Fritz demonstrates how a series of unrelated events converged to make the Lewis and Clark expedition—and America's dream of westward expansion—a reality. Maps guide the reader along the routes taken by Lewis and Clark, and a detailed timeline gives readers an easy-to-use resource for looking up important dates and events. Biographical sketches of major figures conclude the work. An extensive bibliography and index make this an ideal first stop for anybody interested in learning more about this truly remarkable expedition. William Clark and Meriwether Lewis are widely credited with exploring the American West and paving the way for settlement. Yet if Thomas Jefferson's bid for president in 1800 had failed, the expedition probably would not have ventured west. Furthermore, if Napoleon had not been dealt a severe blow by a Haitian slave rebellion, France might never have sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States. The expedition also relied heavily on the goodwill of Native Americans peopling the explored territory. Fritz demonstrates how a series of unrelated events converged to make the Lewis and Clark expedition—and America's dream of westward expansion—a reality. Maps guide the reader along the routes taken by Lewis and Clark, and a detailed timeline gives readers an easy-to-use resource for looking up important dates and events. Biographical sketches of major figures conclude the work. An extensive bibliography and index make this an ideal first stop for anybody interested in learning more about this truly remarkable expedition.

La emigracion ilegal es un fenomeno que se ponde de manifiesto en la mayoria de los paises del tercer mundo. Como es conocido por todos, Cuba es uno de los paises desde donde salen cientos de emigrantes ilegales (llamados balseros) en busca del territorio estadounidense a traves de las peligrosas aguas del Estrecho de la Florida y a traves del extenso Mar Caribe.

En el intento de lograr sus objetivos, fundamentalmente economicos y de libertad, muchos logran coronar, pero tambien muchos desaparecen de manera lamentable en las profundidades de los mares.

En Escape al Caribe, su autor y protagonista en esta historia, es uno de los tantos cubanos que han utilizado el mar como via de escape. Aqui se narra la peligrosa travesia que el ralizo, conjuntamente con once de sus compatriotas, cruzando el Mar Caribe en una precaria embarcacion y luego atravesando los paises centroamericanos hasta llegar a Estados Unidos, enfrentandose de manera desafiante a infinidades de peligros que solamente se presentan en situaciones como esta."

During the course of his short but extraordinary life, John Ledyard (1751-1789) came in contact with some of the most remarkable figures of his era: the British explorer Captain James Cook, American financier Robert Morris, Revolutionary naval commander John Paul Jones, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and others. Ledyard lived and traveled in remarkable places as well, journeying from the New England backcountry to Tahiti, Hawaii, the American Northwest coast, Alaska, and the Russian Far East. In this engaging biography, the historian Edward Gray offers not only a full account of Ledyard's eventful life but also an illuminating view of the late eighteenth-century world in which he lived.
Ledyard was both a product of empire and an agent in its creation, Gray shows, and through this adventurer's life it is possible to discern the many ways empire shaped the lives of nations, peoples, and individuals in the era of the American Revolution, the world's first modern revolt against empire.

Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: 1804-1806; Part 1 & 2 Volume 4

Bradley Carlson's muscular dystrophy causes brutal leg cramps that leave him crumpled on the floor. He can't climb stairs and curbs, and sometimes he can't even move.

But none of that stopped him from putting his best foot forward and walking through his home state of Wisconsin. He walked through 595 incorporated cities, trekking from Lake Michigan to the mighty Mississippi.

During his journey, he experienced his share of falls and challenges, but he also met incredible people, enjoyed special moments, and witnessed the breathtaking beauty of his home state, including waterfalls, desert-like dunes along Lake Michigan, and picturesque mountaintops and forest views.

Bradley didn't set out on this journey to raise money or hand out brochures. He simply did it to show himself and others that someone with muscular dystrophy can accomplish great things.

You'll laugh, cry, meet new friends, and discover new places in this inspirational memoir about one man's refusal to give up while seeing "Wisconsin 1 Step at a Time."

Thrill of the Rookie chronicles the life of Osaze Ehigiator, beginning in Nigeria, a nation plagued with corruption and incessant coup, and how the author escaped to the USA. The tale then follows his difficult years in the States and his experiences with the underside of Americans who operate under different sets of codes called "The Eleventh Commandments" before pulling himself up by the bootstraps and finding success.

This is a book unlike any other before it. It is an autobiography with a twist to it-memoir. Instead of concentrating on me and my experience, lots of focus is placed on taking you through the entire journey I have been through and let you experience these things on your own without physically going through them. You get the full benefits of the experiments without actually been used as a specimen. You enjoy the thrills, humors and treats without feeling any of the pains or face the challenges. This book now dubbed the immigrants bible is also being defined as an adventure to a comic planet, full of excitements, challenges and humors.

