19th century

Ever since 1758, when Sarah Madden was born to an unmarried Irish woman and an unknown black father, the Maddens have been free, escaping--and sometimes defying--the laws and customs that condemned other African Americans to slavery in their native state of Virginia.

"On May 25, 1841, the whaleship Sharon of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, set out for the whaling grounds of the northwestern Pacific under the command of Captain Howes Norris. A year later, while most of the crew was out on the hunt, Norris remained at the helm with four crew members-three of them natives from the Pacific Islands. When the men in the whaleboats spied the Sharon's flag flying at half-mast-a signal of distress-they rowed toward the ship to discover their Captain had been hacked to pieces. His murderers, the Pacific Islanders, were covered in blood and brandishing weapons. Unless the crew could retake the Sharon, their prospects of survival were slim. The nearest land was seven hundred miles away.

"Through recently discovered journals of the ship's cooper and the third officer, award-winning maritime historian Joan Druett unearths the mystery of the ill-fated whaleship.... Dramatically and meticulously recreating the events of the Sharon, Druett pieces together a voyage filled with savagery and madness under the command of one of the most ruthless captains to sail the high seas. In the Wake of Madness brings to life a riveting story and exposes the secrets that followed the men of the Sharon to their graves."

The first serious study of traditional American perennial gardens, which attained great popularity in the years between the Civil War and World War I, this abundantly illustrated volume explores this old-fashioned garden style--frequently referred to as "grandmother's garden"--as seen in small towns, artists' colonies and craft villages, mining towns, and settlements on the Western frontier.

The guide that enables you to identify, and place in their historic and architectural contexts, the houses you see in your neighborhood or in your travels across America. 17th century to the present.

The narrative of the author's journey from Boston around the Cape Horn and landing at a port in the western coast of the United States. A classic work of non-fiction that inspired Melville.

Attractive drawings and interesting explanatory notes on 91 ships, from “a Danish cog of the 13th century” to a Scottish tea merchant of 1869. Plates 56 and 57 feature a fluyt, the same type as the Godspeed. Fluyts were popular merchant vessels from roughly 1595 to 1670. Historic sources for the illustrations are noted.

Volume 1 of the classic account of life among Plains Indians; ceremonies, hunt, warfare, and more.