Whenever anyone mentions 'Reiver', no-one hesitates to add 'Border'. It is an inextricable association, and rightly so. Nowhere else in Britain in the modern era, or indeed in Europe, did civil order break down over such a wide area, or for such a long time. For more than a century the hoof-beats of countless raiding parties drummed over the border. From Dumfriesshire to the high wastes of East Cumbria, from Roxburghshire to Redesdale, from the lonely valley of Liddesdale to the fortress city of Carlisle, swords and spears spoke while the law remained silent. Fierce family loyalty counted for everything while the rules of nationality counted for nothing. The whole range of the Cheviot Hills, its watershed ridges and the river valleys which flowed out of them became the landscape of larceny while Maxwells, Grahams, Fenwicks, Carletons, Armstrongs and Elliots rode hard and often for plunder. These were the Riding Times and in modern European history, they have no parallel. This book tells the remarkable story of the Reivers and how they made the Borders.

    Catherine Sager captured her family's trip across the American West in her journal. Her story describes the terrible journey which the early Oregon settlers made in order to settle and colonise a new territory with many hardships and heartaches along the way.This account today is regarded as one of the most authentic accounts of the American westward migration. This edition has extra contextual information such as paintings, maps and facts to enhance the gripping narrative of Catherine Sager. The Sager Family Catehrine's father, Henry Sager was described as a restless one in her journal. Before 1844 he had moved his growing family three times. In April 1844 Henry and his family took part in the great westward migration and started their journey along the Oregon Trail. During their journey both he and his wife lost their lives and left their seven children orphaned. They were later adopted by Marcus Whitman and Narcissa Whitman, missionaries in what is now Washington, the children were orphaned a second time, when both their new parents were killed during the Whitman massacre in November 1847. Catherine Sager's account About 1860 Catherine, the oldest of the Sager girls, wrote a first-hand account of their journey across the plains and their life with the Whitmans. Catherine's writing is clear, vivid and honest. She details pioneer life, the happy time she had with the Whitman's and the brutal massacre of the Whitman's by Indians. A survivor, she was also taken captive by the Indians. Her story shows how difficult life was for the early pioneers and gives a true insight into the early American West. What was the Oregon trail? The Oregon Trail is a 2,200-mile (3,500 km) historic east–west large-wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of the future state of Kansas and nearly all of what are now the states of Nebraska and Wyoming. The western half of the trail spanned most of the future states of Idaho and Oregon.From the early to mid-1830s the Oregon Trail and its many offshoots were used by about 400,000 settlers, ranchers, farmers, miners, and businessmen and their families. Chapters Across the PlainsHome Life at the Whitman'sThe Waiilatpu MassacreIn Captivity

     Indian attacks, Mexican invasions, murderous bandits and the persistent threat of disease and famine plagued these early settlers. In the first third of the book A. J. Sowell gathers numerous first-hand accounts to construct a history of this area in the mid-nineteenth century, when life was tough and often short. Particularly focusing on the attacks by Native Americans, Sowell examines how early settlers defended themselves in ad hoc groups and volunteer companies. Then Sowell examines the advent of the Republic of Texas in the aftermath of the Texas Revolution. Many of Texas’ most famous events are covered in this section, drawn from eyewitness accounts and sometimes seen by Sowell himself, including the Battle of Concepcion, the Siege of the Alamo and the Battle of San Jacinto. Part three of Sowell’s work covers his own fascinating involvement with the Texas Rangers, including the Wichita Campaign in northwest Texas where he endured a brutally cold winter and participated in a number of deadly fights with Native Americans. Andrew Jackson Sowell was first of his family to be born in Texas after his relations moved to the area in 1830. His grandfather was involved in the Texas Revolution, as was his uncle, who served in the Alamo garrison but departed to obtain supplies prior to its fall. From 1870 November until 1871 June, he was a Texas Ranger in Company F of the Frontier Battalion, serving under Capt. David P. Baker. Drawing on his own experiences as a Texas Ranger, events in his relatives’ lives, family history, and interviews, Sowell wrote numerous books and articles about the early history of Texas. His books include Rangers and Pioneers of Texas, Life of Big Foot Wallace, Early Settlers and Indian Fighters of Southwest Texas, and History of Fort Bend County. Rangers and Pioneers of Texas was published in 1884. Sowell died in 1921.