3 independents book reviews

1: Ehigiator remains largely on point in his message that the American dream is attainable but must be appreciated and nurtured.......Engaging -Kirkus Review

2: A highly readable book----Ehigiator's talent for story telling is evident -BlueInk Review,

3: An intense, personal story of what it takes to embrace the American dream. Told with an intoxicating blend of humility, earnestness, and absurdity. Clarion Review- 4 stars out of 5.

The enigmatic and powerful Tlacaelel (1398-1487), wrote annalist Chimalpahin, was ""the beginning and origin"" of the Mexica monarchy in fifteenth-century Mesoamerica. Brother of the first Moteuczoma, Tlacaelel would become ""the most powerful, feared, and esteemed man of all that the world had seen up to that time."" But this outsize figure of Aztec history has also long been shrouded in mystery. In Tlacaelel Remembered, the first biography of the Mexica nobleman, Susan Schroeder searches out the truth about his life and legacy. A century after Tlacaelel's death, in the wake of the conquistadors, Spaniards and natives recorded the customs, histories, and language of the Nahua, or Aztec, people. Three of these chroniclers - fray Diego Duran, don Hernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, and especially don Domingo de San Anton Munon Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin - wrote of Tlacaelel. But the inaccessibility of Chimalpahin's annals has meant that for centuries of Aztec history, Tlacaelel has appeared, if at all, as a myth. Working from Chimalpahin's newly available writings and exploring connections and variances in other source materials, Schroeder draws the clearest possible portrait of Tlacaelel, revealing him as the architect of the Aztec empire's political power and its military might - a politician on par with Machiavelli. As the advisor to five Mexica rulers, Tlacaelel shaped the organization of the Mexica state and broadened the reach of its empire - feats typically accomplished with the spread of warfare, human sacrifice, and cannibalism. In the annals, he is considered the ""second king"" to the rulers who built the empire, and is given the title ""Cihuacoatl,"" used for the office of president and judge. As Schroeder traces Tlacaelel through the annals, she also examines how his story was transmitted and transformed in later histories. The resulting work is the most complete and comprehensive account ever given of this significant figure in Mesoamerican history.

Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition: 1804-1806; Part 1 & 2 Volume 1

Commerce meets conquest in this swashbuckling story of the six merchant-adventurers who built the modern world

It was an era when monopoly trading companies were the unofficial agents of European expansion, controlling vast numbers of people and huge tracts of land, and taking on governmental and military functions. They managed their territories as business interests, treating their subjects as employees, customers, or competitors. The leaders of these trading enterprises exercised virtually unaccountable, dictatorial political power over millions of people.

The merchant kings of the Age of Heroic Commerce were a rogue's gallery of larger-than-life men who, for a couple hundred years, expanded their far-flung commercial enterprises over a sizable portion of the world. They include Jan Pieterszoon Coen, the violent and autocratic pioneer of the Dutch East India Company; Peter Stuyvesant, the one-legged governor of the Dutch West India Company, whose narrow-minded approach lost Manhattan to the British; Robert Clive, who rose from company clerk to become head of the British East India Company and one of the wealthiest men in Britain; Alexandr Baranov of the Russian American Company; Cecil Rhodes, founder of De Beers and Rhodesia; and George Simpson, the "Little Emperor" of the Hudson's Bay Company, who was chauffeured about his vast fur domain in a giant canoe, exhorting his voyageurs to paddle harder so he could set speed records."Merchant Kings" looks at the rise and fall of company rule in the centuries before colonialism, when nations belatedly assumed responsibility for their commercial enterprises. A blend of biography, corporate history, and colonial history, this book offers a panoramic, new perspective on the enormous cultural, political, and social legacies, good and bad, of this first period of unfettered globalization.

This compelling, richly illustrated work recounts the African journeys of the intrepid Dutch traveller Alexine Tinne (1835-1869). Heiress to a huge fortune -she was at the time the richest woman in the country - and bored with the royal court intrigues in The Hague, Tinne left for Egypt and Sudan accompanied by her mother Henriette Tinne-Van Capellen, ultimately settling in Khartoum. On her expedition in 1862-64, Tinne was joined by the German zoologist Theodor von Heuglin: the whole party set out for the as yet uncharted Bahr-el-Ghazal, hoping to explore that region and ascertain how far westward the Nile basin extended. After four years of research in the Tinne archives, including hitherto unknown correspondence, photos and other documents, Willink presents a dramatic account of Tinne's eventful expedition, casting new light on the events which ultimately ended with Tinne's murder, most likely by the tribesmen who believed there was gold hidden in her water tanks. In addition, Willink casts a new light on the excitement and the dangers of travel in colonial Africa's uncharted territories before and after Tinne's enterprise, revealing to what extent her gruesome death had been foreshadowed in the earlier years and how it would reverberate in the years to come. An accomplished photographer and collector of artefacts, Tinne left a wealth of material from her travels, and many items are reproduced here in colour, bearing testimony to her fascination with Africa.

