Vivid accounts of the dangers that miners faced on a daily basis in the northern, southern, and middle coal fields of eastern Pennsylvania.Since 1870, mining disasters have claimed the lives of over 30,000 men and boys who toiled underground in the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania. Sometimes they survived; many times they did not. The constant threat of fire, explosion, collapsed rock and deadly gas brought miners face to face with death on a daily basis. Through or...

Four distinct anthracite coal fields encompass an area of 1,700 square miles in the northeastern portion of Pennsylvania. Early Coal Mining in the Anthracite Region is a journey into a world that was once very familiar. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, underground coal mining was at its zenith and the work of miners was more grueling and dangerous than it is today. Faces blackened by coal and helmet lamps lit by fire are no longer parts of the everyday lives of miners ...

"Krist does wonders . . . [He] describes the frantic rescue efforts . . . and the malevolent, unending storm. In a thrilling, climactic chapter, he conjures forth the avalanche."—The New York TimesIn February 1910, a monstrous, record-breaking blizzard hit the Northwest. Nowhere was the danger more terrifying than near a tiny town called Wellington, perched high in the Cascade Mountains, where a desperate situation evolved: two trainloads of cold, hungry p...

"Africa’s Children is a testament to one’s heritage, a belief in one’s ancestors, and a record of truth … no told!" – Dr. Henry V. Bishop, chief curator, Black Cultural Centre, Dartmouth, Nova ScotiaChronicling the history of Black families of the Yarmouth area of Nova Scotia, Africa’s Children is a mirror image of the hopes and despairs and the achievements and injustices that mark the early stories of many African-Canadians. This extensively researched history t...

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (1862–1931) was an American educator, investigative journalist, and leading figure of the civil rights movement. Having been born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Wells was freed in 1862 during the American Civil War by the Emancipation Proclamation. From then on she dedicated her life as a free woman to fighting prejudice and violence, founding the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and becoming the most famous African American of ...

Open Rogues and Rascals to any page, and you'll find yourself drawn into the fascinating lives of ordinary Maritimers. A natural storyteller, Bob Kroll relates more than 200 true tales of our very own ancestors, and introduces us to heroes, failures, murderers, and soul savers who bring the everyday history of the Maritimes to vivid life.The stories in Rogues and Rascals are loosely arranged into five sections, but can be read in any order you please. With tales from the 1700s throu...

A miserly miller with a stash of gold, an island with an ever-changing list alias, some sly smugglers who nevertheless remember to send a thank you note, a stern schoolmaster who couldn’t tell time, and a thief with two left feet are just some of the shady individuals who grace the pages of Scamps and Scoundrels. Riotous, and witty, Bob Kroll writes these tales of infamy in a delightfully folksy style, bringing to life snippets of the Maritimes’ somewhat less glorious history. With over a ...

In June 2005, two small envelopes were found in a closet in a Vermont historical site. One of the envelopes was official Treasury Department stationary and inscribed: valuable letter account of the trial after the assassination of Lincoln. Inside were three letters dated April 18, May 20, and June 15, 1865, containing eyewitness accounts of life in Washington, D.C., after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Heres the story of those letters, of the man who wrote them, and of the confusion...

The Sluicebox Series is a collection of interesting facts and entertaining fiction about the Fraser River Gold Rush and the Cariboo Gold Rush of the 1800s in British Columbia.Read how Francis Jones Barnard's express company grew from just a two-horse wagon to a fleet of stagecoaches that provided regular passenger and freight service along the Cariboo Wagon Road.Issue one includes BX Holdup, a mystery about a stagecoach robbery during the summer of 1865 and Constable Stokes' ...

Mayhem at Rock Creek & More Gold Rush Stories is a collection of eight British Columbia gold rush short stories that will take you back to the 1850s.Hardship and conflict follow desperate gold seekers as they travel up the Fraser River into territory previously claimed by the Hudson's Bay Company. Galvanized by their own greed and determination, they brave swollen rivers and precipitous trails to get to the gold diggings where gold commissioners and justices await, ready to take ad...

"This famous memoir by John McCorkle, is the best published account by a scout who "rode with Quantrill." John McCorkle was a young Missouri farmer of Southern sympathies. After serving briefly in the pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard, he became a prominent member of William Clarke Quantrill's infamous guerrillas, who took advantage of the turmoil in the Missouri-Kansas borderland to prey on pro-Union people.McCorkle displayed an unflinchingly violent nature while he participated...

Winner of the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction * ALA Best Book for Young Adults * ALA Notable Children's BookIn this brilliant fictional tour de force, which the New York Times called "a deft, poignant novel," Newbery Medal-winning author Paul Fleischman re-creates the first great battle of the Civil War from the points of view of sixteen participants.Northern and Southern, male and female, white and black. Here are voices that tell of the dreams of glory, the grim...