(1787–1865) was an eccentric and flamboyant surveyor. Renowned for his inventiveness as well as for his bombast and irascibility, Randel was central to Manhattan’s development but died in financial ruin. Telling Randel’s engrossing and dramatic life story for the first time, this eye-opening biography introduces an unheralded pioneer of American engineering and mapmaking.Charged with “gridding” what was then an undeveloped, hilly island, Randel recorded the contours of Manhattan down to the rocks on its shores. He was obsessed with accuracy and steeped in the values of the Enlightenment, in which math and science promised dominion over nature. The result was a series of maps, astonishing in their detail and precision, which undergird our knowledge about the island today. During his varied career Randel created surveying devices, designed an early elevated subway, and proposed a controversial alternative route for the Erie Canal—winning him admirers and enemies.The Measure of Manhattan is more than just the life of an unrecognized engineer. It is about the ways in which surveying and cartography changed the ground beneath our feet. Bringing Randel’s story into the present, Holloway travels with contemporary surveyors and scientists trying to envision Manhattan as a wild island once again. Illustrated with dozens of historical images and antique maps, The Measure of Manhattan is an absorbing story of a fascinating man that captures the era when Manhattan—indeed, the entire country—still seemed new, the moment before canals and railroads helped draw a grid across the American landscape.

     An ancient war, older than humankind, is about to spill out of the shadows into broad daylight...And the fate of the entire creation of Oorja--the Primordial Light--rests upon two complete strangers from different worlds: Abhay Rajvardhan, a seemingly ordinary young man will discover his dead father’s secrets and his connection to a clandestine army dating back to the ages long before the epic battle of the Mahabharata. Abhay’s interaction with a magical artifact--a Chakra forged from an unknown but sentient metal--triggers an unforeseen event whose ripples are felt light-years away. As her kindred prepare to go after the Artifact on Prithvi, Dhwani, a 600-year-old Angiri warrior will find herself chasing an unknown mole hiding in their midst and working alongside the Enemy. To protect the divine artifact of the gods--the Ultimate Weapon--the two will embark upon a quest fraught with nameless perils, fighting the demonic forces of Andhakar that are bent upon destroying them. The lines between myth and reality will blur, a forgotten history will shape a new reality. The Three will unite as One to unleash the Destroyer of Worlds: the Brahmāstra, the weapon to end all weapons--and the world as we know it."

    Pleased, Brahma grants him the city of Vajra, and says that not even air will enter the city, unless Vajranabha wants it to. Now, powerful in his impregnable city, Vajranabha turns his sights on Indra's kingdom. Indra goes to Krishna for help. What Vajranabha does not realise is that his daughter, Prabhavati, has set her heart on marrying Pradyumna, the son of Krishna.

    They rech at the shore and finally Hanuman ji, The Monky God, jumped through the sea and landed in Lanka and handed Seeta mata the Ring of Shree Ram, with the help of Vibhishan, brother of Ravan. After that he burns the lanka, returns to Shree Ram and takes the whole Monky Army to Sea Shore. There Vibhishan meets them and the construction of bridge over Sea is planned.

    This book is not a novel, but a true history of the noted perrson whose name is given above; and although it is not a work of fiction we can safely say that with scenes of thrilling interest, daring exploits and adventures, it can vie with the most sensational novel. The history begins immedciately prior to the breaking out of the Revolutionary War, when the Foster family were living near Hinsdale, N. H. The first part of the book is taken up with the history of the father of the hero of the story, giving an account of his enlistment in the American army, the part he took in the battle of Bunker Hill, and his numerous and daring exploits throughout the whole of the war. When Mr. Foster went to the war his family consisted of his wife, two sons armd a daughter. Nat was the younger son, being nine years old when his father joined the army; but he early learned the skillful use of the rifle, and as deer, moose and other game abounded in the Adirondacks at that time, he did much toward the support of the family during his father’s absence, who when the war was over returned to his home broken down in health, having expended his strength and health in aiding to achieve the independence of his country. To follow Nat Foster from this time to the close of his life in old age, in his wonderful adventures with Indians and daring exploits with wild beasts, would farr exceed the limits of a book notice. One must read the book itself; and whoever begins to read it will not be apt to lay it aside for lack of interest. This book originally published by The Willard Press, in 1912 has been reformatted for the Kindle and may contain an occasional defect from the original publication or from the reformatting.