Before the emergence of anthropology around the middle of the nineteenth century, there was no ethnography as such. But the discipline owes its formation to certain strands that go back into the remoter past of the ancient world, as far back as Homeric epic, and range over such themes as the Greek views of non-Greeks and indeed of the boundaries of what it is to be human. These classical structural polarities have provided an enduring interpretative framework for configuring the 'other' in very different societies and places. Reaching across a remarkable time span, Mason's approach does not attempt a unified narrative, but uses case studies from the ancient world, the early modern era and the Enlightenment, many of them related to the difficulties of comprehending the cultures of the New World, to pinpoint startling continuities and changes. In this way, Mason reveals 'embedded ethnographies' in the works of a diverse set of writers, from giants of their age such as Sextus Empiricus, Columbus, Montaigne, the Marquis de Sade and Goethe, to little-known authors of the sixteenth century such as Jan Huygen van Linschoten (tales of sex and drugs in Goa) and Adriaen Coenen (encountering Eskimos in The Hague). Drawing his conclusions from a wealth of sources, the author deftly moves from travellers' accounts, encyclopaedias, cosmographies and natural history compilations, to literary works of fiction, translating them from seven languages. Many are presented here to English readers for the first time. Whether non-European peoples are demonized or idealized, the author asks, can any trace of a native voice still be found in these European texts? An outstanding work by a scholar with an eye for extraordinary case studies and unexpected cultural connections, which contribute to opening up new paths of research and reinvigorate the field. Francisco Bethencourt - Charles Boxer Professor of History, King's College London The Ways of the World is an elegant, lucid, exemplary piece of intellectual history by an author who is as much at home in philosophy and literary criticism as he is in anthropology and history. Peter Burke - Emeritus Professor of Cultural History, Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge

In Cold Water immerses the reader in the challenges, sights, sounds, triumphs and disappointments of swimming the English Channel--and one man's fixation on the feat. First conquered in 1875 by Matthew Webb, the choppy, 22-mile Channel presents one of the supreme endurance challenges in all of sports. With nothing but a basic swimsuit, pair of goggles, a swim cap, and a goal, swimmers leave Dover Harbor in England and battle their way through frigid waters, mercurial weather, jellyfish, and unrelenting ship traffic. They swim through sunrises and sunsets powered by sheer will and specially formulated energy feeds. And if physical and mental conditions go their way, they walk out of the water in France. Mike Humphreys has swum the swim several times--and though he's yet to achieve his goal, he's amassed a fascinating book full of personal experiences, history, stories of other Channel swimmers, and lore surrounding the sport. For sports active adherents, armchair swimmers and athletes of every stripe, or even just those fascinated by the challenge of English Channel swimming, In Cold Water makes fascinating and inspiring reading.

In this work, Buschmann incorporates neglected Spanish visions into the European perceptions of the emerging Pacific world. The book argues that Spanish diplomats and intellectuals attempted to create an intellectual link between the Americas and the Pacific Ocean.

Although much has been written about Columbus's life in Italy and Spain, little has been written about his formative years in Portugal. This work is the first book-length analysis of Columbus's stay in Portugal and Madeira from 1476 to 1485 and his later experiences in the Portuguese islands of the Azores and the Madeiras. The work stresses the influence the Portuguese had in educating Columbus about the sea, and it depicts his famous voyage to the New World as a logical sequence of the pioneering voyages of the Portuguese in the North Atlantic and along the West Coast of Africa. The work attempts to sort legend from fact and debunks the many myths about Columbus's stays on the island of Madeira.

This is a study of the manner in which certain mythical notions of the world become accepted as fact. Dathorne shows how particular European concepts such as El Dorado, the Fountain of Youth, a race of Amazons, and monster (including cannibal) images were first associated with the Orient. After the New World encounter they were repositioned to North and South America. The book examines the way in which Arabs and Africans are conscripted into the view of the world and takes an unusual, non-Eurocentric viewpoint of how Africans journeyed to the New World and Europe, participating in, what may be considered, an early stage of world exploration and discovery. The study concludes by looking at European travel literature from the early journeys of St. Brendan, through the Viking voyages and up to Marco Polo and Sir John Mandeville. In all these instances, the encounters seem to justify mythical belief. Dathorne's interest in the subject is both intellectual and passionate since, coming from Guyana, he was very much part of this malformed Weltschmerz.