Full AspenCat Catalog

Examines the early years of baseball, discussing such teams as the New York Knickerbockers and the Cincinnati Red Stockings, and investigates the myths and misconceptions about the game.

"The eastern campaigns of the Civil War involved the widespread use of field fortifications, from Big Bethel and the Peninsula to Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Charleston, and Mine Run. While many of these fortifications were meant to last only as long as the battle and often were not detailed in official records, Earl J. Hess argues that their history is deeply significant. Even before the onset of trench warfare at the Wilderness in May 1864, the...

"The uncovering in the mid-1700s of fossilized mastodon bones and teeth at Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, signaled the beginning of a great American adventure. The West was opening up, and unexplored lands beckoned. Unimagined paleontological treasures awaited discovery: strange horned mammals, birds with teeth, flying reptiles, gigantic fish, diminutive ancestors of horses and camels, and more than a hundred different kinds of dinosaurs. This exciting...

"Bound Away offers a new understanding of the westward movement. After Frederick Jackson Turner's thesis celebrating the frontier as the source of American freedom and democracy and the iconoclasm of the new western historians who dismissed the idea of the frontier as merely a mask for conquest and exploitation, David Hackett Fischer and James C. Kelly take a third approach to the subject. They share with Turner the idea of the westward movement as...

The African-American troops known as the Buffalo Soldiers helped change the American West. From 1867 to 1891 they fought over a hundred battles in the Indian Wars. They risked their lives in other ways, including enforcing the law, guarding wagon trains, exploring unknown territory, and building forts, roads, and telegraph lines.

Exploring Lewis and Clark probes beneath the traditional narrative of the journey, looking beyond the perspectives of the explorers themselves to those of the women and the men who accompanied them, as well as of the Indians who met them along the way. It reexamines the journals and what they suggest about Lewis's and Clark's misinterpretations of the worlds they passed through and the people in them. The author portrays Lewis and Clark not as heroes,...

Fans watch sporting events every day. But only a few are truly unforgettable. In 1887 the Newark Little Giants were to play against the Chicago White Stockings. Set to be starting pitcher was George Stovey, a black pitcher. But the manager of Chicago's team refused to allow his team play against a team with a black player.

"The Civil War battlefield is the last place Quakeress Faith Cathwell thought she'd find herself. But with a gift for nursing, Faith seizes this opportunity to join the fight for abolition--and to search for Shiloh, a freeborn childhood friend who was kidnapped and sold south by unscrupulous slave catchers.Knowing it's much too dangerous for her to search enemy territory alone, Faith enlists the help of Colonel Devlin Knight, who is indebted to her...

What four-legged soldiers fight beside our troops? Military dogs! They can sniff out enemies and find dangerous weapons. These dogs are hardworking members of the military. Learn all about what these amazing animals can do!