A world traveler, Isabella Bird recorded her 1873 visit to Colorado Territory in her classic travel narrative, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains. This work inspired Robert Root’s own discovery of Colorado’s Front Range following his move from the flatlands of Michigan. In this elegantly written book, Root retraces Bird’s three-month journey, seeking to understand what Colorado meant to her—and what it would come to mean for him. Following Isabella is a work of intersecting histories. Root interweaves an overview of Bird’s life and work with regional history, nature writing, and his own travels to produce a uniquely informative and entertaining narrative. He probes Bird’s self-transformation as her writing moved from private letters to published books, and also draws on reflections of other authors of her day, including Grace Greenwood and Helen Hunt Jackson. Like Bird, Root experiences his most fulfilling moments in the mountains, climbing formidable Longs Peak, living alone in the cabin of famed editor William Allen White, and wandering wild landscapes. Through reflections on earlier writers’ experiences, and by weighing his own response to them, Root learns not only how to come to Colorado, as visitors so often do, but more important, how to stay.

A world traveler, Isabella Bird recorded her 1873 visit to Colorado Territory in her classic travel narrative, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains. This work inspired Robert Root’s own discovery of Colorado’s Front Range following his move from the flatlands of Michigan. In this elegantly written book, Root retraces Bird’s three-month journey, seeking to understand what Colorado meant to her—and what it would come to mean for him. Following Isabella is a work of intersecting histories. Root interweaves an overview of Bird’s life and work with regional history, nature writing, and his own travels to produce a uniquely informative and entertaining narrative. He probes Bird’s self-transformation as her writing moved from private letters to published books, and also draws on reflections of other authors of her day, including Grace Greenwood and Helen Hunt Jackson. Like Bird, Root experiences his most fulfilling moments in the mountains, climbing formidable Longs Peak, living alone in the cabin of famed editor William Allen White, and wandering wild landscapes. Through reflections on earlier writers’ experiences, and by weighing his own response to them, Root learns not only how to come to Colorado, as visitors so often do, but more important, how to stay.

While playing in the backyard, Isabella imagines herself all over the world as a warrior, archeologist, queen, and astronomer.

A biography of a tenacious Englishwoman who defied Victorian-era societal expectations and sought adventure around the world. Isabella Bird traveled to the wildest places on earth, but at home in Britain she lay in bed, hardly able to write: ‘an invalid at home and a Samson abroad.’ In Japan she rode on a ‘yezo savage’ through foaming floods along unbeaten tracks, and was followed in the city by a crowd of a thousand, whose clogs clattered ‘like a hailstorm’ as they vied for a glimpse of the foreigner. She documented America before and after the Civil War and was deported from Korea with only the tweed suit she stood up in during a Japanese invasion. In China she was attacked with rocks and sticks and called a foreign dog, but she never gave up and went home. ‘The prospect of the unknown has its charms.’ Transformed by distant lands, she crossed raging floods, rode elephants, cows, and yak, clung to her horse’s neck as it clambered down cliff paths, slept on simple mats on the bare ground, unable to change out of wet clothes or get out of the searing heat. Her travels and the books she wrote about them show courage and tenacity, fueled by a restless spirit and a love of nature. She is as unique now as she was then.

This book is about a couple, not a single, dominant ruler. Thus it raises issues of gender, and the dynamics of a marriage over thirty-five years, as well as the practice of monarchical power. The reader sees Ferdinand and Isabella struggle to establish their regime, and then work out an elaborate reform programme in Church and State. It sees them fight a ‘total war’, by fifteenth-century standards, against Muslim Granada, leading to that kingdom’s conquest, and an equally ‘total’ war, through the Inquisition and the Church in general, to convert Spanish Jews and Muslims to Christianity, and to reform and purify the religious and social lives of the established Christians themselves. For readers interested in Early European History.

Isabella Marie Sammarco (Oct. 7th, 1971 July 29th, 1986) Isabella was known by her family and friends for her tremendous zest and respect for life; with a sparkle in her eyes and a contagious smile, she taught those around her to appreciate their lives and to love one another. Although she was very much aware from an early age that her life would be short, this knowledge did not stop her from living with a purpose and making each day count. Isabella was diagnosed at eight months with Thalassemia Major a genetic blood disorder that required her to have regular, monthly transfusions to survive. She fought vigorously to overcome the numerous obstacles that she encountered during her brief life, until her small body could fight no more. Isabella died two months short of her fifteenth birthday. This book is the heartfelt, truthful account of a brave soul and her dedicated family. It is a story that will touch all who read it and inspire those looking for guidance and hope.