    With few friends, many rivals, and ever-shifting loyalties, Louise learns the perils of her new role. Yet she is too ambitious to be a pawn in the intrigues of others. With the promise of riches, power, and even the love of a king, Louise creates her own destiny in a dance of intrigue between two monarchs-and two countries.

    The three younger sisters, Victoria, Sophie and Margaret, were particularly supportive of their mother during her widowhood and remained close throughout their lives. Like their parents, they would know much sorrow as adults. Victoria's romance with Alexander of Battenberg, Prince of Bulgaria, was thwarted by Bismarck for political reasons and she married twice, firstly to a minor German prince and secondly to a young Russian adventurer who left her to die in poverty. Sophie married the future King Constantine of Greece, whose ill-starred reign saw them forced to leave their throne not once but twice, both dying in exile. Margaret married a prince of Hesse-Cassel, both became members of the Nazi party, and she lived to see her family and house become victims of theft on a major scale at the hands of occupying forces at the end of the Second World War. Using previously unpublished sources, this is the first biography to tell the lives of all three princesses. ** This electronic edition includes 43 black-and-white photographs **

    This provocative work of history attributes Spain's rise to power to the collaboration of international business interests, including Italian financiers, German technicians, and Dutch traders. At the height of its power, the Spanish Empire was a global enterprise in which non-Spaniards -- Portuguese, Basque, Aztec, Genoese, Chinese, Flemish, West African, Incan, and Neapolitan -- played an essential role.Challenging, persuasive, and unique in its thesis, Henry Kamen's Empire explores Spain's complex impact on world history with admirable clarity and intelligence.

    Inspired by the power of these ads, Heather Andrea Williams uses slave narratives, letters, interviews, public records, and diaries to guide readers back to devastating moments of family separation during slavery when people were sold away from parents, siblings, spouses, and children. Williams explores the heartbreaking stories of separation and the long, usually unsuccessful journeys toward reunification. Examining the interior lives of the enslaved and freedpeople as they tried to come to terms with great loss, Williams grounds their grief, fear, anger, longing, frustration, and hope in the history of American slavery and the domestic slave trade. Williams follows those who were separated, chronicles their searches, and documents the rare experience of reunion. She also explores the sympathy, indifference, hostility, or empathy expressed by whites about sundered black families. Williams shows how searches for family members in the post-Civil War era continue to reverberate in African American culture in the ongoing search for family history and connection across generations.

    It's the greatest pioneering story in history, uniquely combining the heroic colonization of an intractable virgin land, the ghastly dangers & high adventure of Arctic exploration, & the grimmest saga of penal servitude. 400 years of continual human striving chart its course, a drama of unremitting extremes & elemental confrontations, pitting man against nature, & man against man. East of the Sun, a work of panoramic scope, is the 1st complete account of this strange & terrible story. To most Westerners, Siberia is a vast & mysterious place. The richest resource area on the face of the earth, its land mass covers 5 million square miles-7.5% of the total land surface of the globe. From the 1st foray in 1581 across the Ural Mountains by a band of Cossack outlaws to the fall of Gorbachev, East of the Sun is history on a grand scale. With vivid immediacy, Bobrick describes the often brutal subjugation of Siberia's aboriginal tribes & the cultures that were destroyed; the great 18th-century explorations that defined Siberia's borders & Russia's attempt to "extend" Siberia further with settlements in Alaska, California & Hawaii; & the transformation of Siberia into a penal colony for criminal & political exiles, an experiment more terrible than Australia's Botany Bay. There's the building of the stupendous Trans-Siberian Railway across 7 time zones; Siberia's key role in the bloody aftermath of the October Revolution in 1917; & Stalin's dreaded Gulag, which corrupted its very soil. Today, Siberia is the hope of Russia's future, now that all her appended republic have broken away. Its story has never been more timely.

    . . for better or for worse. Once you begin to look at world history through fly-specked glasses, you begin to see the mark of these minute life forms at every turn. Beneficial bugs have built empires. Bad bugs have toppled them. Bugged is not your everyday history book. From the author and illustrator team behind kid-favorite Poop Happened! A History of the World from the Bottom Up, this combination of world history, social history, natural science, epidemiology, public health, conservation, and microbiology is told with fun and informative graphics and in an irreverent voice, making this one fun-to-read book.

