird Massachusetts is packed with all that great stuff your history teacher wouldn't teach you. So get ready to join our author on his great adventure. It's a journey you'll never forget!

    In Normal Christianity he laid the groundwork for having a Kingdom Worldview. Then in Eyes of Honor he magnificently unveiled our identity in Christ. In his fourth and newest book, Raptureless; An Optimistic Guide to the End of the World, Jonathan bares his theological teeth.The End Times have become the King of the Sacred Cows for the Modern Church. Jonathan fearlessly treads where most leaders will not and asks questions that many thirst to ask but can't articulate. Questions such as, what does the Bible really say about:A secret rapture of the Church?A Future One-World Ruler?A Future Seven-Year Tribulation?Are we living in the Last Days?Welton's answers to these questions are thoroughly argued and scripturally based. Prepare to be stretched and see the Bible through brand new eyes!

    The book traces the history of three families: the working-class African-American Twymons, the working-class Irish McGoffs, and the middle-class Yankee Divers. It gives brief genealogical histories of each families, focusing on how the events they went through illuminated Boston history, before narrowing its focus to the racial tension of the 1960s and the 1970s. Through their stories, Common Ground focuses on racial and class conflicts in two Boston neighborhoods: the working-class Irish-American enclave of Charlestown and the uneasily integrated South End.

    In the retelling of this oft-told saga, Brown has demonstrated once again his abilities as a master storyteller and an entertaining popular historian. By turns heroic, tragic, and even humorous, The American West brings to life American tragedy and triumph in the years from 1840 to the turn of the century, and a roster of characters both great and small: Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, Geronimo, Dull Knife, Crazy Horse, Captain Jack, John H. Tunstall, Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, Wyatt Earp, the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, Wild Bill Hickok, Charles Goodnight, Oliver Loving, Buffalo Bill, and many others. The American West is about cattle and the railroads; it is about settlers who came to claim a land not originally their own and how they slowly imposed law and order on these wild and untamed places; and it is about the wanton destruction of the Native American way of life. This is epic history at its best and popular history at its most readable. This new work is culled from Dee Brown’s highly acclaimed writings, which instantly established him as one of America’s foremost Western authorities. Fully revised, rewritten, and edited into one seamless account of America’s most famous frontier, this epic narrative, along with the introduction and a chronological table of events, etches an unforgettable and poignant portrait. The American West is at once a tribute to the West and a majestic new peak for a writer whose long and successful career has been synonymous with excellence in frontier history.

    In a riveting biography, John F. Ross reconstructs the extraordinary achievements of this fearless and inspiring leader whose exploits in the early New England wilderness read like those of an action hero and whose innovative principles of unconventional warfare are still used today. They were a group of handpicked soldiers chosen for their backwoods savvy, courage, and endurance. Led by a young captain whose daring made him a hero on two continents, Rogers's Rangers earned a deadly fame among their most formidable French and Indian enemies for their ability to appear anywhere at any time, burst out of the forest with overwhelming force, and vanish just as quickly. This swift, elusive, intelligence-gathering strike force was the brainchild of Robert Rogers, a uniquely American kind of war maker capable of motivating a new breed of warrior. The child of marginalized Scots-Irish immigrants, Robert Rogers learned to survive in New England's dark and deadly forests, grasping, as did few others, that a new world required new forms of warfare. Marrying European technology to the stealth and adaptability he observed in native warriors, Rogers trained and led an unorthodox unit of green provincials, raw woodsmen, farmers, and Indian scouts on "impossible" missions that are still the stuff of soldiers' legend. Covering heartbreaking distances behind enemy lines, they traversed the wilderness in whaleboats and snowshoes, slept without fire or sufficient food in below-freezing temperatures, and endured hardships that would destroy ordinary men. With their novel tactics and fierce""esprit de corps, the Rangers laid the groundwork for the colonial strategy later used in the War of Independence. Never have the stakes of a continent hung in the hands of so few men. Rogers would eventually write two seminal books whose vision of a unified continent would influence Thomas Jefferson and inspire the Lewis and Clark expedition. In""War on the Run," " John F. Ross vividly re-creates Rogers's life and his spectacular battles, having traveled over much of Rogers's campaign country. He presents with breathtaking immediacy and painstaking accuracy a man and an era whose enormous influence on America has been too little appreciated.

