First Girl in the West


Eliza Spalding Warren - 2013
    Her story is unparalleled—and offers fascinating insights into the earliest days of the emigrants. Eliza’s parents launched the Oregon Trail era with the original covered wagon trek in 1836. Settling in the region that is now the junction of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, Eliza grew up among native peoples. She learned their language and understood their culture better than any pioneer girl of the era. Eliza was at the Whitman Mission on the day of the fateful attacks that so profoundly changed the course of western history. Her telling of that story is uniquely valuable—even though she was just 10 years old—because she was the only survivor who spoke the language of the attackers. This first-person account is an eye-opening look at life in the early West.Eliza’s story is as fresh and readable today as the day it was written—a rare example of a historic document that can still engage modern readers, even children. This enhanced edition adds dozens of photos, maps, graphics, and notes to the original manuscript. The bonus material provides a layer of context that gives readers deeper insight into her compelling story.

The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square


Ned Sublette - 2008
    The product of the centuries-long struggle among three mighty empires--France, Spain, and England--and among their respective American colonies and enslaved African peoples, it has always seemed like a foreign port to most Americans, baffled as they are by its complex cultural inheritance.The World That Made New Orleans offers a new perspective on this insufficiently understood city by telling the remarkable story of New Orleans’s first century--a tale of imperial war, religious conflict, the search for treasure, the spread of slavery, the Cuban connection, the cruel aristocracy of sugar, and the very different revolutions that created the United States and Haiti. It demonstrates that New Orleans already had its own distinct personality at the time of Louisiana’s statehood in 1812. By then, important roots of American music were firmly planted in its urban swamp--especially in the dances at Congo Square, where enslaved Africans and African Americans appeared en masse on Sundays to, as an 1819 visitor to the city put it, “rock the city.”

The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921


Tim Madigan - 2001
    34 square blocks of Tulsa's Greenwood community, known then as the Negro Wall Street of America, were reduced to smoldering rubble.And now, 80 years later, the death toll of what is known as the Tulsa Race Riot is more difficult to pinpoint. Conservative estimates put the number of dead at about 100 (75% of the victims are believed to have been black), but the actual number of casualties could be triple that. The Tulsa Race Riot Commission, formed two years ago to determine exactly what happened, has recommended that restitution to the historic Greenwood Community would be good public policy and do much to repair the emotional as well as physical scars of this most terrible incident in our shared past. With chilling details, humanity, and the narrative thrust of compelling fiction, The Burning will recreate the town of Greenwood at the height of its prosperity, explore the currents of hatred, racism, and mistrust between its black residents and neighboring Tulsa's white population, narrate events leading up to and including Greenwood's annihilation, and document the subsequent silence that surrounded the tragedy.

The Sinking of the Bounty: The True Story of a Tragic Shipwreck and its Aftermath


Matthew Shaer - 2013
    It looked like something out of a movie--and, in a way, it was. The ship was the Bounty, a replica of a British merchant vessel of the same name whose crew famously mutinied in 1789. She had been built for a Marlon Brando film in the 1960s--and now she was sinking, her sixteen-person crew fleeing into the sea amid the splintered wood and torn canvas. Was the Bounty's sinking--which left her captain missing and one of her crew members dead--an unavoidable tragedy? Or was it the fault of a captain who was willing to risk everything to save the ship he loved? Drawing on exclusive interviews with Bounty survivors and Coast Guard rescuers, journalist Matthew Shaer reconstructs the ship's final voyage and the Coast Guard investigation into her sinking that followed, uncovering a riveting story of heroism and hubris in the eye of a hurricane. Praise for The Sinking of the Bounty:"Matthew Shaer masterfully recreates the last voyage and final doom of the Bounty, an iconic ship that collided with an historic storm off the Carolina coast. Shaer pulls you off the page and onto the Bounty itself--and then into the roiling sea--to relive a long night of terror, heroism and desperate quests for survival. The Sinking of the Bounty is a classic of the genre, beautifully told and riveting to read."—Sean Flynn, GQ correspondent and author of 3000 Degrees: The True Story of a Deadly Fire and the Men Who Fought It"Few images of Hurricane Sandy's destruction were as indelible, or as surreal, as the shattered wreck of the Bounty sinking beneath the waves of the 'Graveyard of the Atlantic.' Matthew Shaer's The Sinking of the Bounty is a powerful and riveting account of the disaster: the fateful decision to set sail before the storm, the crew's epic struggle to save the ship and then themselves, and the heroic rescue launched by the Coast Guard in the middle of the largest storm the Atlantic has ever seen. In the tradition of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm, this is fast-paced and deeply reported storytelling."—Matthew Power, contributing editor, Harper's

