William Lowell Putnam: 16 books

Writing almost twenty years after the death of Roger Putnam, William has achieved a sufficient perspective to note the flaws as well as the fine points of his subject. But the reader cannot miss the loving respect that permeates the entire text. Roger Putnam was the quintessential Yankee: strong in...

An Impetuous College Undergraduate ... A Nation at War ... A New Unit Seeking "Experienced Mountaineers ... Men of Good Physique ... Who Have Lived and Worked in the Mountains ... "  Three letters of recommendation later, in early 1943, William Lowell Putnam joined what was to become...

Established in 1894 in Flagstaff, Arizona by Percival Lowell, the Lowell Observatory on Mars Hill is still remembered as the site of numerous important astronomical firsts. The great recessional velocities of galaxies were first observed here in the years immediately before the first world war, a...

This is the story of one car — a 1911 Stevens-Duryea Model Y "Big Six" — and its famous owner, Percival Lowell, the American astronomer best known for his studies of Mars and mathematical prediction of the discovery of Pluto. The narrative follows the vehicle, a product of Frank Duryea — of...

The story of the 1939 American K2 expedition is well known among mountaineers: world-class German-born climber Fritz Wiessner and Pasang Dawa Lama came within 800 feet of attaining the world's second-highest unclimbed summit before turning back for more supplies. Rejoining them on the descent was...

The first professional mountain guides to be employed in North America were all Italians: Guiseppe Petigax and Lorenzo Croux of Courmeyer, Antonio Maguinaz and Andrea Pellissier of Valtournanche and Erminio Botta of Beilla, all in the retinue of Luigi Amadeo of Savoia, Duke of the Abruzzi whose successful...

William Putnam's book chronicles the history of two important routes through the Alps, which are devoted to treasuring the history of Mont Cenis and the Great Saint Bernard passages. Both of these passes were prominently and frequently used by the Romans in establishing and maintaining their empire....

Whether traveling among the mountains or climbing, hiking, or skiing, have you ever wondered where the names of the peaks, rivers and lakes ever came from, or who named them and why? This book is an effort to do just that for a particular part of North America that rivals the European Alps in fame....

Fred Stott says in his preface to this book that "if you ever hiked or skied a White Mountain trail between 1922 and 1959 you may well have met Joe Dodge. Certainly you know his name. If you have been on a trail since 1959 the chances are good you have heard of him, very possibly a tale about him....

In 1733, John Paul Zenger began to print the New York Journal, the newspaper that was to change Zenger's life and the direction of journalism in colonial America. The material published in the Journal so incensed Sir William Cosby, the royal governor, that Zenger was arrested for seditious libel....

"My objective in setting forth this series of mostly autobiographical vignettes was not to inspire a rash of juvenile delinquency but to have something on paper before the age of involuntary repetition set in. I don't feel I owe much to Sir Walter Scott for cribbing the subtitle; he surely cannot...

Arctic Superstars is a thoroughly researched account of the fascinating lives and harrowing journeys of Adolphus Washington Greely and George Wallace Melville, career military officers and Civil War heroes who explored vast reaches of the Arctic during the early 1880s. Greely was best known for commanding...

"There may be worse weather, from time to time, at some forbidding place on Planet Earth, but it has yet to be reliably recorded." So begins The Worst Weather on Earth: A History of the Mount Washington Observatory. Mount Washington, at 6,288 feet above sea level, is one of the highest elevations...

This book traces the origin of the forces and personalities that brought about the Spanish Inquisition and its impact on the larger world. It dwells extensively on the causes and principal figures of the Protestant Reformation and explains how those attitudes came to influence the evolution of modern...