Late medeival Sicily is shown to have been neither underdeveloped nor dependent on foreign trade.

The true story of a man who took it upon himself to live alone on a deserted island in the South Pacific, in fact he loved it so much he decided to return and stay a while longer! A true castaway story that deserved to be preserved for generations to come.

Far off the coast of California looms a harsh rock known as the island of San Nicholas. Dolphins flash in the blue waters around it, sea otter play in the vast kep beds, and sea elephants loll on the stony beaches. Here, in the early 1800s, according to history, an Indian girl spent eighteen years alone, and this beautifully written novel is her story. It is a romantic adventure filled with drama and heartache, for not only was mere subsistence on so desolate a spot a near miracle, but Karana had to contend with the ferocious pack of wild dogs that had killed her younger brother, constantly guard against the Aleutian sea otter hunters, and maintain a precarious food supply. More than this, it is an adventure of the spirit that will haunt the reader long after the book has been put down. Karana's quiet courage, her Indian self-reliance and acceptance of fate, transform what to many would have been a devastating ordeal into an uplifting experience. From loneliness and terror come strength and serenity in this Newbery Medal-winning classic.

By the end of the 18th century, Corsica had been occupied by France for over thirty years. Islanders yearned to recover their lost independence, and the French Revolution gave them the opportunity. Their leader, Pasquale Paoli, realized that alone they could never defeat the well-organized French forces. He offered Corsica to King George III of England, on condition that the French were driven from the island. Based on documented historical fact, the author paints a detailed portrait of Corsica through the captivating adventures of Damian Berra, a young man from what is today the Swiss canton of Valais. After wandering through Lombardy to the Ligurian coast, as the victim of a press gang on a French frigate, he becomes marooned on Corsica, an island infested with bandits and crippled with vendettas, where murders are seven times more numerous than in mainland France. The story also describes the attempts of the English to administer an island they eventually called “The Ungovernable Rock.”