A Humorous Account of America's Past

by Richard T. Stanley

2009 · iUniverse

America was discovered by a few Norwegians who got lost while sailing to Greenland. Had they established a permanent settlement, America might be the United States of Wine-Land. In 1492, Columbus gave the men of San Salvador shiney glass beads, and their women gave his crew syphillus. Who took advantage of whom? If not for the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, America today would likely be Spanish and Catholic. Early English explorers were pirates of the Caribbean, and early American colonists were illegal immigrants. The first English colony in America was a lot like Gongral Motore, and the husband of Pocahontas was responsible for lung cancer and slavery in the south. More recently, Teddy Roosevelt and his "Rough Riders" had to run up San Juan Hill--someone forgot to transport their horses! So how did America become the greatest nation on earth? Read my book.

Hospitable England in the Seventies

by Richard Henry Dana

1921

Diary entries from Dana visit to England, 1875-1876.

Two Years Before the Mast

by Richard Henry Dana

1911

Richard Henry Dana (1815-1882) of Boston left his studies at Harvard in 1834 in the hope that a sea voyage would aid his failing eyesight. He shipped out of Boston as a common seaman on board the brig Pilgrim bound for the Pacific, and returned to Massachusetts two years later. Completing his education, Dana became a leader of the American bar, an expert on maritime law, and a life-long advocate of the rights of the merchant seamen he had come to know on the Pilgrim and other vessels. Two years before the mast (1911) is based on the diary Dana kept while at sea. First published in 1841, it is one of America's most famous accounts of life at sea. It contains a rare and detailed account of life on the California coast a decade before the Gold Rush revolutionized the region's culture and society. Dana chronicles stops at the ports of Monterey, San Pedro, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Santa Clara. He describes the lives of sailors in the ports and their work of hide-curing on the beaches, and he gives close attention to the daily life of the peoples of California: Hispanic, Native American, and European. The edition of the book reproduced here includes the chapter "Twenty-four Years After" prepared by Dana to accompany the "author's" edition published in 1869 as well as his son's "Seventy-six Years After," an appendix prepared in 1911.

The Cowboy Encyclopedia

by Richard W. Slatta

1996 · W. W. Norton & Company

Over 450 entries provide information on cowboy history, culture, and myth of both North and South America.