    A lovely and moving portrait of society’s outcasts…affirms the essential humanity of its poor and stubborn residents, for whom each day of survival is a victory” (The New York Times Book Review).Set on the high ground at the heart of Cape Ann, the village of Dogtown is peopled by widows, orphans, spinsters, scoundrels, whores, free Africans, and “witches.” Among the inhabitants of this hamlet are Black Ruth, who dresses as a man and works as a stonemason; Mrs. Stanley, an imperious madam whose grandson, Sammy, comes of age in her brothel; Oliver Younger, who survives a miserable childhood at the hands of his aunt; and Cornelius Finson, a freed slave. At the center of it all is Judy Rhines, a fiercely independent soul, deeply lonely, who nonetheless builds a life for herself against all imaginable odds. Rendered in stunning, haunting detail, with Anita Diamant’s keen ear for language and profound compassion for her characters, The Last Days of Dogtown is an extraordinary retelling of a long-forgotten chapter of early American life.

    If Little Hawk survives three moons by himself, he will be a man.John Wakely is only ten when his father dies, but he has already experienced the warmth and friendship of the nearby tribes. Yet his fellow colonists aren’t as accepting of the native people. When he is apprenticed to a barrel-maker, John sees how quickly the relationships between settlers and natives are deteriorating. His friendship with Little Hawk will put both boys in grave danger.The intertwining stories of Little Hawk and John Wakely are a fascinating tale of friendship and an eye-opening look at the history of our nation. Newbery Medalist Susan Cooper also includes a timeline and an author’s note that discusses the historical context of this important and moving novel.

    In the days following the end of the Second World War, the world seems to offer itself up, and the two women are on the cusp of their 'real lives': Helena is off to Hollywood and a new marriage, while Nick is heading for a reunion with her own young husband, Hughes, about to return from the war. Soon the gilt begins to crack. Helena's husband is not the man he seemed to be, and Hughes has returned from the war distant, his inner light curtained over. On the brink of the 1960s, back at Tiger House, Nick and Helena—with their children, Daisy and Ed—try to recapture that sense of possibility. But when Daisy and Ed discover the victim of a brutal murder, the intrusion of violence causes everything to unravel. The members of the family spin out of their prescribed orbits, secrets come to light, and nothing about their lives will ever be the same.Brilliantly told from five points of view, with a magical elegance and suspenseful dark longing, Tigers in Red Weather is an unforgettable debut novel from a writer of extraordinary insight and accomplishment.

    In considering the connections between literature and lived experience, this book contemplates four key questions at the heart of Indigenous kinship traditions: How do we learn to be human? How do we become good relatives? How do we become good ancestors? How do we learn to live together? Blending personal narrative and broader historical and cultural analysis with close readings of key creative and critical texts, Justice argues that Indigenous writers engage with these questions in part to challenge settler-colonial policies and practices that have targeted Indigenous connections to land, history, family, and self. More importantly, Indigenous writers imaginatively engage the many ways that communities and individuals have sought to nurture these relationships and project them into the future. This provocative volume challenges readers to critically consider and rethink their assumptions about Indigenous literature, history, and politics while never forgetting the emotional connections of our shared humanity and the power of story to effect personal and social change. Written with a generalist reader firmly in mind, but addressing issues of interest to specialists in the field, this book welcomes new audiences to Indigenous literary studies while offering more seasoned readers a renewed appreciation for these transformative literary traditions.

