Full AspenCat Catalog

March 1848. Mysterious knocks are heard in a little house in rural New York, throwing the community into turmoil. Are the children who live there -- Kate and Maggie Fox, sisters aged eleven and fourteen -- making the raps to trick their parents? Or are the girls mediums for otherworldly messages? From a battery of strange sounds and the excitement they create, modern Spiritualism is born. Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism...

"A groundbreaking, breathtaking history of the Chinese workers who built the Transcontinental Railroad, helping to forge modern America only to disappear into the shadows of history until now"--

"In The Bank War: Andrew Jackson, Nicholas Biddle, and the Fight for American Finance, historian Paul Kahan explores one of the most important and dramatic events in American political and economic history, from the idea of centralized banking and the First Bank of the United States to Jackson's triumph, the era of 'free banking,' and the creation of the Federal Reserve System. Relying on a range of primary and secondary sources, the book also shows...

"From an acclaimed, New York Times bestselling biographer, a timely reassessment of Abraham Lincoln's indispensable Secretary of the Treasury: a leading proponent for black rights both before and during his years in cabinet and later as Chief Justice of the United States. Salmon P. Chase is best remembered as a rival of Lincoln's for the Republican nomination in 1860-but there would not have been a national Republican Party, and Lincoln could not...

A stunning behind-the-curtain look into the last years of the illegal transatlantic slave trade in the United States. Long after the transatlantic slave trade was officially outlawed in the early nineteenth century by every major slave trading nation, merchants based in the United States were still sending hundreds of illegal slave ships from American ports to the African coast. The key instigators were slave traders who moved to New York City after...

"Reconstructing the South studies the aftermath of the Civil War, discusses how racist laws kept former slaves in inferior positions compared with whites, and explores how the actions of people in the mid-1800s continue to impact African Americans today."--

A sweeping tale of historical fiction that tells the unbelievable story of the early days of the Mormon church through the eyes of the woman who saw it all, Emma, the first wife of the prophet Joseph Smith.

In the lawless territories of the Old West, Eldon Quint and his young son must journey to Missouri to bury his recently deceased child, while being pursued by his criminal brother. Meanwhile, in the newly emancipated south, an ambitious black housemaid, Minn Barker, makes a daring escape from her lecherous overlord--and father to her unborn child--to pursue her dream of attending one of the first black colleges in America. A chance run-in brings Eldon...

"Reardon examines the great profusion of new or newly translated military texts of the Civil War years ... and draws as well on the view of the soldiers and civilians who turned to them in the search for a winning strategy. In examining how debates over principles of military thought entered into the question of qualifications of officers entrusted to command the armies of Northern citizen-soldiers, she explores the limitations of nineteenth-century...