Montana history at its wildest and most intriguing. These 15 stories--illustrated with historical photographs--flash with humor, action, indignation, amazement, and admiration for what some Montanans (and visitors) added to the state's story.

These new essays tell the stories of daring reporters, male and female, sent out by their publishers not to capture the news but to make the news--indeed to achieve star billing--and to capitalize on the Gilded Age public's craze for real-life adventures into the exotic and unknown. They examine the adventure journalism genre through the work of iconic writers such as Mark Twain and Nellie Bly, as well as lesser-known journalistic masters such as Thomas Knox and Eliza Scidmore, who took to the rivers and oceans, mineshafts and mountains, rails and trails of the late nineteenth century, shaping Americans' perceptions of the world and of themselves.

A natural and social history of the great river of Rome

This critical study analyzes major concepts in the travel literature of Mark Twain and notes how his oeuvre (including his classic works of fiction) revolves around travel as a central issue. The book focuses especially on his representations of time, place, and identity in the travel works Roughing It, A Tramp Abroad, The Innocents Abroad, Life on The Mississippi, and Following the Equator. All receive an in-depth analysis, noting Twain's strong sense of nostalgia for the disappearing American frontier, his growing concern over the assimilation of Native American cultures, and his continual search for a sense of personal and national identity. One appendix provides a complete list of the travel literature contained in Twain's personal library.

Contents: 1. 1889-1893.--2. 1894-1898.--3. 1899-1903.