"The Pioneers introduces readers to the colorful and enduring character of frontiersman Natty Bumppo. Forced by a local landowner to obey new hunting laws, Natty Bumppo rebels and finds allies in the landowner's daughter and a mysterious young stranger. Against the backdrop of the changing seasons, a varied cast of unforgettable characters is caught up in a drama that illuminates the essence of the American character and the conflict between a restlessly...

Provides a detailed picture of what life in the slums of New York was like, how the slums were created, how and why they remained as they were, who was forced to live there, and offers suggestions for easing the lot of the poor.

The moving abolitionist novel that fueled the fire of the human rights debate in 1852 and melodramatically condemned the institution of slavery through such powerfully realized characters as Tom, Eliza, Topsy, Eva, and Simon Legree.

"In what has become a landmark of American history and literature, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl recounts the incredible but true story of Harriet Jacobs, born a slave in North Carolina in 1813. Her tale gains its importance from her descriptions, in great and painful detail, of the sexual exploitation that daily haunted her life-and the life of every other black female slave. As a child, Harriet Jacobs remained blissfully unaware that she...

Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, wrote this 1869 novel with the intent of describing a New England village's life and character in the years after the Revolutionary War, before the advent of industrialization. Said Stowe, in the voice of the novel's narrator Horace Holyoke, "I would endeavor to show you New England in its seed-bed, before the hot suns of modern progress had developed its sprouting germs into the great trees of today."...

Contains primary source material.

All of Stevenson's writings about his 12,000-mile journey to California in 1879.