The promise of opportunity drew twenty-seven-year-old Illinois schoolteacher William Winlock Miller west to the future Washington Territory in 1850. Like so many other Oregon Trail emigrants Miller arrived cash-poor and ambitious, but unlike most he fulfilled his grandest ambitions. By the time of his death in 1876, Miller had amassed one of the largest private fortunes in the territory and had used it creatively in developing the region’s assets, leaving a significant mark on the territor...

The Country for Me is the first full biography of Joel Palmer (1810–81), born in Canada to American parents, who played a central role in the political and economic shaping of Oregon. Having traveled on the Oregon Trail three times, he wrote a popular trail guidebook used by later emigrants. Palmer’s experience in public life and government service during his first five years in Oregon led to his federal appointment as superintendent of Indian Affairs for the territory. Palmer is ...

Covering the adventures of coastal and ocean explorers who made key discoveries and landmark observations from northern California up the coastline to Alaska during the mid-1700s to the early 1800s, this anthology of primary source journal entries, book excerpts, maps, and drawings enables readers to "discover" the Northwest Coast for themselves.More than 200 years ago, explorers traveled from Central America, Russia, and even Europe to explore the coastline of the...

If you were looking for the definitive Christmas anthology, consider yourself lucky, because you just found it!This book is everything you want Christmas to be — loving, warm and celebratory. Timeless and adorable, beautifully designed, "The Big Book of Christmas" is a great big stocky book — stuffed with novels, novellas, short stories, poems, carols and songs.Inside you'll find:· Novels, novellas and short stories from Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, Hans Chri...

Make the Christmas season brighter with a wonderful collection of stories, poems, and timeless holiday tales. The Big Book of Christmas brings together a generous selection of classic Christmas stories, festive poems, fairy tales, and seasonal writings by various authors, offering hours of holiday reading for the whole family. From snowy winter nights and cozy firesides to family gatherings, unexpected adventures, acts of kindness, and magical Christmas encounters, these stories capture th...

Tales of Lost Souls: 400+ Ghost Stories in One Collection maps the extraordinary breadth of supernatural fiction from Gothic romance to psychological horror, antiquarian terror, folkloric fantasy, and modern ghostly unease. Its vast assembly moves through ruined estates, cursed objects, spectral visitations, doubles, revenants, and haunted domestic spaces, demonstrating how the ghost story continually adapts to changing fears. Alongside classic Gothic atmospheres, readers encounter tales o...

The Big Book of Ghost Stories: 140 Horror Novels & Short Story Collections maps the ghostly imagination across the Gothic, Romantic, Victorian, Edwardian, and modern traditions. Its capacious selection ranges from ancestral curses, haunted houses, doubles, revenants, and spectral revenge to psychologically ambiguous apparitions and folkloric visitations. Novels and short fiction mingle with fairy-tale, sensation, decadent, imperial, and supernatural-investigation modes, revealing how the g...

After more than two centuries of civil strife Japan was finding its way back to peace and order during the Period of Unification (1573-1615). The final drive came in the fall of 1600, when the massed eastern and western warlords faced each other in the decisive Battle of Sekigahara, in which every man who called himself a warrior faced the stark choice between the forces of division and those of unification.One such warrior was Ono Jiroemon Tadaaki (1565-1628), a

“I had been here before: I was going from being a mere ‘interpreter’ to being a ‘cultural interpreter.’ It was a dangerous path to tread.”Walking Japan's ancient inland route in search of a vague romantic notion, the author encounters a string of idiosyncratic characters, locals with a story to tell. Recording their stories, the author braids a travelogue deftly interwoven with his own experiences since he first set foot in Japan some thirty years ago.At times hilarious, at...

Yagyu Munenori was a great swordsman from the Nara Basin of Japan. During the great wars of the medieval era, his clan had first lost its castle, then its lands, until finally it was thrown upon the mercy of a local temple. Munenori was forced to become a ronin, a masterless samurai, destined to lead the life of a wanderer.The Period of Unification in which Munenori lived was one of the great turning points in Japan's medieval era. After more than two centuries of ...

The medieval era of Japan was marked by a century of civil strife known as the Warring States period (1469-1573). The century prior had seen the sword replace the bow and arrow as the chief weapon of the samurai, thus setting the stage for this golden age of Japanese swordsmanship. Every man who called himself a warrior pledged his allegiance and life to a warlord and honed his martial skills to defend his patron to the death on the field of battle.One such warrior was Kami...

This is the harrowing account of arguably the most ill-fated expedition in the long maritime history of the Low Countries. At the end of the 16th century five heavily armed ships sailed from the port of Rotterdam under the command of men who had never set foot on a seagoing ship. Their plan was to sail through the treacherous Strait of Magellan and raid the western coast of Latin America as had the Englishmen Drake and Cavendish. Storms, disease, and general inexperience were to upset thos...