As we approach the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 2004, attention will inevitably turn to the nineteenth-century explorers who risked life and limb to interpret the natural history of the American West. Beginning with Meriwether Lewis and his discovery of the bitterroot, the goal of most explorers was not merely to find an adequate route to the Pacific, but also to comment on the state of the region's ecology and its suitability for agriculture, and, of course, to collect plant specimens. In this book, Williams follows the trail of over a dozen explorers who "botanized" the Rocky Mountains, and who, by the end of the nineteenth century, became increasingly convinced that the flora of the American West was distinctive. The sheer wonder of discover, which is not lost on Williams or his subjects, was best captured by botanist Edwin James in 1820 as he emerged above timberline in Colorado to come upon "a region of astonishing beauty."

This publication comprises the 170 letters written by the Abbe Dominique Chaix to Dr Dominique Villars between 1772 and 1799, when they were collaborating on the publication of the first flora for the old province of Dauphine. The letters reveal the uncertainties of plant classification in the late-18th century, but, more generally, the penetration of the Enlightenment into a remote, alpine region of France. Both botanists were of recent peasant origin, invading, albeit deferentially, an intellectual field, traditionally the monopoly of their social betters. The letters also document the enthusiasms, anxieties, and perils of rural clerical life during the French Revolution, and give occasional evidence about the deforestation of the mountains.

With so much written about the actual battle at the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876, Roger L. Williams has now compiled a wealth of data concerning the men of the 7th Cavalry at the time of the engagement. "Military Register of Custer's Last Command" presents for the first time the complete military history of every enlisted man on the regimental rolls, with particular attention devoted to the well-known campaigns from the Washita to Wounded Knee.

Williams has culled a vast amount of primary-source material, much of it never before published, to shed new light on Custer's forces and provide previously unknown names for several troopers. As a reference for future historians, the book includes for the first time the 400-plus pension-file and personal-file numbers for Custer's troops. The volume also offers new information on Custer himself and on the civilian mule-packers and American Indian scouts who accompanied the expedition.

As the first in-depth analysis of the statistics related to the battle, "Military Register of Custer's Last Command" is the most extensive work available on the 7th Cavalry. With its exhaustive bibliography, it will stand as a definitive resource for historians and enthusiasts and a tribute to all enlisted soldiers on the western frontier.

The dialogue is Lucky having flashbacks of his life. There is tragedy and inspiration, this story has sex and secrets, trauma and illustrations. Lucky didn't know if he would make it to ten years old, but as you read on, he does it step by step right before your eyes. Lucky becomes a man by six years old, facing a choice to live or die. Lucky chooses to live, so what went wrong? Oh don't get his family wrong they all loved lucky, but no one was there for him. He still wishes someone would give him a hug. Lucky has run away about tree times to go looking for his mother or his auntie. Out of those three times he found his aunt at around one or two a.m. Lucky is too scared to ring the bell. Lucky falls asleep in Mt. Morris Park, Lucky didn't care, a police car was shining a flashlight in his face. He told the policeman that he was too scared to ring the bell. The policeman went and rang the bell for lucky, telling him "Don't do that again, son." I said okay. Now Lucky is happy, he is with his auntie and Uncle Freddie. Another time Lucky ran away because a male friend of his older cousin spanked him. Lucky runs down the stairs and hides under the stairs. He was lonely and wished he could see where his mother or auntie was at.

The Origins of Federal Support for Higher Education revises the traditional interpretation of the land-grant college movement, whose institutions were brought into being by the 1862 Morrill Act to provide for "the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes." Rather than being the inevitable consequence of the unfolding dynamic of institutional and socioeconomic forces, Williams argues, it was the active intervention and initiative of a handful of educational leaders that secured the colleges' future--above all, the activities of George W. Atherton.

For nearly three decades, Atherton, who was the seventh president of the Pennsylvania State University, worked to secure consistent federal financial support for the colleges, which in their early years received little assistance from the states they were designed to benefit. He also helped to develop the institutions as comprehensive "national" universities grounded in the liberal arts and sciences--a conception that countered the prevailing view of the colleges as mainly agricultural schools.

Atherton became the prime mover in the campaign to enact the 1887 Hatch Act, which encouraged the establishment of agricultural experiment stations at land-grant colleges. The act marked the federal government's first effort to provide continuous funding to research units associated with higher education institutions. At the same times, Atherton played a key role in the formation of the first association of such institutions: The Association of American Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations. It was the Association that provided the critical mass needed to lobby Congress successively and to approach the many opportunities and threats the land-grant colleges faced during the 1885-1906 period.

Atherton was also deeply involved in the campaign for the Morrill Act of 1890, which provided long-sought annual appropriations to land-grant colleges for a broad range of academic programs and encouraged steady growth in state support during the 1890s.

Roger Williams traces the motives and tactics behind a series of laws that made the federal government irreversibly committed to funding higher education and scientific research and provides rich new insights into the complexities, polarities, and inherent contradictions of the history of the American land-grant movement.