Western Biography

Galileo Galilei grew up in a time when nearly everyone thought the Earth was the center of the universe and the Sun and the planets revolved around the Earth. His intellectual world was dominated by the work of the ancient philosopher Aristotle. Science as we know it today was just starting to emerge from the dark ages and it was blended with religion so that the two at were hard to distinguish between. Galileo's work included a radial improvement in a parlor toy called a spyglass.

I feared for their lives and their ears. Our local weekly newspaper showed pictures of them dangling from ropes hanging in woven baskets off the embankment of a mountain in order to tap sticks of dynamite into the holes they drilled in the granite cliff faces they blasted away. One could hear that awful, loud dynamite blasting all the way in town. But the booming had been even worse for the ears of the railroad workers who detonated the charges for the grading and tunneling, especially the Chinese who were given these most dangerous jobs.

I lead my Grulla Mare, Savanna, to water. She is the gray of a mule deer's winter coat, with a dorsal stripe and zebra markings on her legs that trace back to the original wild horses, though she is quarter horse, not mustang. The mustang follows. It is his first time here, to the pinon pine and juniper woodland that defines my desert home.

Meet Barbara Reichmann, once known as Gucia Gomolinska: smart, determined, independent, and steadfast in the face of injustice. A Jew growing up in predominantly Catholic Poland during the 1920s and ’30s, Gucia studies hard, makes friends, falls in love, and dreams of a bright future. Her world is turned upside down when Nazis invade Poland and establish the first Jewish ghetto of World War II in her town of Piotrko´w Trybunalski.

In 1980, I was thirty years old, and my son, ten, when we traveled to Guinea, then a closed country in West Africa. My fiancé was a geologist working in a diamond exploration camp in Baoule Valley, near Kérouané. During my time there I kept a diary. Once back in the United States, I wrapped the diary in a silk scarf and tucked it away. I had had planned to return to Guinea and the diamond camp, but life took me in a different direction. I didn't open and read the diary until autumn of 2023, forty-four years later.

Billy the Kid - born Henry McCarty in 1859, and also known as William H. Bonney - emerges from this audio in all his complexity, at once a gentleman and gregarious companion and a thief and violent murderer. Tapping new depths of research, Etulain traces Billy’s short life from his mysterious origins in the East through his wanderings in New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas.

From Handbags to Hand Grenades is the riveting true story of Kathryn West, a courageous front-line officer in London’s Metropolitan Police force. From 1990 to 2020, she dedicated her life to serving and protecting the people of Britain during some of the most historical and life-altering events of our time.

Among the legendary heroes and outlaws of the Wild West, few names echo louder than that of Wild Bill Hickok. Wild Bill wasn’t just a name whispered in saloons or shouted on the stage of Buffalo Bill’s world-famous Wild West shows. Long before he stepped onto any stage, Wild Bill had carved his path in blood, sweat, and gunpowder. He was a Civil War scout who could read the vast plains like a map, a fearless marshal who faced down lawlessness, and a frontier sheriff whose very name sent ripples through the towns he protected.

Just before Christmas in 1996, a beautiful French woman - the wife of a movie mogul - was brutally murdered outside of her holiday home in a remote region of West Cork, Ireland. The crime was reported by a local journalist, Ian Bailey, who was at the forefront of the case until he became the prime murder suspect. Arrested twice, he was released without charge.

This story takes you on one woman's life journey through flight. Ascent. A brief history of the mergers she has been through, the hiring process she experienced, a turbulent marriage, a new relationship, some of her most memorable trips, and some passengers and crew stories. Descent. Where Ellie is today, and how she navigated the turbulence of 2020 and beyond with thought-provoking, encouraging, and inspiring thoughts. Ellie's journey spans 40-plus years in the airline industry. She was inspired to write this story for you. For those of you that are enamored with the airline industry and ...

It was one of the happiest and strangest marriages there has ever been. Both Vita and Harold were always in love with other people and each gave the other full liberty 'without enquiry or reproach', knowing that their love for each other would be unaffected and even strengthened by the crises which it survived. This account of their love story is now a modern classic.

Jesse James grew up in Clay County, Missouri, a place where north and south conflicted over the issue of slavery. Tensions grew in the lead-up to the Civil War, and James’ Southern loyalties meant he had to make a decision. When war broke out, Jesse and his brother Frank joined the Confederate guerrillas known as “bushwhackers” alongside other notorious characters like “Bloody Bill”. By the age of 17, Jesse had escaped death twice and gained a reputation as a ruthless killer.

The year 2021 marks the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri. His, like ours, was a world of moral uncertainty and political violence, all of which made not only for the agony of exile but for an ever deeper meditation on the nature of human happiness. In Why Dante Matters, John Took offers - by way of three of Dante’s works in particular - an account, not merely of Dante’s development as a poet and philosopher, but of his continuing presence to us as a guide to man’s wellbeing as man.

Do you want to learn about the botanist John Bartram but don’t have the time or patience to read a thick book? Then this is the short and concise book for you! Some of the many accomplishments of John Bartram were: Established one of America’s first botanical gardens in Philadelphia. Held regular scientific correspondence with such notable scientists as: Peter Collinson, Carl Linnaeus, Alexander Garden, Benjamin Franklin, Cadwallader Colden, and more. Explored and recorded his journey into uncharted parts of up-state New York in the 1740s. Co-founded the American Philosophical Society ...

The Literary Legacy of Rebecca West is the first book to explore the entire corpus of her extraordinary 71-year writing career. The general introductory studies of West are outdated and do not take into account her posthumous publications, or her large literary archive of unpublished letters and manuscripts. Previous scholarly books have chopped West up into categories and genres instead of following the evolution of her career.

Country Editor's Boy picks up where Hal Borland's classic memoir High, Wide and Lonesome left off: with Borland, on the cusp of adulthood in the early twentieth century, making his way in an eastern Colorado town that still retained all the flavors of the Old West. Borland's father, the editor of a local weekly newspaper, was working to help his publication transition along with the town around him. At the same time, young Hal was experiencing dramatic social and economic change in his own way.

When the 2010 earthquake struck Haiti, Raymond Joseph, the former Haitian ambassador to the United States, found himself rushing back to his beloved country. The earthquake ignited a passion in Joseph, inspiring him to run for president against great competition, including two well-known Haitian pop stars, his nephew Wyclef Jean and Michel Martelly. But he couldn't compete in a democratic system corrupt to the core.

On a warm night in September 1985, teenagers Kimberly Dowell and Ethan Dixon were brutally murdered in Westside Park in Muncie, Indiana. Their killer has never been charged. Early on, police focused on a family member of one of the teens as a primary suspect. The investigation even ruled out fantastic scenarios, including a theory that the perpetrator was a Dungeons & Dragons devotee. The case grew cold.

In early November 1834, an aristocratic young couple from Savannah and South Carolina sailed from New York and began a seventeen-year odyssey in West Africa. Leighton and Jane Wilson sailed along what was for them an exotic coastline, visited cities and villages, and sometimes ventured up great rivers and followed ancient paths.

How can one pilot cram so much into a single lifetime? Climb into Captain Terry Reece's cockpit, fasten your seatbelt, and hold on for an exciting journey into the world of aviation. Born to a family of transplanted North Carolinians who moved to Washington State, a young Reece explored the hills of the Pacific Northwest. Hiking in the mountains and being a fire lookout gave him a taste of adventure, but he craved more-and he got it.