In the late 1800s, the city of Austin, Texas was on the cusp of emerging from an isolated western outpost into a truly cosmopolitan metropolis. But beginning in December 1884, Austin was terrorized by someone equally as vicious and, in some ways, far more diabolical than London's infamous Jack the Ripper. For almost exactly one year, the Midnight Assassin crisscrossed the entire city, striking on moonlit nights, using axes, knives and long steel rods...

This blend of authoritative historic overview and human interest stories recounts one of the most important eras in American history This educational activity book introduces young readers to the Industrial Revolution through the people, places, and inventions of the time, from the incredibly wealthy Rockefellers and Carnegies and the dingy and dangerous factories of the day to the creation of new forms of transportation and communication. By...

"The story of George Ferris, inventor of the iconic Ferris Wheel"-- "The World's Fair in Chicago, 1893, was to be a spectacular event: architects, musicians, artists, and inventors worked on special exhibits to display the glories of their countries. But the Fair's planners wanted something really special, something on the scale of the Eiffel Tower, which had been constructed for France's fair three years earlier. At last, engineer George Ferris...

A portrait of nineteenth-century conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker describes their rise from savvy side-show celebrities to wealthy Southern gentry and discusses how their experiences reflected America's historical penchant for objectifying differences. "With wry humor, Shakespearean profundity, and trenchant insight, Yunte Huang brings to life the story of America's most famous nineteenth-century Siamese twins. Nearly a decade after his triumphant...

Monson shares the stories of twelve women who heard the call to settle the west and came from all points of the globe to begin their journey. As a slave, Clara watched helpless as her husband and children were sold, only to be reunited with her youngest daughter six decades later. Charlotte hid her gender to escape a life of poverty and became the greatest stagecoach driver that ever lived. A Native American, Gertrude fought to give her people a voice...

"Did the Great Chicago Fire really start after a cow kicked over a lantern in a barn? Find out the truth in this addition to the What Was? series. On Sunday, October 8, 1871, a fire started on the south side of Chicago. A long drought made the neighborhood go up in flames. And practically everything that could go wrong did. Firemen first went to the wrong location. Fierce winds helped the blaze jump the Chicago River twice. The Chicago Waterworks...

Publisher Annotation: An award-winning historian shows how girls who found self-understanding in the natural world became women who changed America. Norton short series, 192pp., 30K

As part of the Treaty of Paris, in which Great Britain recognized the new United States of America, Britain ceded the land that comprised the immense Northwest Territory, a wilderness empire northwest of the Ohio River containing the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. A Massachusetts minister named Manasseh Cutler was instrumental in opening this vast territory to veterans of the Revolutionary War and their families...

When the epic story of the suffrage movement in the United States is told, the most familiar leaders, speakers at meetings, and participants in marches written about or pictured are generally white. Dionne shows that the real story isn't monochromatic. Women of color, especially African American women, were fighting for their right to vote and to be treated as full, equal citizens of the United States. They had to overcome deep, exclusionary racial...

"In The War That Forged a Nation, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James McPherson considers why the Civil War remains so deeply and firmly embedded within our national consciousness. The drama and tragedy of the war, from its scope and size--an estimated death toll of 750,000, not including civilians--to the nearly mythical individuals involved--Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Frederick Douglass, Clara Barton, Stonewall Jackson...