    With the country in the grip of the Black Death, brothers John and William fear that they will shortly die and go to Hell. But as the end draws near, they are given an unexpected choice: either to go home and spend their last six days in their familiar world, or to search for salvation across the forthcoming centuries – living each one of their remaining days ninety-nine years after the last.   John and William choose the future and find themselves in 1447, ignorant of almost everything going on around them. The year 1546 brings no more comfort, and 1645 challenges them still further. It is not just that technology is changing: things they have taken for granted all their lives prove to be short-lived.   As they find themselves in stranger and stranger times, the reader travels with them, seeing the world through their eyes as it shifts through disease, progress, enlightenment and war. But their time is running out – can they do something to redeem themselves before the six days are up?

    But the question of how we understand the British Empire - its origins, nature, purpose, and effect on the world it ruled - is far from settled. In this incisive work, David Cannadine looks at the British Empire from a new perspective - through the eyes of those who created and ruled it - and offers fresh insight into the driving forces behind the Empire.Arguing against the views of Edward Said and others, Cannadine suggests that the British were motivated not only by race, but also by class. The British wanted to domesticate the exotic world of their colonies and to reorder the societies they ruled according to an idealized image of their own class hierarchies.

    Half a century later, Massasoit's son, King Philip, had been shot at the end of a bloody two-year conflict. The war began as a skirmish between the Wampanoag and the English on the frontier of Plymouth colony and ended with many of the New England's settlements reduced to ashes. As many as 800 colonists were killed, but the Native Americans suffered even greater losses in their pivotal struggle against the colonists. Devastated by disease and famine, the native peoples of southern New England were violently removed from their ancestral homelands. Three hundred years later, their fight for justice has been all but erased from the history books.At once an in-depth history of this pivotal war and a guide to the historical sites where the ambushes, raids, and battles took place, King Philip's War expands our understanding of American history and provides insight into the nature of colonial and ethnic wars in general. Through a careful reconstruction of events, first-person accounts, period illustrations, and maps, and by providing information on the exact locations of more than fifty battles, King Philip's War is useful as well as informative. Students of history, colonial war buffs, those interested in Native American history, and anyone who is curious about how this war affected a particular New England town, will find important insights into one of the most seminal events to shape the American mind and continent.

    Richards stresses the dynamic quality of Mughal territorial expansion, their institutional innovations in land revenue, coinage and military organization, ideological change and the relationship between the emperors and Islam. He also analyzes institutions particular to the Mughal empire, such as the jagir system, and explores Mughal India's links with the early modern world.

    The small, poignant touches are riveting." -"Kirkus Discoveries""I think about what I want and what makes me happy, But orderly and quietly to myself. Because my thoughts tear down fortresses and walls, My thoughts are free. -German folk song, author unknown"The beautiful, safe, joyful places in young Tilli's imagination were her only refuge from the bombing that tore through the sky above her during World War II. Her thoughts were her only freedom from Hitler's Nazi tyranny, and they were her strength to survive after the war ended, when Russians invaded her tiny farming village in eastern Germany; forced her into months of hiding in a dark attic crawlspace; and took her innocence, her childhood, and nearly her life.Tilli's dreams-of a time when she could think and act freely, and travel, work, write, worship, and live however she wished-were what fueled the sixteen-year-old to courageously and single-handedly escape the terror of Stalin's harsh Communist rule and create her own happy ending in a free America.This true tale of sorrow and terror, hope and triumph, is Tilli's story-but it's also the story of the unthinkable suffering and untold bravery of countless innocent children who have lived through a war and its aftermath.

    This plain-English guide is a one-stop resource for genealogy DNA testing. Inside, you'll learn what DNA tests are available; the pros and cons of the three major testing companies; and advice on choosing the right test to answer your specific genealogy questions. Once you've taken a DNA test, this guide will demystify and explain how to interpret DNA test results, including how to understand ethnicity estimates and haplogroup designations, navigate suggested cousin matches, and use third party tools like GEDmatch to furether analyze your data. To give you a comprehensive view of genetic testing for ancestry, the book also discusses the ethics and future of genetic genealogy, as well as how adoptees and others who know little about their ancestry can especially benefit from DNA testing.