The Ancient and Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitus is a fraternal society established in California during the Gold Rush. Dormant by the early 20th century, it was revived in 1930 as the New Dispensation of E Clampus Vitus. From 1934 to the centennial of the Gold Rush in 1949, six volumes of New Dispensation lore were written to announce and explain E Clampus Vitus. This anthology brings these six volumes together for the first time in celebration of the 75th anniversary of the publication of the first volume in the series. Volumes included are The Enigmatical Book of Vitus, The Curious Book of Clampus or Gumshaniana, My Darling's ECV: The Esoteric Book of E, Ye Preposterous Booke of Brasse, Credo Quia Absurdum and Fool's Gold. For Clampers, this anthology is essential for a more complete understanding of their society. For non-Clampers, this anthology provides a new perspective on the Gold Rush and the celebration of its traditions by E Clampus Vitus today.

Often thought of as the inventor of baseball - the great American pastime - Abner Doubleday was first and foremost a soldier. My Life in the Old Army is comprised of a set of previously unpublished writings (the originals are housed at the New-York Historical Society) with an emphasis on Doubleday's tour of duty during the Mexican War. He was on hand for the first shots of the conflict, for the battles of Monterrey and Buena Vista, and later served in Saltillo after the campaign moved farther south toward Mexico City. Fluent in Spanish, he traveled far and wide in Mexico and describes his experiences in this volume.

This is the life story of a great fighting general of the Civil War, Winfield Scott Hancock. In the early fighting on the Peninsula, when the Confederates were flanked out of Fort Magruder, McClellan reported, “Hancock was superb.” Before long people were referring to him as Hancock the Superb, and for the next three years he re-earned the sobriquet in battle after battle. He was able to distinguish himself equally in disastrous defeat, as at Chancellorsville, and m victory, as at Gettysburg. Tucker feels personally that some of Hancock’s work with Grant—in the Wilderness and at Spotsylvania—was the most fascinating of his career, and he makes a good case for this view. Glenn Tucker chose to write about Hancock primarily because of his interesting personality and remarkable career. These are reason enough. He also had another reason. For more than three years, while a succession of commanding generals came and went, Hancock was a growing power in the Army of the Potomac. Along with his study of Hancock, Tucker also presents a graphic picture of the Army of the Potomac. It was a much maligned army. Because of its inept, bumbling commanders, it took some crushing and much publicized defeats. But in spite of Pope, Burnside, Hooker and others not much better, it weathered the worst blows Lee could inflict on it, preserved a bloody stalemate and at last wore down the enemy. Hancock and the Army of the Potomac fought together right up to the end. Never seeking top command, Hancock was the best and most trusted of the subordinate generals. Under good commanders and bad, his steadiness, unfailing courage and incisive military judgment many times helped to preserve the Army of the Potomac as an efficient fighting force. Glenn Tucker’s reporting skill puts you right in the action. You are at Hancock’s elbow in a score of battles in Virginia and you are there for three cataclysmic days at Gettysburg.

Originally published in 1979, Mark Twain as a Literary Comedian looks at how Mark Twain addressed social issues through humour. The Southwest provided the subject for much of Twain’s writing, but the roots of his style lay principally in north-eastern humour. In the mid-1800s the northern United States underwent social changes that reflected in the writing of the literary humourists like Twain. Sloane argues that he used humour to describe conditions in the emerging middle-class urban experience and express his American vision and that Twain’s views on the human, social, and political conditions, presented through his fictional characters, elevated the use of literary humour in the American novel.

A reference guide to the great American author (1835-1910) for students and general readers. The approximately 740 entries, arranged alphabetically, are essentially a collection of articles, ranging significantly in length and covering a variety of topics pertaining to Twain's life, intellectual milieu, literary career, and achievements. Because so much of Twain's writing reflects Samuel Clemens's personal experience, particular attention is given to the interface between art and life, i.e., between imaginative reconstructions and their factual sources of inspiration. Each entry is accompanied by a selective bibliography to guide readers to sources of additional information. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Includes Part 1, Number 2: Books and Pamphlets, Including Serials and Contributions to Periodicals July - December)

Personalities. Characters. History. John C. Waugh, author of the award-winning The Class of 1846, presents forty of the most memorable and impactful people he has come across during his decades of writing about the Civil War—or as he calls them, his “Unforgettables.” Waugh’s unique pen and spritely style bring to life a mix of the famous and the infamous, the little-known, and the unremembered. He reintroduces us to Abraham Lincoln the writer, Jefferson Davis the losing president, and their fascinating and influential wives, Mary and Varina. Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster (“three for the ages”) are juxtaposed with Presidents Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan—four chief executives who failed to avert the coming war. Military personalities include U. S. Grant and R. E. Lee, with a nod to their mentor, the nearly forgotten Winfield Scott. Waugh cast a wide net to include “the seekers of equality,” African Americans Sojourner Truth and Lincoln’s friend Frederick Douglass, a half dozen women like Maria Mayo, Kate Chase, and Anna Dickinson who helped shape our understanding of cultural issues, and media maven Horace Greeley and full-time Washington critic and pest, Count Adam Gurowski. Poet and political activist Muriel Rukeyser once wrote, “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” She might have added that these stories are driven by the passions of their characters and are what history is all about. “My hope,” explains the author, “is that these sketches and word portraits rekindle that passion and hook a few non-believers on the undeniable drama that is history.”