During the mid-nineteenth century, a quarter of a million travelers-men, women, and children-followed the "road across the plains" to gold rush California. This magnificent chronicle-the second installment of Will Bagley's sweeping Overland West series-captures the danger, excitement, and heartbreak of America's first great rush for riches and its enduring consequences. With narrative scope and detail unmatched by earlier histories, With Golden Visions Bright Before Them retells this classic American saga through the voices of the people whose eyewitness testimonies vividly evoke the most dramatic era of westward migration. Traditional histories of the overland roads paint the gold rush migration as a heroic epic of progress that opened new lands and a continental treasure house for the advancement of civilization. Yet, according to Bagley, the transformation of the American West during this period is more complex and contentious than legend pretends. The gold rush epoch witnessed untold suffering and sacrifice, and the trails and their trials were enough to make many people turn back. For America's Native peoples, the effect of the massive migration was no less than ruinous. The impact that tens of thousands of intruders had on Native peoples and their homelands is at the center of this story, not on its margins. Beautifully written and richly illustrated with photographs and maps, With Golden Visions Bright Before Them continues the saga that began with Bagley's highly acclaimed, award-winning So Rugged and Mountainous: Blazing the Trails to Oregon and California, 1812-1848, hailed by critics as a classic of western history.

This further volume in this series, looking at the changing patterns of rail freight from 1968 to the present day, examines the gradual shift from wagonload to trainload operation, the cull of public goods depots and small private sidings and the Speedlink years, together with details of wagon types and terminal facilities, and many charts, diagrams and plans.

The most significant debate in global economic history over the past twenty years has dealt with the Great Divergence, the economic gap between different parts of the world. Thus far, this debate has focused on China, India and north-western Europe, particularly Great Britain. This book shifts the focus to ask how Japan became the only non-western county that managed, at least partially, to modernize its economy and start to industrialize in the 19th century. Using a range of empirical data, Peer Vries analyses the role of the state in Japan's economic growth from the Meiji Restoration to World War II, and asks whether Japan's economic success can be attributed to the rise of state power. Asserting that the state's involvement was fundamental in Japan's economic 'catching up', he demonstrates how this was built on legacies from the previous Tokugawa period. In this book, Vries deepens our understanding of the Great Divergence in global history by re-examining how Japan developed and modernized against the odds.

Forbidding canyons, raging rapids and menacing rocks--this was the daily challenge that faced whitewater men who worked the wild rivers and creeks to bring freight and supplies to northern BC in the years before the Grand Trunk Railway. In particular, the Grand Canyon of British Columbia's Fraser River was infamous for swallowing at least 200 luckless occupants of rafts and small craft between the years 1862-1921. "Sternwheelers and Canyon Cats: Whitewater Freighting on the Upper Fraser" is the story of the "Canyon Cats" who made their living running the Grand Canyon and other equally dangerous waterways; men such as George Williams, affectionately known to his peers as "The Wizard of the River," and Frank Freeman, a powder expert who tamed the wildest water by blowing out many of the worst boulders and logjams thereby allowing safer passage for the scows, sternwheelers, rafts and boats that travelled the murky river.
A total of twelve steamers worked the upper Fraser River during the period 1862-1921 and the dangers faced by these vessels and their steel-nerved captains are legend. It was a perilous existence hauling supplies to the isolated construction camps of the GTP Railroad and in retrospect it seems ironic that these steamers were made obsolete by this same railway upon its completion. "Sternwheelers and Canyon Cats: Whitewater Freighting on the Upper Fraser" is a chronicle of the men whose feats almost defy belief and whose contribution to BC history has gone long unrecognized.

For centuries lime was an essential ingredient in many aspects of life and work - such as farming, building and manufacturing - and the kilns in which lime was produced were a familiar sight across the country, not just in areas where limestone naturally occurred. The importance given to the industry is illustrated by the number of painters, notably Turner and Girtin, who chose to paint lime kilns either as the main focus or as an incidental element, and by the number of literary figures who brought lime burning into their novels. Lime Kilns: History and Heritage starts by discussing the uses and importance of lime, and how it has been portrayed artistically, then describes how lime kilns changed over time, from simple clamp kilns through small farmers' and estate field kilns to large commercially operated kilns. It is illustrated with contemporary and modern photographs, paintings and plans drawing on examples from across Britain. David Johnson has published and lectured widely on lime burning and is regarded as an authority on the subject.

