Sea State

In 1838, the U.S. government launched the largest discovery voyage the Western world had ever seen; six sailing vessels and 346 men bound for the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Four years later, the U.S. Exploring Expedition, or Ex. Ex. as it was known, returned with an astounding array of accomplishments and discoveries: 87,000 miles logged, 280 Pacific islands surveyed, 4,000 zoological specimens collected, including 2,000 new species, and the discovery of the continent of Antarctica.

In 1827 the Royal Navy purchased a Baltimore clipper and renamed her the Black Joke. Assigned to the Preventative Squadron, she patrolled the west coast of Africa and freed 3,692 captives from enslavement. Beloved by seafarers and celebrated by the public, the Black Joke would become the most famous weapon in the campaign for abolition. But in her previous life as the Henriqueta, the Black Joke had been a slave ship. Through the experiences of slavers and abolitionists, captives and crew, Stephen Taylor charts the vessel's extraordinary double life.

*** An American Library Association Notable Children’s Book *** The year is 1777, and America is in danger of losing the Revolutionary War because of the British blockade… Benjamin Franklin is sent to Paris to seek an alliance with France, but how will he ever be able to convince the French that the American battle is worth joining—especially when the French are still licking their wounds from their own loss to the mighty British Navy? Franklin’s only chance to prove the British Navy is not invincible—and that the American colonists are determined to fight to the end—is to put ...

David Henry White, a free Black teenage sailor from Lewes, Delaware, was kidnapped by Captain Raphael Semmes of the Confederate raider Alabama on October 9, 1862, from the Philadelphia-based packet ship Tonawanda. In a best-selling postwar memoir, Semmes falsely described White as a contented slave who remained loyal to the Confederacy. In Kidnapped at Sea, archaeologist Andrew Sillen uses a forensic approach to describe White’s enslavement and demise and illustrates how White’s actual life belies the Lost Cause narrative his captors sought to construct.

The English had long dreamed of colonizing America, especially after Sir Francis Drake brought home Spanish treasure and dramatic tales from his raids in the Caribbean. Ambitions of finding gold and planting a New World colony seemed within reach when, in 1606, Thomas Smythe extended overseas trade with the launch of the Virginia Company. But from the beginning the American enterprise was a disaster.

In its youth, Portland, Oregon, was a bit like a rough-and-ready logging camp with a gritty, hard-punching deep-water port. Lusty lads dallied with hard-eyed beauties in dark alleys, and captains forked over “blood money” to buy men for their crews from shanghai operators. From the seedy waterfront to the notorious North End, Portland's sin sector offered vices packaged in pint glasses and perfumed corsets.

Realm of the Golden Dragon is a sea story. On 17 August 1967, after many years of being home ported in Hawaii, the 180-foot Coast Guard Cutter Basswood set sail for her new home port on Guam in the Marianas Islands. During her travels, she would unleash sixty fun-loving, frolicking, fornicating, fighting, young Coasties on forty-seven Pacific Islands and five Asian Nations. This epic voyage would take them to the hooker bars and short-time hotels of Olongapo in the Philippines, the Vietcong infested bays and rivers of Vietnam, and the vaunted Namenoue Red Light District in Naha, Okinawa. ...

Frederick Jackson Turner was the dean of American historians in his time. He originated, and he and his students popularized, the Frontier Hypothesis of American history: that the primary driving force in the development of American society and politics was the encounter with the frontier, conceived of as a vast area of essentially free land, a seemingly limitless resource available to all comers.

As Jack Lee investigates a series of deadly cases, he encounters murderers, international criminals, and a robber. At the same time, his niece Jenn, an underwater archaeologist studying mermaids, arrives on the island, coinciding with a sudden crime wave. From bank robberies to vandalism to searching a lake with hidden secrets, Jack is determined to solve every case and protect the public. However, when tragedy hits the high school swim team, and someone close to Jack is kidnapped, Jack must find help to close the cases, including assistance from someone with fins, scales, and a long tail. ...