    An inspirational tale of her journey through extreme personal crisis."You can run, but you can't hide from yourself."Abandoned by her mother as a young child and with a father constantly on the run, Shelley's life was never normal. Her family's involvement with South London's criminal underworld left her isolated, vulnerable and lonely. Falling deeper and deeper into depression and despair - she snapped.Shelley got on the first coach out of London with only the clothes she stood up in and £30 in her pocket. She didn't care where she was going, as long as she could disappear completely from her oppressive life. For years, she lived anonymously in refuges, hostels and on the streets. It would take something remarkable to bring her back to the real world.

    These wealthy men had founded the first banks in the United States and built its first railroads, factories, and steamships. Now, they were to cap their achievements by making their young country equally superior in size, and in the process, producing the greatest, swiftest, and most beautiful craft the world had ever seen - the clipper ship. This book not only traces the origins and achievements of the clipper but enlivens the dry bones of historic fact with the flesh and blood of clipper captains and crews. A great era comes to life with their courageous, tenacious stories.

    Reveals True Story of Kill Or Be Killed Shootouts In The Real Wild West.Recently discovered memoir by one of the Old West's most feared (but virtually unknown today) gunfighter's and lawmen puts you behind a pair of Colt .45 six-guns and immerses you in the real life man-on-man fast draw shootouts, hell-bent-for-leather outlaw chases and lead dodgin' narrow escape in the Real Old West.If you've ever wondered what it was like to strap on a six-gun and have a face-off-in-the-street gunfight where only the fastest gunslinger walks away - - then rare eyewitness account of what it was like to live and die in the Real Old West is a must read.

    Yet just a hundred years ago is was the ancestral pile of the Fitzwilliams - an aristocratic clan whose home and life were fuelled by coal mining. Black Diamonds tells of the Fitzwilliams' spectacular decline: of inheritance fights; rumours of a changeling and of lunacy; philandering earls; illicit love; war heroism; a tragic connection to the Kennedys; violent death; mining poverty and squalor; and a class war that literally ripped apart the local landscape. The demise of Wentworth and the Fitzwilliams is a riveting account of aristocratic decline and fall, set in the grandest house in England.

    Patricia Cline Cohen goes behind these first lurid accounts to reconstruct the story of the mysterious victim, Helen Jewett. From her beginnings as a servant girl in Maine, Helen Jewett refashioned herself, using four successive aliases, into a highly paid courtesan. She invented life stories for herself that helped her build a sympathetic clientele among New York City's elite, and she further captivated her customers through her seductive letters, which mixed elements of traditional feminine demureness with sexual boldness.But she was to meet her match--and her nemesis--in a youth called Richard Robinson. He was one of an unprecedented number of young men who flooded into America's burgeoning cities in the 1830s to satisfy the new business society's seemingly infinite need for clerks. The son of an established Connecticut family, he was intense, arrogant, and given to posturing. He became Helen Jewett's lover in a tempestuous affair and ten months later was arrested for her murder. He stood trial in a five-day courtroom drama that ended with his acquittal amid the cheers of hundreds of fellow clerks and other spectators.With no conviction for murder, nor closure of any sort, the case continued to tantalize the public, even though Richard Robinson disappeared from view. Through the Erie Canal, down the Ohio and the Mississippi, and by way of New Orleans, he reached the wilds of Texas and a new life under a new name. Through her meticulous and ingenious research, Patricia Cline Cohen traces his life there and the many twists and turns of the lingering mystery of the murder. Her stunning portrayals of Helen Jewett, Robinson, and their raffish, colorful nineteenth-century world make vivid a frenetic city life and sexual morality whose complexities, contradictions, and concerns resonate with those of our own time.From the Hardcover edition.