It is 1615. Shakespeare is still alive and the country is at peace. James 1 of England (James VI of Scotland) has been on the throne since the childless Elisabeth I died in 1603. He claimed the throne by virtue of the fact that he was direct in line of descent from Henry VII, his great-grandfather. The English Navy, which had been founded as a standing force by Henry VIII and had defended the country from several Spanish Armadas during the Elisabethan era, had been neglected. It needed rebuilding and this meant new ships and plenty of stout English (and Welsh) oak. Luckily for James, one of his closest advisors was an admiral, Sir Robert Mansell, who having given up his naval career and become an industrialist and entrepreneur (as well as a Member of Parliament), saw an opportunity to secure his new-found business of coal mining and glass-making. Mansell applied to the King to grant him a patent forbidding the use of timber for smelting (mainly iron and glass) and on 23 May 1615 the papers were signed. Thus, with the stroke of his quill, the king started the industrial revolution that turned the British Isles from an agrarian economy, based upon wool, water power and wind power, to one where coal and steam brought about unimaginable developments in trade and industry. It was following the signing of the 1615 patent that glassmaking in Britain went from a peripatetic, nomadic business which chased the fuel from clearing to clearing in the dwindling forests, to one where the fuel travelled to the kilns. By virtue of the fact that kilns didn't have to move as the wood ran out, they could be bigger and better, brick-built with chimneys and flues, which made the glass stronger and more durable. It was into this exciting, changing world of glassmaking that Sir Kenelm Digby developed his strong verre Anglais bottles which enabled the production of (lightly) sparkling bottle-fermented ciders and wines. The Knight who invented Champagne is the story of King James I, Admiral Sir Robert Mansell and Sir Kenelm Digby and the part they played between 1615 and 1630 in revolutionising the production of glass. The changes they helped bring about led to the development and production of stronger glass that could be used for making bottles that would withstand the pressure caused by a secondary-fermentation in the bottle. By 1662 we know that it was common practice by cidermakers, vintners and coopers to add raisins and sugar to wine and cider at bottling to start a secondary fermentation in the bottle. All of this happened several years before Dom Perignon, often credited with 'inventing Champagne', took up his position as cellarer at the Abbaye Saint-Pierre d'Hautvillers.

An epic World War II story of valor, sacrifice, and the Rangers who led the way to victory in EuropeIt is said that the right man in the right place at the right time can make the difference between victory and defeat. This is the dramatic story of sixty-eight soldiers of the U.S. Army's 2nd Ranger Battalion, D Company- Dog Company- who made that difference, time and again.From D-Day, when German guns atop Pointe du Hoc threatened the Allied landings and the men of Dog Company scaled the ninety-foot cliffs to destroy them to the thickly forested slopes of Hill 400, in Germany's Hurtgen Forest, where the Rangers launched a desperate bayonet charge across an open field, captured the crucial hill, and held it against all odds. In each battle, the men of Dog Company made the difference. Dog Company is their unforgettable story- thoroughly researched and vividly told by acclaimed combat historian Patrick K. O'Donnell- a story of extraordinary bravery, courage, and determination. America had many heroes in World War II, but few can say that, but for them, the course of the war may have been very different. The right men, in the right place, at the right time- Dog Company.