    Leviathan was also chosen by Amazon.com's editors as one of the 10 best history books of 2007."To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme," proclaimed Herman Melville, and the vivid story of whaling is one of the mightiest themes in American history. Indeed, much of America's culture, economy, and even its spirit were literally and figuratively rendered from the bodies of whales. In Leviathan, the first one-volume history of American whaling in many decades, historian Eric Jay Dolin chronicles the epic battle between man and the sea — and, in this case, between man and beast — an often-violent struggle that animates the imagination and stirs our emotions. Beginning his engrossing narrative with Captain John Smith's botched whaling expedition to the New World in 1614, Dolin traces the rise of this burgeoning industry-from its rapid expansion in the colonial era and its brutal struggles during and after the Revolutionary War, to its Golden Age in the mid-1800s, when more than 60 ports got into the whaling business and the sails of America's whaleships whitened the seven seas. American whale oil lit the world and greased the gears of the industrial revolution. Baleen cut from the mouths of whales shaped the course of feminine fashion. Spermaceti, from sperm whales, produced amazingly brilliant and clean-burning candles, while ambergris gave perfumes great staying power and was worth its weight in gold. And the profits from whaling created great fortunes and helped fuel the nation's growth. Leviathan teems with fascinating vignettes, from the Pilgrims' frustrating encounters with whales, to the Candle Wars that pitted eighteenth-century New England Industrialists against each other, to the heroic cruise of Captain David Porter and the USS Essex, in which Porter and his men valiantly protected American whaleships during the War of 1812 until they themselves were captured by the British. Then there is the violent tale of Cyrus Plumer, a notorious troublemaker whose mutiny on the whaleship Junior is thrillingly retold. Among the most amazing accounts is that of the Shenandoah, a Confederate raider, which burned 22 of the 26 Union whaleships it captured, most after the Civil War had already ended. In the waning years of the nineteenth century, we witness the agonizingly slow death of an American industry, as the discovery of oil, tragic disasters in the Arctic, and changes in female fashion combine to transform the American whalemen into an historical relic. The final scene comes in 1924, as the whaleship Wanderer, wrecked on the shore of Cuttyhunk Island, provides the last glimpse of a bygone era. Through it all, those "iron men in wooden boats" created a legacy of dramatic, poignant, and at times horrific stories. This sprawling, maritime saga is filled with these tales, as well as rich, lyrical descriptions of whales and the sea. Original, stirring, and authoritative, Leviathan delivers the 300-year history of American whaling in vibrant detail, integrating literary, social, and economic history into an epic account of this once-vital industry.(W. W. Norton, 480 pp., 90 illustrations. Also available in Audiobook format from Tantor Audiobooks.)

    In the words of Edward O. Wilson, the museum stands as both "cabinet of wonder and temple of science." Its rich and unlikely history involves literary figures, creationists, millionaires, and visionary scientists from Asa Gray to Stephen Jay Gould. Its mastodon skeleton -- still on display -- is even linked to one of the nineteenth century's most bizarre and notorious murders. The Rarest of the Rare tells the fascinating stories behind the extinct butterflies, rare birds, lost plants, dazzling meteorites, and other scientific and historic specimens that fill the museum's halls. You'll learn about the painting that catches Audubon in a shameful lie, the sand dollar collected by Darwin during the voyage of the Beagle, and dozens of other treasures in this surprising, informative, and often amusing tour of the natural world.

    Now Turner has written the novel she was born to write, this exciting and heartfelt story of a woman struggling to find herself during the tumultuous years preceding the American Revolution.The story begins in 1729, when Resolute Talbot and her siblings are captured by pirates, taken from their family's plantation in Jamaica, and brought to the New World. Resolute and her sister become indentured servants and are taught the trade of spinning and weaving. Betrayed by her first love, Resolute falls back on her skill with a loom to survive. Then she meets a young woodsman who is living a double life and is wanted in England. When British rule begins to crush the Colonials, Resolute begins to work in secret, hiding her craft and smuggling goods to keep Patriot soldiers clothed. Ultimately she becomes a friend of Margaret Gage, the very real wife of the commanding general of the British Army in America. On the night of April 18, 1775, Resolute carries a message to the Reveres' silver shop, changing the course of American history.Heart-wrenching, brilliantly written, and historically authentic, My Name is Resolute is destined to become an instant classic.