The story brings the reader to the Western frontier during the post-Civil War era. Robin, a half breed Texas Ranger, after being reunited with his father, was living and working on the huge BBC ranch. While there he received a letter from friends who had aided him in the past, requesting his help with a rustling problem in Missouri. He and a friend left the Northwest Territory as early as possible in order to avoid the snows of winter and to return the favor. They were both completely unaware that they would become embroiled in a confl ict between a power hungry, brilliantly devious madman who was attempting to gain control of the small valley and the people that lived there. Before the surprising conclusion of this story you will fi nd the Ranger and his friends required to face personal danger, confl icting moral decisions, love and all of its complexities, and diffi cult decisions to make between duty and loyalty. Not only will you fi nd a diversity of characters, but also attempts to deal with the clash of cultures between the Sioux and Arapahoe Nations as the European population push themselves onto sacred hunting grounds in search of gold or land. These were hard times and hard men lived them, and after losing everything they owned at the close of the Civil War, many men would willingly kill if an opportunity to regain a place they can call their own presented itself.

In Footprints Across the South: Bartram's Trail Revisited, author James Kautz travels the path of William Bartram, a botanist from Philadelphia who explored the American Southeast in the 1770s. Beginning in Charleston, SC, and ending in Baton Rouge, LA, Kautz compares the conditions at the time of the nation's founding with the current social and natural environment of today. Interested in learning more?

Chaco Canyon, the great Ancestral Pueblo site of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, has inspired excavations and research for more than one hundred years. Chaco Revisited brings together an A-team of Chaco scholars to provide an updated, refreshing analysis of over a century of scholarship. In each of the twelve chapters, luminaries from the field of archaeology and anthropology, such as R. Gwinn Vivian, Peter Whiteley, and Paul E. Minnis, address some of the most fundamental questions surrounding Chaco, from agriculture and craft production, to social organization and skeletal analyses. Though varied in their key questions about Chaco, each author uses previous research or new studies to ultimately blaze a trail for future research and discoveries about the canyon. Written by both up-and-coming and well-seasoned scholars of Chaco Canyon, Chaco Revisited provides readers with a perspective that is both varied and balanced. Though a singular theory for the Chaco Canyon phenomenon is yet to be reached, Chaco Revisited brings a new understanding to scholars: that Chaco was perhaps even more productive and socially complex than previous analyses would suggest.

Andreas M. Cohrs presents an awesome guide to the less visited regions of California, as well as a glance into what makes up the Golden state and its glittering mentality. Through a chain of serendipitous events, Cohrs gained access to the belongings of the late backpacking icon, Colin Fletcher. Based on the outdoor guru’s original maps, notes, and photos, fifty years later he retraced The Walker’s hitherto untraceable thousand-mile journey along the lengthy spine of California, across the state’s enchanting deserts and over the snow-laden high sierra. With maps accompanying each chapter, drawn by Fletcher’s carto- grapher david Lindroth, more than 100 photos, and with stories from the trail, Cohrs tells a compelling tale of one of the most varied and fascinating regions on our planet. Yet, as the title reveals, California serendipity is more than a hiking guide that lays Fletcher’s original route at your feet for the first time. It takes the reader on a crash course through the state’s early history and its unique nature into finding the only true answer to Fletcher’s concern whether his 1958-trip could ever be repeated. With his narrative travel writing, Cohrs conveys the intimate sensations of what it means to venture upon a four-month trek, unpretentious but up close and affective, and why serendipity will travel with you, rewarding you with the most unexpected encounters, when you take the right turn.

In 1978, William Least Heat-Moon made a 14,000-mile journey on the back roads of America, visiting 38 states along the way. In 1982, the popular Blue Highways, which chronicled his adventures, was published. Three decades later, Edgar Ailor III and his son, Edgar IV, retraced and photographed Heat-Moon’s route, culminating in Blue Highways Revisited, released for publication on the thirtieth anniversary of Blue Highways. A foreword by Heat-Moon notes, "The photographs, often with amazing accuracy, capture my verbal images and the spirit of the book. Taking the journey again through these pictures, I have been intrigued and even somewhat reassured that America is changing not quite so fast as we often believe. The photographs, happily, reveal a recognizable continuity – but for how much longer who can say – and I'm glad the Ailors have recorded so many places and people from Blue Highways while they are yet with us." Through illustrative photography and text, Ailor and his son capture once more the local color and beauty of the back roads, cafes, taverns, and people of Heat-Moon’s original trek. Almost every photograph in Blue Highways Revisited is referenced to a page in the original work. With side-by-side photographic comparisons of eleven of Heat-Moon’s characters, this new volume reflects upon and develops the memoir of Heat-Moon’s cross-country study of American culture and spirit. Photographs of Heat-Moon’s logbook entries, original manuscript pages, Olympia typewriter, Ford van, and other artifacts also give readers insight into Heat-Moon’s approach to his trip. Discussions with Heat-Moon about these archival images provide the reader insight into the travels and the writing of Blue Highways that only the perspective of the author could provide. Blue Highways Revisited reaffirms that the "blue highway" serves as a romantic symbol of the free and restless American spirit, as the Ailors lose themselves to the open road as Heat-Moon did thirty years previously. This book reminds readers of the insatiable attraction of the “blue highway”—“But in those brevities just before dawn and a little after dusk—times neither day or night—the old roads return to the sky some of its color. Then, in truth, they carry a mysterious cast of blue, and it's that time when the pull of the blue highway is strongest, when the open road is a beckoning, a strangeness, a place where a man can lose himself” (Introduction to Blue Highways).

The Lower East Side has been home to some of the city's most iconic restaurants, shopping venues, and architecture. The neighborhood has also welcomed generations of immigrants, from newly arrived Italians and Jews to today's Latino and Asian newcomers. This history has become somewhat obscured, however, as the Lower East Side can appear more hip than historic, with wealth and gentrification changing the character of the neighborhood. Chronicling these developments, along with the hidden gems that still speak of a vibrant immigrant identity, Joyce Mendelsohn provides a complete guide to the Lower East Side of then and now. After an extensive history that stretches back to Manhattan's first settlers, Mendelsohn offers 5 self-guided walking tours, including a new passage through the Bowery, that take the reader to more than 150 sites and highlight the dynamics of a community of contrasts: aged tenements nestled among luxury apartment towers abut historic churches and synagogues. With updated and revised maps, historical data, and an entirely new community to explore, Mendelsohn writes a brand-new chapter in an old New York story.