A story about the Irish, just before the onset of the famine of 1847, with all the color and dialogue of a man who lived it.

Isabella Lucy Bird was a 19th century English traveller, writer, and natural historian. She was a sickly child, however, while she was travelling she was almost always healthy. Her first trip, in 1854, took her to America, visiting relatives. Her first book, The Englishwoman in America was published anonymously two years later. Unbeaten Tracks in Japan is compiled of the letters she sent to her sister during her 7 months sojourn in Japan in 1878. Her travels there took her from Edo (now called Tokyo) through the interior - where she was often the first foreigner the locals had met - to Niigata, and from there to Aomori...

Isabella L. Bird was an English traveller, writer and natural historian. She was travelling in the Far East alone at a time when such endeavours were risky and dangerous even for men and large, better equipped parties. In "Among the Tibetans", Bird describes her tour through Tibet with her usual keen eye: From descriptions of the landscape and flora to the manners, customs and religion of the local people we get a fascinating account of a world long past.

The world, if we choose to see it so, is a complicated picture of people dressing and undressing. The history of the world is composed of the chat of a little band of tailors seated cross-legged on their boards; they gossip across the centuries, feeling, as they should, very busy and important. As you will see, I have devoted myself entirely to civil costume—that is, the clothes a man or a woman would wear from choice, and not by reason of an appointment to some ecclesiastical post, or to a military calling, or to the Bar, or the Bench. Such clothes are but symbols of their trades and professions, and have been dealt with by persons who specialize in those professions.

The author was raised as an American Indian and describes what it was like to be an Indian boy (the first 7 chapters) and an Indian Girl (the last 7 chapters). This is very different from the slanted way the white man tried to picture them as 'savages' and 'brutes.'Quote: Dear Children:—You will like to know that the man who wrote these true stories is himself one of the people he describes so pleasantly and so lovingly for you. He hopes that when you have finished this book, the Indians will seem to you very real and very friendly...

Based in part upon the author's own observations and personal knowledge, it was the aim of the book to set forth the status and outlook of the North American Indian. He addressed issues such as Indian schools, health, government policy and agencies, and citizenship in this book. In connection with his writings, Eastman was in steady demand as a lecturer and public speaker with the purpose of interpreting his race to the present age.

Joining the Continental Army as a teenager, Joseph Plumb Martin spent the next eight years fighting in the Revolutionary War as an enlisted man. His memoirs tell in detail his experiences during that time...the bitter cold, hunger, loss of life, long marches, and fear of battle. He also includes tales of fishing, hunting, and other activities...including encounters with a "saucy miss". His narrative reveals much about American life at the time and is one of the fullest and best accounts of the Revolutionary War, presented from a private's point of view.The book has been later republished under the names Private Yankee Doodle and Memoir of a Revolutionary Soldier.

Rawlings follows the development of printing from the origins of writing to modern printing. Some of the earliest records are ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman recordings on papyrus and wax tablets. However, Rawlings acknowledges the sparse nature of this first fragile evidence, and limits speculation.Later, libraries of religious books grew in Europe, where monks copied individual books in monasteries. The "block printing" technique began with illustrations carved in wood blocks, while the text needed to be written by hand...

This is a careful and fascinating collection of interviews with people who knew Lincoln as a boy and young man. A glimpse into the type of person he was from the very beginning. "All the world loves a lover"—and Abraham Lincoln loved everybody. With all his brain and brawn, his real greatness was in his heart. He has been called "the Great-Heart of the White House," and there is little doubt that more people have heard about him than there are who have read of the original "Great-Heart" in "The Pilgrim's Progress...

Originally published in 1825 under the title: Sketches of New Brunswick : containing an account of the first settlement of the province, with a brief description of the country, climate, productions, inhabitants, government, rivers, towns, settlements, public institutions, trade, revenue, population, &c., by an inhabitant of the province. The value of this history is in the fact that it was written when the Province was still in its infancy. Although there had been a few small settlements established in New Brunswick prior to 1783, the main influx of settlers were Loyalists who chose to remove to the area from the United States following the American Revolution.

This autobiography of Andrew Carnegie is a very well written and interesting history of one of the most wealthy men in the United states. He was born in Scotland in 1835 and emigrated to America in 1848. Among his many accomplishments and philanthropic works, he was an author, having written, besides this autobiography, Triumphant Democracy (1886; rev. ed. 1893), The Gospel of Wealth, a collection of essays (1900), The Empire of Business (1902), and Problems of To-day (1908)]. Although this autobiography was written in 1919, it was published posthumously in 1920.

Margaret Sanger was an American sex educator and nurse who became one of the leading birth control activists of her time, having at one point, even served jail time for importing birth control pills, then illegal, into the United States. Woman and the New Race is her treatise on how the control of population size would not only free women from the bondage of forced motherhood, but would elevate all of society. The original fight for birth control was closely tied to the labor movement as well as the Eugenics movement, and her book provides fascinating insight to a mostly-forgotten turbulent battle recently fought in American history.

Fortress-walled Saint Catherine's monastery on the Sinai peninsula has been a pilgrimage site since its founding by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian in the 6th century. According to tradition, the monastery sits at the base of the mountain where Moses received the Tablets of the Law. Set in rugged country, accessible in times past only by a many days journey by camel across barren desert, the monastery survived intact through the centuries, and, as a result, became a rich repository of religious history—told through its icons, mosaics, and the books and manuscripts in the monastery library...

A Merchant talks about daily life inside prisons of England, describes routines and how prisoners are treated. He notes stories of how fellow prisoners came to be in prison, and his ideas about the penal system, its downfalls and ways to improve it. The reader can see similarities to the problems we still have in regarding "criminals" today. (Introduction by Elaine Webb)