Edward ""Ed"" Schieffelin (1847-1897) was the epitome of the American frontiersman. A former Indian scout, he discovered what would become known as the legendary Tombstone, Arizona, silver lode in 1877. His search for wealth followed a path well-trod by thousands who journeyed west in the mid to late nineteenth century to try their luck in mining country. But unlike typical prospectors who spent decades futilely panning for gold, Schieffelin led an epic life of wealth and adventure. In Portrait of a Prospector, historian R. Bruce Craig pieces together the colorful memoirs and oral histories of this singular individual to tell Schieffelin's story in his own words. Craig places the prospector's family background and times into context in an engaging introduction, then opens Schieffelin's story with the frontiersman's accounts of his first prospecting attempts at ten years old, his flight from home at twelve to search for gold, and his initial wanderings in California, Nevada, and Utah. In direct, unsentimental prose, Schieffelin describes his expedition into Arizona Territory, where army scouts assured him that he ""would find no rock . . . but his own tombstone."" Unlike many prospectors who simply panned for gold, Schieffelin took on wealthy partners who invested the enormous funds needed for hard rock mining. He and his co-investors in the Tombstone claim became millionaires. Restless in his newfound life of wealth and leisure, Schieffelin soon returned to exploration. Upon his early death in Oregon he left behind a new strike, the location of which remains a mystery. Collecting the words of an exceptional figure who embodied the western frontier, Craig offers readers insight into the mentality of prospector-adventurers during an age of discovery and of limitless potential. Portrait of a Prospector is highly recommended for undergraduate western history survey courses.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Soviet philologist, literary dissident, and university professor Viktor Duvakin made it his mission to interview the members of the artistic avant-garde who had survived the Russian Revolution, Stalin's purges, and the Second World War. Based on archival materials held at the Moscow State University Library, Russian Modernism in the Memories of the Survivors catalogues six interviews conducted by Duvakin. The interviewees talk about their most intimate life experiences and give personal accounts of their interactions with famous writers and artists such as Vsevolod Meyerhold, Sergei Eisenstein, and Marina Tsvetaeva. They offer insights into the world of Russian emigrants in Prague and Paris, the uprising against the Communist government, what it was like to work at the United Nations after the Second World War, and other important aspects of life in the Soviet Union and Europe during the first half of the twentieth century. Archival photographs, as well as hundreds of annotations to the text, are included to help readers understand the historical and cultural context of the interviews. The unique and previously unpublished materials in Russian Modernism in the Memories of the Survivors will be of great interest to anyone who wants to learn more about this fascinating period in Soviet history.

International Arms Trade has always been a powerful and multi-functional constituent of world politics and international diplomacy. Sending military advisors abroad and promoting arms sales, each legitimizing and supporting the other, became indispensable tools of alliance-making starting from the eve of the First World War until today. To the German Empire, as a relative latecomer to imperialistic rivalry in the struggle for colonies around the word in the late 19th century, arms exports performed a decisive service in stimulating and strengthening the German military-based expansionist economic foreign policy and provided effective tools to create new alliances around the globe. Therefore, from the outset, the German armament firms' marketing and sales operations to the global arms market but especially to the Ottoman Empire, under the rule of Sultan Abdulhamid II, were openly and strongly supported by Kaiser Wilhelm II, Bismarck and the other decision-makers in German Foreign Policy. Based on extensive multinational archival research in Germany, Turkey, Britain and the United States, Arming the Sultan explores the decisive impact of arms exports on the formation and stimulation of Germany's expansionist foreign economic policy towards the Ottoman Empire. Making an important contribution to current scholarship on the political economy of the international arms trade, Yorulmaz's innovative book Arming the Sultan reveals that arms exports, specifically under the shadow of personal diplomacy, proved to be an indispensable and integral part of Germany's foreign economic policy during the period leading up to WW1.

The remote Kimberley region of Western Australia has a rich history and unique geography. In the 1960s De Beers, the world's largest diamond company, sent gem-hunters to the area but they came away empty-handed. It was a vast region to survey, and they'd overlooked something vital. A few years later, a team of Australian geologists with a tiny budget searched for even tinier mineral clues. Those clues led them to the earth's largest diamond deposit and the world's richest source of rare pink diamonds. Based on in-depth research and interviews-including with Alan King Jones, Bill Leslie and 'the father of Australian diamonds', Ewen Tyler-Argyle: The Impossible Story of Australian Diamonds details the almost overwhelming challenges with realising a diamond mining venture in Australia, shows how these obstacles were overcome, and explores the mine's impact and legacy.

