If you want to spark young people’s interest in history, teach them about the undocumented legends they won’t find in their traditional history books. This title offers readers a juicy retelling of what some people speculate is an alternate history of the Americas. From Vikings maps of America hundreds of years before Columbus to the discovery of a lost Christian colony in prehistoric Michigan, this book dares to uncover some of history’s most controversial legends.

Introduction -- Ancient Cape Cod -- Legendary miscreants -- The arctic explorer from Provincetown -- Fantastic creatures -- Murder most foul -- Gentle legends -- The disappearance of Billingsgate Island -- Village vignettes -- Unsolved mysteries -- Medical Maladies -- Haunted places -- Wampanoag tales -- Cape Cod oddities -- Ill-fated sea voyages -- Local legends -- Believe it or not -- Goblins and ghosts -- Inspirational legends -- The auctioneer and the air crash -- Hurricanes and other disasters -- UFO sightings: fact or fiction -- Cape eccentrics -- Legendary Hyannis Port.

More than 160 tales from eighty tribal groups present a rich and lively panorama of the Native American mythic heritage. From across the continent comes tales of creation and love; heroes and war; animals, tricksters, and the end of the world. “This fine, valuable new gathering of ... tales is truly alive, mysterious, and wonderful—overflowing, that is, with wonder, mystery and life" (National Book Award Winner Peter Matthiessen). In addition to mining the best folkloric sources of the nineteenth century, the editors have also included a broad selection of contemporary Native American voices.

Native American tales are set against scientific facts to explain how thunder, tornadoes, sunlight, rainbows, and other weather phenomena come into existence.

A storyteller examines Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and the lore that inspired it, as well as other local legends of the Hudson Valley. The story of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman is one of America's best-known fables, but what other stories does the Hudson Valley hold? Imps cause mischief on the Hudson River, a white lady haunts Raven Rock, Major Andre’s ghost seeks redemption and real headless Hessians search for their severed skulls. These mysterious and spooky tales from the region’s past inspired Irving and continue to captivate the imagination to this day. “Kruk has been enchanting audiences with his dramatic, enticing storytelling ability for 20 years.” —Suzanne Rothberg, Tarrytown-Sleepy Hollow Patch

The burnt-red badlands of Montana's Hell Creek are a vast graveyard of the Cretaceous dinosaurs that lived 68 million years ago. Those hills were, much later, also home to the Sioux, the Crows, and the Blackfeet, the first people to encounter the dinosaur fossils exposed by the elements. What did Native Americans make of these stone skeletons, and how did they explain the teeth and claws of gargantuan animals no one had seen alive? Did they speculate about their deaths? Did they collect fossils? Beginning in the East, with its Ice Age monsters, and ending in the West, where dinosaurs lived and died, this richly illustrated and elegantly written book examines the discoveries of enormous bones and uses of fossils for medicine, hunting magic, and spells. Well before Columbus, Native Americans observed the mysterious petrified remains of extinct creatures and sought to understand their transformation to stone. In perceptive creation stories, they visualized the remains of extinct mammoths, dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and marine creatures as Monster Bears, Giant Lizards, Thunder Birds, and Water Monsters. Their insights, some so sophisticated that they anticipate modern scientific theories, were passed down in oral histories over many centuries. Drawing on historical sources, archaeology, traditional accounts, and extensive personal interviews, Adrienne Mayor takes us from Aztec and Inca fossil tales to the traditions of the Iroquois, Navajos, Apaches, Cheyennes, and Pawnees. Fossil Legends of the First Americans represents a major step forward in our understanding of how humans made sense of fossils before evolutionary theory developed.

"The New River winds its way through a mysterious and tumultuous history, from the whirlpools of a legendary birth to banks stained with the blood of a massacre. Long-lost tribes flourished on the bounty of fish from its crystal-clear water and game from its wooded shores, only to succumb to European weapons and disease ... South Florida's destiny was changed forever when inshore transportation evolved from foot and hoof to inland waterway and steel rails. Schemes to 'drain the Everglades' turned swamp to subdivisions with the New River at its core. Trace the storied arc of Fort Lauderdale's ancient waterway with author Donn R. Colee Jr."--Publisher marketing.

From Davy Crockett, Wild Bill Hickok, and Calamity Jane to Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, and Frank and Jesse James, here are more than 130 colorful stories of the pioneers, cowboys, outlaws, gamblers, prospectors, and lawmen who settled the wild west, creating a uniquely American hero and an enduringly fascinating folk mythology. In this wonderfully boisterous treasury of tall tales, everyone and everything is larger than life and bragging is elevated into an art form. Many of these stories are of real people and real events; more than a few, however, grew taller and funnier as they made their rounds from wagon train to campfire to rodeo to miners' quarters. But even if it is far from established that Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett were able to kill three men with one bullet or subdue ferocious grizzly bears with their fists, they come vividly to life here as beloved characters who have become part of the fabric of the American imagination. With black-and white illustrations throughout Part of the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library

Amazing America celebrates the most incredible aspects of the United States. This volume features the fascinating myths and legends of the United States.

A collection of Native American tales and myths focusing on the relationship between man and nature.