Kirjahaku

This is the journal of a young New Yorker of good family who signed on as a clerk with John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company, incorporated in 1808, at a time when the Pacific Northwest was still disputed among the United States, Great Britain, Spain, and Russia. The company was to tap the fur resources of the Northwest as well as to establish trade with both Russian Alaska and Canton in China. The difficulties for the Pacific Fur Company, American-owned but largely Canadian-staffed, brought on by the War of 1812, are described, including the forced sale of Astoria and the company's furs and trade goods to the North West Company, a Canadian rival. The young clerk recounts life and manners in the areas where he lived and worked: the Pacific Northwest, Hawaii, Russian Alaska, and Spanish dominions in California and Mexico. He describes the tensions and violence between whites and Indians. His descriptions often reveal that he took a superior attitude toward the French Canadians and Indians with whom he had to deal and, on at least one occasion, he frets that his contact with these rough characters will cause him to lose his gentlemanly ways. By contrast, the beauty and refined manners of young Spanish women in California nearly lead him to "a foolish act" (i.e., to a marriage proposal that would have distressed his parents). In 1947 the notebook was discovered during the renovation of Washington Irving's home in Tarrytown, New York. It is theorized that Seton himself lent the notebook to Irving who used it as a source of his history of the Pacific Fur Company, Astoria, Or Anecdotes of an Enterprise Beyond the Rocky Mountains.

George Washington: Ordinary Man, Extraordinary Leader is a revised edition of the author's George Washington, published in 1979. Totally updated to include the author's extensive research conducted in the intervening two decades, the book is a concise but complete biography of Washington as gentleman planter, colonial rebel, American general, and U.S. president. The book provides a full and even-handed portrait of the first president, with special emphasis on how he took his rather commonplace talents and transformed them with self-discipline into extraordinary leadership in a time of turmoil. The book pays special attention to Washington's struggles during the Revolution and his tenure as president and deals with his gradual conversion from advocate of nonpartisan politics to a strict Federalist. This book synthesizes the current research in a readable style that affords the general reader an understanding of Washington's special character and his vital role in the making of the United States.

George Washington: Ordinary Man, Extraordinary Leader is a revised edition of the author’s George Washington, published in 1979. Totally updated to include the author’s extensive research conducted in the intervening two decades, the book is a concise but complete biography of Washington as gentleman planter, colonial rebel, American general, and U.S. president. The book provides a full and even-handed portrait of the first president, with special emphasis on how he took his rather commonplace talents and transformed them with self-discipline into extraordinary leadership in a time of turmoil. The book pays special attention to Washington’s struggles during the Revolution and his tenure as president and deals with his gradual conversion from advocate of nonpartisan politics to a strict Federalist. This book synthesizes the current research in a readable style that affords the general reader an understanding of Washington’s special character and his vital role in the making of the United States.

William Duer belonged to the middle ranks of those who led America to success in her struggle for independence, standing just behind such men as John Jay and Robert R. Livingston. Duer, as a member of the N.Y. State Convention and the Continental Congress, as Sec. to the Board of Treasury under the Confed. and Assist. to the Sec. of the Treasury when the fed. govt. was organized, had a role in all the significant changes which occurred during the revolutionary period. Yet interspersed with his public career was his career as a stock speculator, land promoter, army contractor, and merchant. Duer never tired of trying to combine public office with private profit. This is the first full scale study of Duer's entire career, although, due to lack of material about his personal life, it should not be taken as a biography.

After her parents’ deaths and the recession force her out of her home in 1873, Jenny Dousmann heads for the Wild West. She knows that if she can find her brother, Otto, a Civil War veteran, he’ll take care of her. When they finally reunite, Jenny is surprised to find that Otto has been working as a buffalo hunter and is struggling even to support himself. The number of hunters in the West has increased rapidly, and buffalo has become scarce. To make matters worse, the whites and the native Indians are constantly at war, putting everyone in the area in danger. Their first winter alone in the West is devastating: Jenny is raped by two US soldiers passing through the area, while Otto is crippled during a blizzard. They are discovered, near death, by a member of a nearby Cheyenne tribe. Two Shields is an Indian buffalo skinner, and he vows to keep them safe. To do so, Two Shields asks them to become members of his tribe. He promises to teach them how to hunt like his people and to live simply on the land. Jenny and Otto must decide if they should continue to depend on only each other or if they should put their lives in the hands of a man who is supposed to be their enemy. Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction that takes place in the old West. Westerns?books about outlaws, sheriffs, chiefs and warriors, cowboys and Indians?are a genre in which we publish regularly. Our list includes international bestselling authors like Zane Gray and Louis L’Amour, and many more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.