The Last Days of the Incas


Kim MacQuarrie - 2007
    Drawing on both native and Spanish chronicles, he vividly describes the dramatic story of the conquest, with all its savagery and suspense. This authoritative, exciting history is among the most powerful and important accounts of the culture of the South American Indians and the Spanish Conquest.

Women of the Dawn


Bunny McBride - 1999
    Their courageous responses to tragedies brought on by European contact make up the heart of the book. The narrative begins with Molly Mathilde (1665-1717), a mother, a peacemaker, and the daughter of a famous chief. Born in the mid-1600s, when Wabanakis first experienced the full effects of colonial warfare, disease, and displacement, she provided a vital link for her people through her marriage to the French baron of St. Castin. The sage continues with the shrewd and legendary healer Molly Ockett (1740-1816) and the reputed witchwoman Molly Molasses (1775-1867). The final chapter belongs to Molly Dellis Nelson (1903-1977) (known as Spotted Elk), a celebrated performer on European stages who lived to see the dawn of Wabanaki cultural renewal in the modern era.

America in the Gilded Age: From the Death of Lincoln to the Rise of Theodore Roosevelt


Sean Dennis Cashman - 1993
    Sean Dennis Cashman traces the political and social saga of America as it passed through the momentous transformation of the Industrial Revolution and the settlement of the West. Revised and extended chapters focusing on immigration, labor, the great cities, and the American Renaissance are accompanied by a wealth of augmented and enhanced illustrations, many new to this addition.

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die


Robert Dimery - 2005
    Carefully selected by a team of international critics, each album is a groundbreaking work seminal to the understanding and appreciation of music from the 1950s to the present. Included with each entry are production details and credits as well as reproductions of original album cover art. Perhaps most important of all, each album featured comes with an authoritative description of its importance and influence. Among the critics involved in selecting the list are some of the best known music reviewers and commentators, including Theunis Bates (music writer for Time and urban editor at worldpop.com), Jon Harrington (staff writer at MTV), Seth Jacobson (writer for Dazed & Confused), as well as many others.

What Every American Should Know about Who's Really Running the World: The People, Institutions, and Organizations That Control Our Future


Melissa L. Rossi - 2005
    But ever wonder who's pulling their strings? Who the movers and shakers are around the globe? In sharp, witty prose, What Every American Should Know About Who's Really Running the World spells out exactly who to watch and what they've done (and are still doing).Get the lowdown on:- Pfizer - Monsanto - Oprah Winfrey - WTO & IMF - Wal-Mart - Rupert Murdoch - Al Qaeda Filled with hard facts, global issues, and profiles of the heavy hitters, What Every American Should Know About Who's Really Running the World is essential reading for all Americans who want a handle on the movers and shakers behind the headlines.

Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country


Sierra Crane Murdoch - 2020
    In her absence, the landscape had been altered beyond recognition, her tribal government swayed by corporate interests, and her community burdened by a surge in violence and addiction. Three years later, when Lissa learned that a young white oil worker, Kristopher "KC" Clarke, had disappeared from his reservation worksite, she became particularly concerned. No one knew where Clarke had gone, and few people were actively looking for him.Yellow Bird traces Lissa's steps as she obsessively hunts for clues to Clarke's disappearance. She navigates two worlds--that of her own tribe, changed by its newfound wealth, and that of the non-Native oilmen, down on their luck, who have come to find work on the heels of the economic recession. Her pursuit of Clarke is also a pursuit of redemption, as Lissa atones for her own crimes and reckons with generations of trauma.

The Oregon Trail


Francis Parkman - 1849
    Detailed accounts of the hardships experienced while traveling across mountains and prairies; vibrant portraits of emigrants and Western wildlife; and vivid descriptions of Indian life and culture. A classic of American frontier literature.

The Aztecs


Richard F. Townsend - 1992
    Beginning with the story of the Spanish conquest, the text then charts the rise of the Aztecs from humble nomads to empire builders. Within 100 years they established the largest empire in Mesoamerican history and, at Tenochtitlan, built a vast city in a lake, a Venice of the New World. This revised edition has been updated, assimilating information from archaeological excavations and ethnohistoric studies, and widening the picture of Aztec culture beyond their cities. Additional material on topics ranging from local crafts, trade, agriculture and food to architecture, society and women's roles depicts the richness of life in villages and regional centres. Illustrations of archaeological sites, pictorial manuscripts and monuments enhance the narrative.

My People the Sioux


Luther Standing Bear - 1928
    Born in the 1860s, the son of a Lakota chief, Standing Bear was in the first class at Carlisle Indian School, witnessed the Ghost Dance uprising from the Pine Ridge Reservation, toured Europe with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, and devoted his later years to the Indian rights movement of the 1920s and 1930s.

Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest


Ella Elizabeth Clark - 1958
    Each group of stories is prefaced by a brief factual account of Indian beliefs and of storytelling customs. Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest is a treasure, still in print after fifty years.

