The Write Thought: 24 books
by William Noble
Language: English
Release Date: December 15, 2009
Language: English
Release Date: December 15, 2009
Dialogue must contribute to the telling of the story said Victorian-era novelist Anthony Trollope more than one hundred years ago and his words have been a yardstick for writers ever since. A more recent novelist, Stephen King, wrote, "When dialogue is right, we know. When it's wrong we also know—it...
by William Noble
Language: English
Release Date: December 15, 2009
Language: English
Release Date: December 15, 2009
"Why does nonfiction have to be boring," he sniveled. "It doesn't," she replied cheeringly. "Haven't you ever read anything by Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, John McPhee, Joan Didion, Norman Mailer, Mark Bowden, Laura Hillenbrand, or Sebastian Junger-just to name a few?" "No," he said popping open another long-neck...
Siskiyou Trail
The Hudson’s Bay Company’s Route to California
Language: English
Release Date: July 16, 2012
The Hudson’s Bay Fur Company route to California was the fur trappers’ and traders’ road in the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s from Fort Vancouver (now in Washington State) to San Francisco and beyond.
Does “road” mean a six-lane paved freeway...
Durham’s Place-Names of California’s Eastern Sierra
Including Death Valley, Alpine, Inyo & Mono Counties
Language: English
Release Date: September 4, 2012
• The Federal Writers’ Project named an area three miles south-southeast of Stovepipe Wells in Death Valley the Devil’s Cornfield because the arrowweed growing there resembled shocks of corn tied about the middle.
• The Devil’s Golf...
Humbugs and Heroes
A Gallery of California Pioneers
Language: English
Release Date: June 25, 2012
Award-winning historian Richard Dillon deals up intriguing vignettes on sixty-three men and women who helped shaped California into the colorful state that it is.
Dillon, whose work on Meriwether Lewis has appeared on the New York Times best-seller...
Embarcadero
True Tales of Sea Adventure from 1849 to 1906
Language: English
Release Date: June 18, 2012
There are no tales like high-sea tales and here’s a baker’s dozen of true sea adventures—tales filled with salt spray, blood-and-thunder, and man-overboard action all guaranteed to satisfy the hardiest armchair adventurer.
Researched...
by William B. Secrest
Language: English
Release Date: July 19, 2012
Language: English
Release Date: July 19, 2012
For many years one of the prime hardships on the western American frontier was the scarcity of women. Men could endure living a rough existence out in the open, fighting Indians and the elements, but the loneliness of life without women could become almost unendurable. Miners...
The Gila Trail
The Texas Argonauts and the California Gold Rush
Language: English
Release Date: June 27, 2012
The Texas Argonauts were on the march west as early as January, 1849 —a remarkable circumstance when it is recalled that the famous tea caddy of gold dust which set off the gold fever in the “States” did not reach Washington, D. C, until December 7, 1848. From Brownsville,...
Burnt-Out Fires
California’s Modoc Indian War
Language: English
Release Date: May 22, 2012
Burnt-Out Fires deals with a very dark period of American history, a period that, until recently, had been purposefully forgotten ... a period that hopefully will cause a re-evaluation of the American ideals and dreams.
Everyone pointed to...
Fool’s Gold
The Decline and Fall of Captain John Sutter of California
Language: English
Release Date: September 10, 2012
Sutter, the father of California, is one of the most enigmatic figures in the history of the West.
With Fool’s Gold, famed California historian Richard Dillon (Wells, Fargo Detective, Embarcadero) brings to life the story of Swiss immigrant John A. Sutter.
Via a circuitous route,...
Hatchet Men
The Story of the Tong Wars in San Francisco’s Chinatown
Language: English
Release Date: May 29, 2012
Richard Dillon, one of California’s premier historians, tells the compelling story of San Francisco’s exotic pre-1906 Chinatown when vicious hoodlum gangs held sway. Chinatown, as demonstrated by Dillon’s fast-paced narrative, became a cauldron of chaos teeming with...
The Legend of Grizzly Adams
California’s Greatest Mountain Man
Language: English
Release Date: May 22, 2012
The greatest California mountain man of them all was Grizzly Adams.
He was also one of the most mysterious men in the history of the American West.
In this colorful biography, historian Richard Dillon chronicles...
Shanghaiing Days
The Thrilling account of 19th Century Hell-Ships, Bucko Mates and Masters, and Dangerous Ports-of-Call from San Francisco to Singapore
Language: English
Release Date: May 29, 2012
In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the American Merchant Marine went into a terrible and tragic decline, and sailors were forced to serve under conditions that were little better than serfdom.
Seamen were exploited in wholesale...
The Great Yosemite Holdups
The Last Stagecoach Robberies on the Road to Yosemite and How One of the Events Was Actually Photographed!
Language: English
Release Date: July 19, 2012
The robberies on the road to Yosemite during the early 1900s were unique for several reasons. Despite the lack of money involved, the number of coaches and passengers robbed at one time, coupled with the fact that the bandits were never apprehended, were reason enough to be...
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