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An in-depth look at Lewis and Clark's historic expedition through the explorers' journals—America's "first report on the West" (Bernard DeVoto, Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar-historian of the American West).In 1803, the great expanse of the Louisiana Purchase was an empty canvas. Keenly aware that the course of the nation's destiny lay westward—and that a “Voyage of Discovery” would be necessary to determine the nature of the frontier—President Thomas Jefferson commissioned Meriwether Lewis to lead an expedition from the Missouri River to the northern Pacific coast and back. From 1804 to 1806, accompanied by co-captain William Clark, the Shoshone guide Sacajawea, and thirty-two men, Lewis mapped rivers, traced the principal waterways to the sea, and established the American claim to the territories of Idaho, Washington, and Oregon.Together the captains kept this journal: a richly detailed record of the flora and fauna they sighted, the native tribes they encountered, and the awe-inspiring landscape they traversed, from their base camp near present-day St. Louis to the mouth of the Columbia River, which has become an incomparable contribution to the literature of exploration and the writing of natural history.

From the prehistoric peoples who inhabited the Americas at the end of the last Ice Age to the American Indian of the 20th century, this book encompasses the whole historical and cultural range of Indian life in Corth, Central, and South America. 32 pages of black-and-white photographs.

Is there any chapter in American history more dramatic than that of the Northwest from the time of Lewis and Clark to the tragic defeat of Chief Joseph in 1877? Heroic - and not so heroic -characters abound: explorers, fur traders, miners, settlers, missionaries, ranchers, Indian chiefs and their tribespeople. Now, when interest in Lewis and Clark and the American Northwest has never been higher, comes the first complete and unabridged paperback edition of Alvin Josephy's masterwork.

From Hitler's rise to power to the Japanese surrender on the deck of the Missouri in 1945, World War II is brought into sharp focus in this dramatic book. Over a third of World War II consists of eyewitness accounts, as Sulzberger emphasizes the people involved in this historic event--the leaders, the victims, and the fighters.

Few books have so firmly established their place in American literature as The Education of Henry Adams. When it was first published in 1918, it became an instant bestseller and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. More than eighty years later, in an age of self-reflection and exhaustive memoirs, The Education still stands as perhaps the greatest American autobiography. The son of a diplomat, the grandson and great-grandson of two American presidents, a man of extraordinary gifts and learning in his own right, Henry Adams recounts his life from his birth in 1838 and upbringing as a Boston Brahmin, through the Civil War, the nation's industrial expansion, and its emergence as a world power. In the process, he gives us a brilliant history of a changing country as well as a thoughtful, humane, often tender exploration of himself. From the original publisher, this edition of The Education of Henry Adams, newly introduced by Donald Hall, celebrates and honors this classic work on what it means to be an American.

In this single indispensable volume, one of America’s ranking scholars combines a life’s work of research and teaching with the art of lively narration. Both authoriatative and beautifully told, THE MIDDLE AGES is the full story of the thousand years between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance — a time that saw the rise of kings and emperors, the flowering of knighthood, the development of Europe, the increasing power of the Church, and the advent of the middle class. With exceptional grace and wit, Morris Bishop vividly reconstructs this distinctive era of European history in a work that will inform and delight scholars and general readers alike.