Sticky Buns Across America is the story of one of the four continents and one of the countries Woodland has crossed by bike, this time with patient wife Steph: a tale of riding across small-town America (and occasional bits of Canada, although to Americans that doesn't count). It's not a tale of heroic battling with storms, riots, poison ivy, Americans, and other problems. Instead, sit back and enjoy an eccentric account of encounters made and experiences lived. Plus, it has to be admitted, a lot of sticky buns eaten.

The fundamental message of A Preface to Politics is that statesmanship cannot succeed if it focuses merely on the forms and mechanics of government and the technical development and administration of policy. Political leadership can be successful only if political leaders attune themselves to the human beings they lead, keeping themselves abreast of their wants and needs and the social and cultural movements among them. No political mechanism can function without intelligent, perceptive, and responsive people to make it work.

Get ready to devour America. Adam Richman, the exuberant host of Travel Channel’s Man v. Food and Man v. Food Nation, has made it his business to root out unique dining experiences from coast to coast. Now, he zeroes in on some of his top-favorite cities - from Portland, Maine, to Savannah, Georgia - to share his uproariously entertaining food travel stories, top finds, and some invaluable (and hilarious) cautionary tales.

America in the antebellum years was a deeply troubled country, divided by partisan gridlock and ideological warfare. The Civil War that followed brought America to the brink of self-destruction. But it also created a new country from the ruins of the old one - bolder and stronger than ever. No event in the war was more destructive, or more important, than William Sherman's legendary march through Georgia - crippling the heart of the South's economy, freeing thousands of slaves, and marking the beginning of a new era.

Mona Mireles is a quintessential overachiever: a former spelling-bee champion and valedictorian of her college class, she has a sterling résumé and a wall of plaques and medals in her bedroom that stretches floor to ceiling. She's also broke, unemployed, back at home with her parents, and completely adrift in life and love. Seven months out of college, she’s desperately trying to reassemble the pieces of her life after the Wall Street job she had waiting for her post-graduation dissolves in the wake of the Great Recession.

In this brilliant portrait of the oceans' unlikely hero, H. Bruce Franklin shows how menhaden have shaped America's national-and natural-history, and why reckless overfishing now threatens their place in both. Since Native Americans began using menhaden as fertilizer, this amazing fish has greased the wheels of U.S. agriculture and industry.

Olive Oatman isn’t a household name, but a distinct feature on her face has made her infamous for the worst reasons. She is the girl with the blue tattoo. The story behind the distinctive tattoo is the stuff of legends. Some believed it was placed on her face during her captivity, following the brutal murders of her family members and the kidnapping of her and her sister. Others believe it was placed on her after her return.

September 3, 1939, the day of the Spanish exiles’ splendid arrival in Chile, the Second World War broke out in Europe. Victor Dalmau is a young doctor when he is caught up in the Spanish Civil War, a tragedy that leaves his life - and the fate of his country - forever changed. Together with his sister-in-law, the pianist Roser Bruguera, he is forced out of his beloved Barcelona and into exile.

Born in Battle, Blood, and Fire. Israel has reveled in terrorising its neighbours. 75 years of conflict and bloodshed and it has never in all that time forsaken its kin:-War and Terror. Within hours of the launch of the Al Aqsa Flood, the Israeli propaganda machine -the Hasbara - sprung into action. Its purpose; churn out lies to justify the unjustifiable - the bombing of hospitals, homes, and schools. The wholesale slaughter of civilians, women, and children by indiscriminate bombing is not enough, so lay siege to Gazam so those Palestinians they can not kill will starve, parch to death, ...

Dolly Madison is one of the most intriguing women, indeed, one of the most intriguing people of either gender in American history. From the quiet rectitude of her Quaker upbringing, through the startlingly sudden romance of her marriage to James Madison, to her rise to a position of prominence and influence that created the role of the First Lady as we still know it today, through the tumult and chaos of the War of 1812, to the melancholy of her last years, marked by the bitterly disappointing career of her beloved son.

In the list of popular American geological oddities and attractions, one sizeable phenomenon remains surprisingly unfamiliar to the average citizen. This may be due in part to its remote desert location, but perception of the Salton Sea in Southern California is also laden with environmental concerns and is in a constant state of flux. The extensive body of inland saltwater hides a glorious commercial past and has served as an important wildlife preserve but approaches a seemingly inevitable crisis in the coming decade.