On the 21st of May 1825, the Elizabeth sailed from the Cove of Cork, carrying 45 men, 31 women and 134 children from some of the most distressed districts in the south of Ireland. These people were transported, at Government expense, as part of an experimental emigration that settled over 2000 Irish paupers in the backwoods of Upper Canada. Responsibility for the success of this enterprise fell to Peter Robinson (1785 – 1838), who had conducted a similar experiment on a smaller scale in 1823....

Remarkable first-person story of survival in Nazi occupied Poland. Narrowly escaping the Nazi sweep in Southern Poland, Jafa Wallach and her husband, Natan, a physician, were able to send their four-year-old daughter to safety (they prayed) while they themselves—along with two of Jafa's brothers—managed to dig a shallow hole in the ground beneaththe cellar of an heroic Polish mechanic's shop.

Fifteen-year-old Hanna Berkenski journeys from her family's tiny apartment in the Warsaw Ghetto through an awful night spent in a cattle-car with her mother and sister to the welcoming orchestra at Auschwitz where she was to be a violinist for three years.As the train arrives at Auschwitz, flowers, sunshine and music feel like warm welcomes to her. She's been told she'll be spending the next few weeks in a "work camp" until her family can be reunited and relocated. Even the snowfla...

The view 16-year-old Thomas Osborne first had of Muskoka was at night, trudging alone with his even younger brother along unmarked primitive roads to find their luckless father who, in 1875, had decided to make a new start for his beleaguered family on some "free land" in the bush east of the pioneer village of Huntsville, Ontario. The miracle is that Thomas lived to tell the tale.For the next five years Thomas endured starvation, falling through the ice and freezing, accidents wit...

A daring young woman will risk her life to find her destiny in this atmospheric, beautifully drawn historical debut novel—a tale of love, hope, and danger set during the First World War.Lady Elizabeth Neville-Ashford wants to travel the world, pursue a career, and marry for love. But in 1914, the stifling restrictions of aristocratic British society and her mother’s rigid expectations forbid Lilly from following her heart. When war breaks out, the spirited young woman seizes her ch...

**#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the acclaimed author of Seabiscuit comes the incredible true story of survival and salvation that is the basis for two major motion pictures: Unbroken and Unbroken: Path to Redemption.“Extraordinarily moving . . . a powerfully drawn survival epic.”—The Wall Street Journal**“Hillenbrand’s writing is so ferociously cinematic, the events she describes so incredible, you don’t dare take y...

#1 New York Times BestsellerAvailable in a special hardcover edition, Christina Baker Kline’s smash bestseller, a captivating historical novel that is “a lovely novel about the search for family that also happens to illuminate a fascinating and forgotten chapter of American history” (Ann Packer).Between 1854 and 1929, so-called orphan trains ran regularly from the cities of the East Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest, carrying thousands of aband...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A book in the best tradition of popular history—the untold story of Ireland's role in maintaining Western culture while the Dark Ages settled on Europe. • The perfect St. Patrick's Day gift!Every year millions of Americans celebrate St. Patrick's Day, but they may not be aware of how great an influence St. Patrick was on the subsequent history of civilization. Not only did he bring Christianity to Ireland, he instilled a sense of literacy and ...

"It will be very reasonably asked why I should consent, though upon a sort of challenge, to write even a popular essay in English history, who make no pretence to particular scholarship and am merely a member of the public. The answer is that I know just enough to know one thing: that a history from the standpoint of a member of the public has not been written. What we call the popular histories should rather be called the anti-popular histories. They are all, nearly without exception, wri...

THE ONLY BOOK ON IRISH HISTORY YOU'LL EVER NEED!From invasions to rebellions, heroic martyrs to pragmatic politicians, industrial development to mass emigration, A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes by renowned Irish historian Jonathan Bardon will take you on a sweeping journey through Irish history, getting behind the historical headlines to reveal the lived experience of Irish people.Written in easy-to-read bitesize episodes, Bardon's original and engaging style will make you feel as tho...

One of Canada's founding peoples, the Irish arrived in the Newfoundland fishing stations as early as the seventeenth century. By the eighteenth century they were establishing farms and settlements from Nova Scotia to the Great Lakes. Then, in the 1840s, came the failures of Ireland's potato crop, which people in the west of Ireland had depended on for survival. "And that," wrote a Sligo countryman, "was the beginning of the great trouble and famine that destroyed Ireland."Fligh...

This superb account of life on the Great Blasket Island off the west coast of Kerry, written as the nineteenth century draws to its close and the dawn of a new era trespasses on the lives of its small community, is both a shocking and captivating read. Here is the first complete translation of Tomás O'Crohan's autobiography An tOileánach, first published in 1929. This edition is based on Professor Sean O Coileain's definitive 2002 Irish language edition. It contains many passages omitted f...