The Journals of Lewis and Clark


Meriwether Lewis - 1905
    Keenly aware that the course of the nation's destiny lay westward—and that a "Voyage of Discovery" would be necessary to determine the nature of the frontier—President Thomas Jefferson commissioned Meriwether Lewis to lead an expedition from the Missouri River to the northern Pacific coast and back. From 1804 to 1806, accompanied by co-captain William Clark, the Shoshone guide Sacajawea, and thirty-two men, Lewis mapped rivers, traced the principal waterways to the sea, and established the American claim to the territories of Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Together the captains kept this journal: a richly detailed record of the flora and fauna they sighted, the native tribes they encountered, and the awe-inspiring landscape they traversed, from their base camp near present-day St. Louis to the mouth of the Columbia River, that has become an incomparable contribution to the literature of exploration and the writing of natural history.

Dear Fran, Love Dulcie: Life and Death in the Hills and Hollows of Bygone Australia


Victoria Twead - 2021
    Both are newly-weds; Dulcie has a baby girl and Fran is expecting a baby. But there the similarities end.Fran is a Detroit city girl enjoying modern conveniences. Dulcie is a pineapple farmer’s wife enduring the extremes of Australia. Bushfires, floods, cyclones, droughts, dingo attacks and accidents are all too common. Regardless, Dulcie’s optimism shines through, revealing her love of the land and fascination for the wild creatures that share her corner of Queensland.Each book purchased will help support Careflight, an Australian aero-medical charity that attends emergencies, however remote.

Landing Eagle: Inside the Cockpit During the First Moon Landing


Michael Engle - 2019
    It was a sea in name only. It was actually a bone dry, ancient dusty basin pockmarked with craters and littered with rocks and boulders. Somewhere in that 500 mile diameter basin, the astronauts would attempt to make Mankind’s first landing on the Moon. Neil Armstrong would pilot the Lunar Module “Eagle” during its twelve minute descent from orbit down to a landing. Col. Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin would assist him. On the way down they would encounter a host of problems, any one of which could have potentially caused them to have to call off the landing, or, even worse, die making the attempt. The problems were all technical-communications problems, computer problems, guidance problems, sensor problems. Armstrong and Aldrin faced the very real risk of dying by the very same technical sword that they had to live by in order to accomplish the enormous task of landing on the Moon for the first time. Yet the human skills Armstrong and Aldrin employed would be more than equal to the task. Armstrong’s formidable skills as an aviator, honed from the time he was a young boy, would serve him well as he piloted Eagle down amidst a continuing series of systems problems that might have fatally distracted a lesser aviator. Armstrong’s brilliant piloting was complemented by Aldrin’s equally remarkable discipline and calmness as he stoically provided a running commentary on altitude and descent rate while handling systems problems that threatened the landing. Finally, after a harrowing twelve and a half minutes, Armstrong gently landed Eagle at “Tranquility Base”, a name he had personally chosen to denote the location of the first Moon landing. In “Landing Eagle-Inside the Cockpit During the First Moon Landing”, author Mike Engle gives a minute by minute account of the events that occurred throughout Eagle’s descent and landing on the Moon. Engle, a retired NASA engineer and Mission Control flight controller, uses NASA audio files of actual voice recordings made inside Eagle’s cockpit during landing to give the reader an “inside the cockpit” perspective on the first Moon landing. Engle’s transcripts of these recordings, along with background material on the history and technical details behind the enormous effort to accomplish the first Moon landing, give a new and fascinating insight into the events that occurred on that remarkable day fifty years ago.

The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution


John Oller - 2016
    A popular, comprehensive biography of Francis Marion, the "Swamp Fox," covering his famous engagements as well as a private side of him that has rarely been explored

आज भी खरे हैं तालाब


Anupam Mishra - 1993
    The book focuses on how to save the ancient water resources which have been neglected for quite a long time in India. This book holds a place in the list of best thirty books that have been published so far. This book has been translated in almost all Indian languages and quite a few foreign languages as well. There also exists a Braille version of this book. When it got published, it attracted the attention of a huge chunk of people and around two lac copies of books are known to have reached people across various places. The book, basically a report based book talks about how every household in arid regions could have their own water harvesting facility, a technique that has been in place for centuries. His approach towards life was something we do not find easily in the modern times. Moreover, this book has no copyright and can be reprinted and republished as and when one wants to. It is intriguing as to how this book could have had such an impact on the public, and on the society as a whole.

Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party


George R. Stewart - 1936
    Stewart's history of the Donner Party is “compulsive reading ??—?? a wonderful account, both scholarly and gripping, of horrifying episode in the history of the west" (Pulitzer Prize-winner Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.)The tragedy of the Donner party constitutes one of the most amazing stories of the American West. In 1846 eighty-seven people ??—?? men, women, and children ??—?? set out for California, persuaded to attempt a new overland route. After struggling across the desert, losing many oxen, and nearly dying of thirst, they reached the very summit of the Sierras, only to be trapped by blinding snow and bitter storms. Many perished; some survived by resorting to cannibalism; all were subjected to unbearable suffering. Incorporating the diaries of the survivors and other contemporary documents, George R. Stewart wrote the definitive history of that ill-fated band of pioneers. Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party is an astonishing account of what human beings may endure and achieve in the final press of circumstance.

A People's History of the United States


Howard Zinn - 1980
    Zinn portrays a side of American history that can largely be seen as the exploitation and manipulation of the majority by rigged systems that hugely favor a small aggregate of elite rulers from across the orthodox political parties.A People's History has been assigned as reading in many high schools and colleges across the United States. It has also resulted in a change in the focus of historical work, which now includes stories that previously were ignoredLibrary Journal calls Howard Zinn’s book “a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those…whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories.”

Brigham's Destroying Angel: Being the Life, Confession, and Startling Disclosures of the Notorious Bill Hickman, the Danite Chief of Utah


William Adams Hickman - 1904
     Hickman’s memoir chronicles his life as a significant member of the church and his position as Brigham Young’s underling. Hickman does not shy away from sharing the plethora of crimes he committed but he controversially claims that they were ordered by Young. J. H. Beadle, the editor of this account, examines the history of the Mormon church and the reasons behind the church’s lack of action over Hickman’s brutal crimes. He also questions how Hickman remained in positions of power despite knowledge of his murderous ways being publicly known. Hickman’s account sheds light on these issues as well as providing a unique insight into the mind of an infamous murderer and is an important addition to the history of the nineteenth century Mormon church. William Adams "Wild Bill" Hickman was an American frontiersman. He also served as a representative to the Utah Territorial Legislature. Hickman was baptized into Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in 1839 by John D. Lee. He later served as a personal bodyguard for Joseph Smith, Jr. and Brigham Young. Hickman was reputedly a member of the Danites. He died in Wyoming in 1883.

Pearl: Lost Girl of White Oak Mountain


Bill Yates - 2020
    The search for little Pearl consumed the next several weeks, and the story became front page news all over the United States. Hundreds of residents from the nearby towns of Waldron and Booneville Arkansas helped in the search, and a mysterious mountain hermit seemed to hold the secret to Pearl's disappearance. The incredible events that followed contributed to a mountain legend that still exists today.

Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing


Arnie Bernstein - 2009
    Bath Massacre takes readers back more than eighty years to that fateful day, when Andrew Kehoe set off a cache of explosives concealed in the basement of the local school, killing thirty-eight children and six adults. Among the dead was Kehoe, who literally blew himself to bits by setting off a concealed dynamite charge in his car. The next day, on Kehoe's farm, what was left of his wife---burned beyond recognition after Kehoe set his property and buildings ablaze---was found tied to a hand cart, her skull crushed and objects placed with macabre ritualism next to her body. With the horrors of Oklahoma City and 9/11 still fresh in Americans' minds, the seemingly endless stories of school violence epitomized by the Columbine shooting, and suicide bombers around the globe, Bath Massacre resonates powerfully for modern readers and reminds us that terrorism and murder on a large scale are nothing new. Bolstered by cooperation with survivors and their descendents, the book includes interviews with the people who lived through the horror of that day.

The Knights Templar: The True and Surprising Story Of Histories Most Secretive Order


Patrick Auerbach - 2016
     The order of the Knights Templar was founded by Hugh de Payens, a French nobleman from the Champagne region, along with eight of his companions, in Jerusalem around 1119. They originally consisted of a group of knights who protected Christian pilgrims travelling to the Holy Land against attack from brigands and Saracen pirates, after the crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099. The order's full name was the "Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon". They were given quarters next to the temple and adopted their distinctive uniform – white tunics with an eight-pointed blood-red cross. In 1129 they took monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and pledged themselves ready to die for their faith. They were gradually transformed into a chivalric order of warrior-monks who fought with distinction in the Crusades. Scroll to the top of the page and click Add To Cart to read more about this extraordinary chapter of history