The extraction of raw turpentine and tar from the southern longleaf pine-along with the manufacture of derivative products such as spirits of turpentine and rosin-constitutes what was once the largest industry in North Carolina and one of the most important in the South: naval stores production. In a pathbreaking study that seamlessly weaves together business, environmental, labor, and social history, Robert B. Outland III offers the first complete account of this sizable though little-understood sector of the southern economy. Outland traces the South's naval stores industry from its colonial origins to the mid-twentieth century, when it was supplanted by the rising chemicals industry. A horror for workers and a scourge to the Southeast's pine forests, the methods and consequences of this expansive enterprise remained virtually unchanged for more than two centuries. With its exacting attention to detail and exhaustive research, Tapping the Pines is an essential volume for anyone interested in the piney woods South.

The Lake District mountains are full of mineral veins. Many have been discovered and worked over the past 1,000 years. Many still remain to be discovered. The last working metal-ore mine in the Lake District, the Force Crag Mine, closed in 1986. It is believed that mining commenced at Force Crag during the fifteenth century. Today, remains of this past extensive industry lie abandoned on the mountainsides and are now considered to be an iconic reflection of the Lake District's industrial past. They blend in well with other iconic 'industrial' structures such as stone walls, drove roads and fell farms that exist throughout the district. For many years now industrial historians have studied these workings and also the lives of the skilled miners who spent their careers high on Lake District mountainsides, working the veins. Concern for the loss of many of these ancient sites has developed over recent years. In 1989 a report produced by local industrial archaeologists highlighted a list of twenty-seven former mining sites on the fells considered to be of such exceptional importance to the history of the Lake District communities that they should be given future protection. Many of these sites have been included in this definitive illustrated guide.

Now widely recognized as a novelist and essayist, working-class writer Ethel Carnie Holdsworth first published as a poet. The three books collected here demonstrate her growth in this genre from her early poems, written when she worked full time in the mill, to her last book of poetry, Voices of Womanhood, which realizes her mature insights into the lives of working-class women. Carnie Holdsworth's poetry provides both a unique perspective on British life in the early twentieth century and an invaluable testament to the experiences of her gender and class.

Militant Minority tells the compelling story of British Columbia workers who sustained a left tradition during the bleakest days of the Cold War. Through their continuing activism on issues from the politics of timber licenses to global questions of war and peace, these workers bridged the transition from an Old to a New Left.

In the late 1950s, half of B.C.'s workers belonged to unions, but the promise of postwar collective bargaining spawned disillusionment tied to inflation and automation. A new working class that was educated, white collar, and increasingly rebellious shifted the locus of activism from the Communist Party and Co-operative Commonwealth Federation to the newly formed New Democratic Party, which was elected in 1972. Grounded in archival research and oral history, Militant Minority provides a valuable case study of one of the most organized and independent working classes in North America, during a period of ideological tension and unprecedented material advance.

Though often seen as the smaller twin of Manchester, Salford - its neighbour across the River Irwell - boasts a rich industrial heritage. Cotton and silk spinning and weaving in local mills attracted an influx of families and provided Salford with a strong economy. However, it was the completion of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894 that triggered the town's development as a major inland port, and Salford expanded rapidly from a small market town into a major industrial metropolis. The population rose from 12,000 in 1812 to 70,244 within thirty years. By the end of the nineteenth century it had increased to 220,000, mostly housed in low-quality and overcrowded Victorian terraces, leading to chronic social deprivation. Salford at Work explores the life of Salford and its people, from pre-industrial beginnings through to the present day. In a fascinating series of contemporary photographs and illustrations, it takes us through the dramatic rise and fall of the textile industry and the town's role as a major inland port, the trauma of high unemployment between the wars, post-war industrial decline and into the twenty-first century, showing how this 'Dirty Old Town' has successfully transformed itself from one of the country's most deprived areas into a thriving post-industrial city.