Abigail Adams lived the American Revolution as the wife of one of its central figures--John Adams. Her family correspondence, published along with a memoir by her grandson, Charles Francis Adams, brings that era into eloquent focus. What was it like to hear the cannon's roar from your window? to face pestilence? food shortages? rampant inflation? devalued coinage? to raise four children alone--and earn the money to keep your household afloat, while your husband was engaged in politics and diplomacy miles and oceans away ...

The history of New York City is told as a story, in few words. It begins with Henry Hudson's discovery of Manhattan in 1609. And it finishes in 1898 when the island of Manhattan becomes the Borough of Manhattan of Greater New York.

Wherever their ships took them, the Normans (Northman) were ruthless conquerors but gifted governors. These eight lectures, given in Boston in 1915 by the eminent Harvard medievalist, Charles Homer Haskins, chronicle the achievements of these descendants of the Vikings, whose genius for assimilation transformed them into French, English, and Sicilian citizens of well-run states. Haskins discusses the great William the Conqueror and Henry II, the impetuous Richard the Lion-Hearted, and the hapless King John. The Normans founded the Kingdom of Sicily in which there was religious toleration and a Saracen bureaucracy, and left us a moving picture of themselves in the Bayeux Tapestry.

A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates is a 1724 book containing biographies of contemporary pirates. It's author uses the name Captain Charles Johnson, generally considered a pseudonym. The real identity of the author was thought by some scholars to be Daniel Defoe, although this has since been disputed. The publisher Nathaniel Mist or somebody working for him are other suggested authors. In the first volume, "Johnson" sticks fairly close to the available sources, though he embellishes the stories somewhat...

Charles Kingsley (June 12 1819 - January 23 1875) was an English divine, university professor, historian, and novelist, particularly associated with the West Country and north-east Hampshire. As a novelist, his chief power lay in his descriptive faculties, which are evident in this novel as he pictures the Egyptian desert and the ancient city Alexandria. Hypatia, 1st published in 1853, is set in 5th Century A.D. Egypt. It centers upon a young orphan monk from a desert monastery who feels called to continue his religious life in the city...

Did you ever wish you knew how to explain natural phenomena such as earthquakes and volcanoes to your children? Search no more, this book has all the answers (at least all the ones that were known in 1869) and gives them in a pedagogical way. Listed on the Ambleside homeschooling list.