"From the author of 1491--the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas--a deeply engaging new history that explores the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs. More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed totally different suites of plants and animals. Columbus's voyages brought them back together--and marked the beginning...

Photographs and text provide information about boats and ships, looking at different types of sailing vessels from throughout history, investigating their different parts, and discussing how and why they work.

Ten Days That Shook the World is an undisputed classic of political reportage. A stunning first-hand account overflowing with urgency and immediacy, Reed's masterpiece lives and breathes the streets, meeting halls, posters and pamphlets of the revolution he witnessed. Like no other work, it places the reader shoulder to shoulder with the people's militias, factory committees, propagandists and crowds which thronged St Petersburg's squares to protest,...

"America’s backstory is a whitewashed mythology implanted in our collective memory. It is the story of the pilgrims on the Mayflower building a new nation. It is George Washington’s cherry tree and Abraham Lincoln’s log cabin. It is the fantastic tale of slaves that spontaneously teleported themselves here with nothing but strong backs and negro spirituals. It is a sugarcoated legend based on an almost true story. It should come as no surprise...

"Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage--and lost his mother and all memory of her when he was a child--but he is also gifted with a mysterious power. Hiram almost drowns when he crashes a carriage into a river, but is saved from the depths by a force he doesn't understand, a blue light that lifts him up and lands him a mile away. This strange brush with death forces a new urgency on Hiram's private rebellion. Spurred on by his improvised plantation...

Colorado Collection

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. Their first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway,...

H.A.W. Tabor and his bride Augusta left New England for Kansas and then to the Colorado Mountains to pursue wealth. They were a part of Denver's early history. Tabor became very wealthy and became lieutenant governor , U.S. Senator, politician, capitalist, parton of the arts, and an empire builder on a grand scale. He divorced Augusta and married a divorcee of the mining camps Baby Doe. He died a pauper. Three women shared his struggles, Augusta,...

Bud Miles was a boy when he crossed the Mississippi. But Bud buried his father after an Indian attack, and as the wagon train pushed on through Sioux country, the boy stood as tall as any man ... Tell Sackett killed cougars at fourteen and fought a war at fifteen. Now Tell was hauling dangerous freight--a soldier's wife and a fortune in gold--knowing that someone wanted him dead ... Laurie Bonnet was a mail-order bride who thought she was a failure...

"Our world was made on and by the Silk Roads. For millennia it was here that East and West encountered each other through trade and conquest, leading to the spread of ideas and cultures, the birth of the world's great religions, the appetites for foreign goods that drove economies and the growth of nations. From the first cities in Mesopotamia to the growth of Greece and Rome to the depredations by the Mongols and the Black Death to the Great Game...