American Heroes (Tom Doherty Associates)

Chief Joseph (1840-1904) became a legend due to his heroic efforts to keep his people in their homeland in Oregon's Wallowa Valley despite a treaty that ordered them onto a reservation in Idaho. In 1877, when the US army forced the Nez Percé away from their lands, Joseph led his tribespeople on a 1,500-mile, four-month flight from western Idaho across Montana, through Yellowstone National Park and Wyoming, toward safety in Canada. During this journey, the Army attacked the Indians several times; in one battle alone, at the Big Hole in western Montana, ninety Indian men, women, and children were killed. The Nez Percés' flight ended at the Bear's Paw mountains in northern Montana, just forty miles from the safety of the Canadian border. There the Army surrounded the Nez Percé, captured their horses, killed all but two of their primary chiefs, and forced their capitulation. When Chief Joseph surrendered to military leaders he told them, "From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever." Promised by military commanders that they would be returned to Idaho, the Nez Percés were instead relocated to Indian Territory in Oklahoma where many died of fever and disease. Chief Joseph began a new fight-for better conditions for his people and the right to return to their home country. His diplomacy and eloquence won public support and ultimately resulted in the Nez Percé's return to Idaho and Washington. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A exciting new biography of America's first lady of flight. As a tomboy growing up in Kansas, Amelia Earhart delighted in trying new and risky things, once even building a roller-coaster in her grandparents' backyard. In her 20s she fell in love with flight while watching an aerobatics exhibition and grew even more enthralled when she took her first airplane ride. At age 24 she earned her pilot's wings and 1928 took part in the transatlantic "Friendship" flight. Her willowy build, wholesome smile, and tousled blonde hair invited comparison to the celebrated pilot Charles Lindbergh, and "Lady Lindy" charmed the public with her unassuming manner. Lori Van Pelt's Amelia Earhart: The Sky's No Limit takes readers through Earhart's career triumphs and tragedies. It explorers not only her accomplishments in the field of flight, but also her struggles in the male-dominated world of aviation. Named to the New York Public Library's Best Books for the Teen Age 2006 At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Mary Edwards Walker (1832-1919) defied the conventions of her era. Born and raised on a farm in Oswego, New York, Walker became one of a handful of female physicians in the nation-and became a passionate believer in the rights of women. Despite the derision of her contemporaries, Walker championed freedom of dress. She wore slacks--or "bloomers" as they were popularly known--rather than the corsets and voluminous ground-dragging petticoats and dresses she believed were unhygenic and injurious to health. She lectured and campaigned for woman's suffrage and for prohibition, and against tobacco, traditional male-dominated marriage vows, and any issue involving the sublimation of her sex. From the outset of the Civil War, Walker volunteered her services as a physician. Despite almost universal opposition from army commanders and field surgeons, Walker served at Manassas, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Chickamauga, and other bloody theaters of the war. She ministered to wounded and maimed soldiers and civilians on both sides of the conflict. Captured by Confederates near Chattanooga in 1864, she served four months in a Southern prison hellhole where she nursed and tended to wounded prisoners of war. For her services in the war, in 1865 Mary Edwards Walker was awarded the Medal of Honor, becoming the only woman in American history to receive the nation's highest award for military valor. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

In 1849, 11-year-old John Muir immigrated from Scotland to America. Here, he rose from farmer and sawmill worker to become a noted authority on the botany, glaciers, and forestry of the nation's wilderness. Best known for his long association with the Yosemite Valley and Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, Muir also explored, mostly afoot, the southern States, Alaska, the Great Basin, and the Mojave Desert. His studies of nature took him around the world and generated volumes of poetic, evocative writings. As America expanded relentlessly westward, Muir witnessed the plunder and exploitation of the land and became a driving force in efforts to protect the natural world. A modest and private man, married and father of two doting daughters, his conservationist views forced him into battle with powerful political and industrial interests. Some battles he won, influencing four US Presidents to sponsor legislation that protected forests and established or expanded America's national parks. Muir lost his last, and perhaps most personal battle. He fought until near the end of his life to prevent the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park from becoming a reservoir for the city of San Francisco. Some of his conservationsist friends believed the conflict so sapped his physical, emotional, and spiritual strength that it contributed to his death. Remembered as the founder of the Sierra Club, father of America's conservation movement, and architect of a still growing wilderness ethic, Muir set an example many still follow, fighting today's threats to the environment.