Full AspenCat Catalog

Illustrates three verses of our national anthem, written at the battle of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812. Includes music, background history, and pictures of flags used in the United States, past and present.

The gripping story of an epic prairie snowstorm that killed hundreds of newly arrived settlers and cast a shadow on the promise of the American frontier. January 12, 1888, began as an unseasonably warm morning across Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Minnesota, the weather so mild that children walked to school without coats and gloves. But that afternoon, without warning, the atmosphere suddenly, violently changed. One moment the air was calm; the next...

In the thirty years after the Civil War, the United States blew by Great Britain to become the greatest economic power in world history. That is a well-known period in history, when titans like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan walked the earth. But as Charles R. Morris shows us, the platform for that spectacular growth spurt was built in the first half of the century. By the 1820s, America was already the worlds most productive...

A narrative account of the twentieth president's political career offers insight into his background as a scholar and Civil War hero, his battles against the corrupt establishment, and Alexander Graham Bell's failed attempt to save him from an assassin's bullet.

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...

Powder papers, booty balls, and sugar tits- Lotions, Potions, and Deadly Elixirs has a cure for whatever ails! These quaint names were given to popular medicinal forms during America's frontier era that were said to cure everything from fallen arches to a broken windmill. Grandmas, mommas, and even certified physicians treated the sick, lame, and unlucky with what was available: barbed wire and horseshoe nails, cactus, pokeweed, buckeyes, you name...

An account of the Great Chicago Fire combines archival photographs and drawings with personal accounts by its survivors and historical documents.

Combines an account of Robert Louis Stevenson's experiences as he traveled from New York to California by train in 1879 and a description of the building and operation of railroads in nineteenth-century America. An account of Robert Louis Stevenson's twelve day journey from New York to California in 1879, interwoven with a history of the building of the transcontinental railroad and the settling of the West.

Cokie Roberts sheds new light on the generation of heroines, reformers, and visionaries who helped shape our nation with this blend of biographical portraits and behind-the-scenes vignettes chronicling women's public roles and private responsibilities. Drawing on personal correspondence, private journals, and other primary sources--many of them previously unpublished--Roberts brings to life the extraordinary accomplishments of women who laid the groundwork...

"Describes disgusting details about daily life during the U.S. Civil War, including housing, food, and sanitation"--Provided by publisher.