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The gripping story of an epic prairie snowstorm that killed hundreds of newly arrived settlers and cast a shadow on the promise of the American frontier. January 12, 1888, began as an unseasonably warm morning across Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Minnesota, the weather so mild that children walked to school without coats and gloves. But that afternoon, without warning, the atmosphere suddenly, violently changed. One moment the air was calm; the next...
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Book of the Year Award, 2005, National Association of Outlaw and Lawmen History
In the early 1890s Wyoming's northern rangeland was torn by the Johnson County War, a violent western collision that pitted cattle barons and powerful politicians against homesteaders and rustlers. The range war, riddled with lynchings, ambushes, and an invasion by Texas hired gunmen, culminated in a valiant last stand and siege involving hundreds of
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While other resources focus on different aspects of this century, such as the Civil War or immigration, this is the first truly comprehensive treatment to cover all aspects of 19th century history: population, politics and government, economy and work, society and culture, religion, social problems and reform, everyday life, and foreign policy are explored in many A-to-Z articles. Complete with more than 400 illustrations and maps, this set includes...
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At large during the most colorful period in New Orleans' history, from just after the Louisiana Purchase through the War of 1812, privateers Jean and Pierre Laffite made life hell for Spanish merchants on the Gulf. Pirates to the US Navy officers who chased them, heroes to the private citizens who shopped for contraband at their well-publicized auctions, the brothers became important members of a filibustering syndicate that included lawyers, bankers,...
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"Leigh Eric Schmidt rebuilds the history of American secularism from the ground up, giving flesh and blood to these outspoken infidels, including itinerant lecturer Samuel Porter Putnam; rough-edged cartoonist Watson Heston; convicted blasphemer Charles B. Reynolds; and atheist sex reformer Elmina D. Slenker. He describes their everyday confrontations with devout neighbors and evangelical ministers, their strained efforts at civility alongside their...
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Wyoming attorney John W. Davis retells the story of the West?s most notorious range war. Having delved more deeply than previous writers into land and census records, newspapers, and trial transcripts, Davis has produced an all-new interpretation. He looks at the conflict from the perspective of Johnson County residents?those whose home territory was invaded and many of whom the invaders targeted for murder?and finds that, contrary to the received...
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In all the sagas of human migration, few can top the drama of the journey by Midwestern farmers to Oregon and California from 1840 to 1849?between the era of the fur trappers and the beginning of the gold rush. Even with mountain men as guides, these pioneers literally plunged into the unknown, braving all manner of danger, including hunger, thirst, disease, and drowning. Employing numerous illustrations and extensive primary sources, including original...
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Library of America volume 66-67
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In nineteenth-century America, poetry was, part of everyday life, as familiar as a hymn, a love song, a patriotic exhortation. American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century reveals the vigor and diversity of a tradition embracing solitary visionaries and congenial storytellers, humorists and dissidents, songwriters and philosophers. These two volumes reassess America's poetic legacy with a comprehensive sweep that no previous anthology has attempted. This...
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In 1864, as the Civil War still raged, throngs of Chinese migrants began to converge on the enormous western worksite of the Transcontinental Railroad. Over the next five years, they blasted tunnels through the granite cliffs of the Sierra Nevada and laid tracks across the burning Nevada and Utah deserts. As many as twelve hundred lost their lives along the route. Those who survived would suffer a different kind of death: a historical one. Chang retraces...
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On the afternoon of October 26, 1881, in a vacant lot in Tombstone, Arizona, a confrontation among eight armed men erupted in a deadly shootout. The gunfight at the O.K. Corral shaped how future generations came to view the old West. Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and the Clantons became the stuff of legends, symbolic of a West populated by good guys in white hats and bad guys in black ones. It's colorful stuff - but the truth is even better.
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"With the national campaign for women's suffrage stalled, the thinly populated Wyoming Territory in 1869 became the first democracy in the world to recognize every woman's right to vote. Colorful frontier characters, a volatile mix of motives, and the caprice of history drive this story of a neglected chapter in America?s past. Wyoming PBS and Caldera Productions looks further back 150 years to when the Wyoming Territory led the way on women's suffrage."...
14) Hell's Half-Acre: The Untold Story of the Benders, a Serial Killer Family on the American Frontier
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"In 1873 the people of Labette County in Kansas made a grisly discovery. Buried on a homestead seven miles south of the town of Cherryvale, in a bloodied cellar and under frost-covered soil, were countless bodies in varying states of decay. The discovery sent the local community and national newspapers into a frenzy that continued for over two decades, and the land on which the crimes took place became known as 'Hells Half-Acre.' When it emerged that...
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Appears on list
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The account of an unprecedented feat of engineering, vision, and courage. It is the story of the men who built the transcontinental railroad-the investors who risked their businesses and money; the enlightened politicians who understood its importance; the engineers and surveyors who risked, and sometimes lost, their lives; and the Irish and Chinese immigrants, the defeated Confederate soldiers, and the other laborers who did the backbreaking and...
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Joseph Johnson has lost just about everyone he's ever loved. He lost his pa in an accident. He lost his ma and his little sister to sickness. And now, he's lost his pony -- fast, fierce, beautiful Sarah, taken away by a man who had no right to take her. Joseph can sure enough get her back, though. The odds are stacked against him, but he isn't about to give up. He will face down deadly animals, dangerous men, and the fury of nature itself on his quest...
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