    From a sequence of knocks and rattles translated by the young girls as a "voice from beyond," the Modern Spiritualism movement was born.Talking to the Dead follows the fascinating story of the two girls who were catapulted into an odd limelight after communicating with spirits that March night. Within a few years, tens of thousands of Americans were flocking to seances. An international movement followed. Yet thirty years after those first knocks, the sisters shocked the country by denying they had ever contacted spirits. Shortly after, the sisters once again changed their story and reaffirmed their belief in the spirit world. Weisberg traces not only the lives of the Fox sisters and their family (including their mysterious Svengali-like sister Leah) but also the social, religious, economic and political climates that provided the breeding ground for the movement. While this is a thorough, compelling overview of a potent time in US history, it is also an incredible ghost story.An entertaining read - a story of spirits and conjurors, skeptics and converts - Talking to the Dead is full of emotion and surprise. Yet it will also provoke questions that were being asked in the 19th century, and are still being asked today - how do we know what we know, and how secure are we in our knowledge?

    A baby, a black hired hand, a bay horse, a gun, a gold stash, and a preacher have all gone missing. Cherokee America Singer, known as "Check," a wealthy farmer, mother of five boys, and soon-to-be widow, is not amused. In this epic of the American frontier, several plots intertwine around the heroic and resolute Check: her son is caught in a compromising position that results in murder; a neighbor disappears; another man is killed. The tension mounts and the violence escalates as Check's mixed race family, friends, and neighbors come together to protect their community--and painfully expel one of their own.Cherokee America vividly, and often with humor, explores the bonds--of blood and place, of buried histories and half-told tales, of past grief and present injury--that connect a colorful, eclectic cast of characters, anchored by the clever, determined, and unforgettable Check.

    More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. When Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas, he ended that separation at a stroke. Driven by the economic goal of establishing trade with China, he accidentally set off an ecological convulsion as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans. The Columbian Exchange, as researchers call it, is the reason there are tomatoes in Italy, oranges in Florida, chocolates in Switzerland, and chili peppers in Thailand. More important, creatures the colonists knew nothing about hitched along for the ride. Earthworms, mosquitoes, and cockroaches; honeybees, dandelions, and African grasses; bacteria, fungi, and viruses; rats of every description—all of them rushed like eager tourists into lands that had never seen their like before, changing lives and landscapes across the planet. Eight decades after Columbus, a Spaniard named Legazpi succeeded where Columbus had failed. He sailed west to establish continual trade with China, then the richest, most powerful country in the world. In Manila, a city Legazpi founded, silver from the Americas, mined by African and Indian slaves, was sold to Asians in return for silk for Europeans. It was the first time that goods and people from every corner of the globe were connected in a single worldwide exchange. Much as Columbus created a new world biologically, Legazpi and the Spanish empire he served created a new world economically.As Charles C. Mann shows, the Columbian Exchange underlies much of subsequent human history. Presenting the latest research by ecologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, Mann shows how the creation of this worldwide network of ecological and economic exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Mexico City—where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted—the center of the world. In such encounters, he uncovers the germ of today’s fiercest political disputes, from immigration to trade policy to culture wars.In 1493, Charles Mann gives us an eye-opening scientific interpretation of our past, unequaled in its authority and fascination

    The citadel of power, privilege and breeding in which the titled, land-owning governing class had barricaded itself for so long was breached. The incomers were a group of young women who, fifty years earlier, would have been looked on as the alien denizens of another world - the New World, to be precise. From 1874 - the year that Jennie Jerome, the first known 'Dollar Princess', married Randolph Churchill - to 1905, dozens of young American heiresses married into the British peerage, bringing with them all the fabulous wealth, glamour and sophistication of the Gilded Age.Anne de Courcy sets the stories of these young women and their families in the context of their times. Based on extensive first-hand research, drawing on diaries, memoirs and letters, this richly entertaining group biography reveals what they thought of their new lives in England - and what England thought of them.

    These circumstances explain how this army ... has never yet been defeated in the field."From the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 to the Downfall of Napoleon in 1815, Britain won a series of major wars against France that enabled her to lay the foundations of a global empire. By Waterloo, she was the paramount maritime and industrial power in the world, and would remain so for much of the nineteenth century.This is the story of that extraordinary century and a half of martial success and the people who made it possible: the soldier-kings William III and the first two Georges; the generals Marlborough, Wolfe, Moore and Wellington; and the ordinary British redcoats who - despite harsh service conditions that included low pay, poor housing, inadequate food and brutal discipline - rarely let their commanders down in battles as far afield as Blenheim, Plassey, Quebec and Waterloo.499 pages of narrative, 573 pages in total