The West: An Illustrated History for Children

A presentation, based on a PBS television documentary, of the story of the West, a magnificent but harsh landscape, and the people who have tried to claim it

Children's Books

Dayton Duncan

History

Little,Brown & Company

Ernest Hemingway called Huckleberry Finn “the best book we’ve ever had. There was nothing before. There’s been nothing as good since.” Critical opinion of this book hasn’t dimmed since Hemingway uttered these words; as author Russell Banks says in these pages, Twain “makes possible an American literature which would otherwise not have been possible.” He was the most famous American of his day, and remains in ours the most universally revered American writer. Here the master storytellers Geoffrey Ward, Ken Burns, and Dayton Duncan give us the first fully illustrated biography of Mark Twain, American literature’s touchstone, its funniest and most inventive figure. This book pulls together material from a variety of published and unpublished sources. It examines not merely his justly famous novels, stories, travelogues, and lectures, but also his diaries, letters, and 275 illustrations and photographs from throughout his life. The authors take us from Samuel Langhorne Clemens’s boyhood in Hannibal, Missouri, to his time as a riverboat worker—when he adopted the sobriquet “Mark Twain”—to his varied careers as a newspaperman, printer, and author. They follow him from the home he built in Hartford, Connecticut, to his peripatetic travels across Europe, the Middle East, and the United States. We see Twain grieve over his favorite daughter’s death, and we see him writing and noticing everything. Twain believed that “The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.” This paradox fueled his hilarity and lay at the core of this irreverent yet profoundly serious author. With essays by Russell Banks, Jocelyn Chadwick, Ron Powers, and John Boyer, as well as an interview with actor and frequent Twain portrayer Hal Holbrook, this book provides a full and rich portrayal of the first figure of American letters.

Mark Twain: An Illustrated Biography

Biographies & Memoirs

Geoffrey C. Ward

Ken Burns

Arts & Literature

KNOPF

The companion volume to the PBS documentary film about the first—and perhaps most astonishing—automobile trip across the United States. In 1903 there were only 150 miles of paved roads in the entire nation and most people had never seen a “horseless buggy”—but that did not stop Horatio Nelson Jackson, a thirty-one-year-old Vermont doctor, who impulsively bet fifty dollars that he could drive his 20-horsepower automobile from San Francisco to New York City. Here—in Jackson’s own words and photographs—is a glorious account of that months-long, problem-beset, thrilling-to-the-rattled-bones trip with his mechanic, Sewall Crocker, and a bulldog named Bud. Jackson’s previously unpublished letters to his wife, brimming with optimism against all odds, describe in vivid detail every detour, every flat tire, every adventure good and bad. And his nearly one hundred photographs show a country still settled mainly in small towns, where life moved no faster than the horse-drawn carriage and where the arrival of Jackson’s open-air (roofless and windowless) Winton would cause delirious excitement. Jackson was possessed of a deep thirst for adventure, and his remarkable story chronicles the very beginning of the restless road trips that soon became a way of life in America. Horatio’s Drive is the first chapter in our nation’s great romance with the road. With 146 illustrations and 1 map

Horatio's Drive: America's First Road Trip

Americas

UK edition of book originally published in 1997.

Lewis Clark

Travel

Pimlico

Random House Audio |

It's now a given that Americans--and people the world over--would seek to preserve their sacred, special places. One hundred fifty years ago, however, it was definitely not a foregone conclusion that the awe-inspiring granite cliffs, astounding waterfalls, and sublime sequoias of Yosemite would be protected. The idea of preserving special places grew into the national park idea, and it started on its course from a seed, a seed planted in Yosemite in 1864. It was through the efforts of visionaries like James Mason Hutchings, Galen Clark, Frederick Law Olmsted, John Muir, and Theodore Roosevelt among others, that the world learned of Yosemite, flocked to it, nearly destroyed it, and finally saved it. These fascinating characters and their enduring stories are skillfully woven together in this lively portrayal of the beginnings of the preservation movement.

Seed of the Future: Yosemite and the Evolution of the National Park Idea

Yosemite Conservancy Yosemite National Park

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Dayton Duncan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Dayton Duncan