Violence Over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West


Ned Blackhawk - 2006
    In this ambitious text that ranges across Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado and eastern California, Ned Blackhawk places native peoples squarely at the centre of a dynamic and complex story as he chronicles two centuries of Indian and imperial history that profoundly shaped the American West.

The Captivity of the Oatman Girls: The History of the Young Sisters Who Were Abducted by Native Americans in the 1850s


Charles River Editors - 2017
    At this sight a thrill of icy coldness passed over me; I thought I had been struck; my thoughts began to reel and became irregular and confused; I fainted and sank to the earth, and for a while, I know not how long, I was insensible.” – Olive Oatman On the North American continent, Native American tribes carried out abductions against the new European settlers from the time they first set foot on eastern shores. Some of the women taken in the colonial to early American period went on to become respected figures in their new environments, while others lived out their lives as slaves. Various tribes perceived the historical value of women’s social personalities through different prisms, and even those groups living in the same region often exhibited dissimilar behavior toward them. For some of the more aggressive tribal societies, to commit atrocities against women and their children engaged the same mindset as that adopted for male-to-male warfare. What European sensibilities failed to grasp, despite the home continent’s own lurid history, was that the numerous indigenous cultures of North America were already in the habit of perpetrating such abductions against each other and had for thousands of years. Whether the enemy was European or domestic, old or young, male or female, the deeply embedded cultural habit was the same. To steal women from an enemy often brought the same adulation from the collective as the stealing of horses, and abduction initiated by even a single individual brought honor to that person and his family. In the American wilderness, instances occurred wherein the abduction of either horses or human beings was considered essential to survival, if not to pride and manhood. Abductees were generally adopted into the tribe through a specific ritual. Some were based on “violent hazing,” while for others, entry into the community was a “mere formality.” Children and adolescents were, more often than not, the preferred choice for abduction. In the capturing of slaves, both the strength and docility of the individual taken was of utmost importance. However, in the absence of viable wives, the concept of exogamy, an effort to bring new blood into the tribe, was encouraged. Such a rejuvenation of the community was widely accepted as a convention of war. In the history of abductions among the North American continent’s tribes, a low rate of escape attempts by captured settlers has been the norm from the beginning. This may be largely due to geographical obstacles, with help being so far away as to discourage hope of success. By the same token, relatively few rescue attempts were made by white kinsman to rescue a family member from an indigenous tribe. With no contact available to them, families of lost members taken from the colonial period through the 19th century usually fell into a long-term state of grief, but resigned themselves to never seeing their loved ones again. The Captivity of the Oatman Girls: The History of the Young Sisters Who Were Abducted by Native Americans in the 1850s examines the history of one of the most famous abduction stories of the Old West, the kidnapping of the young Oatman sisters and their subsequent experiences with the Mojave.

Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country


Louise Erdrich - 2003
    Her nonfiction is equally eloquent, and this lovely memoir offers a vivid glimpse of the landscape, the people, and the long tradition of storytelling that give her work its magical, elemental force. In a small boat like those her Native American ancestors have used for countless generations, she travels to Ojibwe home ground, the islands of Lake of the Woods in southern Ontario. Her only companions are her new baby and the baby's father, an Ojibwe spiritual leader, on a pilgrimage to the sacred rock paintings their people have venerated for centuries as mystical "teaching and dream guides," and where even today Ojibwe leave offerings of tobacco in token of their power. With these paintings as backdrop, Erdrich summons to life the Ojibwe's spirits and songs, their language and sorrows, and the tales that are in their blood, echoing through her own family's very contemporary American lives and shaping her vision of the wider world. Thoughtful, moving, and wonderfully well observed, her meditation evokes ancient wisdom, modern ways, and the universal human concerns we all share.

Lakota Woman


Mary Crow Dog - 1990
    Rebelling against the aimless drinking, punishing missionary school, narrow strictures for women, and violence and hopeless of reservation life, she joined the new movement of tribal pride sweeping Native American communities in the sixties and seventies. Mary eventually married Leonard Crow Dog, the American Indian Movement's chief medicine man, who revived the sacred but outlawed Ghost Dance. Originally published in 1990, Lakota Woman was a national best seller and winner of the American Book Award. It is a unique document, unparalleled in American Indian literature, a story of death, of determination against all odds, of the cruelties perpetuated against American Indians, and of the Native American struggle for rights. Working with Richard Erdoes, one of the twentieth century's leading writers on Native American affairs, Brave Bird recounts her difficult upbringing and the path of her fascinating life.

The Monster Hunter's Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Saving Mankind from Vampires, Zombies, Hellhounds, and Other Mythical Beasts


Ibrahim S. Amin - 2007
    From a hellhound's three-headed assault to a brain-eating zombie attack, The Monster Hunter's Handbook instructs readers in the background of each creature and the dangers each present. It also includes an impressive catalog of the premodern world's most powerful armament. Illustrated by Richard Horne, the creator of the wildly successful 101 Things to Do Before You Die, this trusty book details everything a new generation of valiant monster hunters needs to know to vanquish antiquity's biggest--and baddest--beasts.