Hear the cannon roar at Valley Forge with George Washington, dance the night away at a Chicago Speakeasy during Prohibition, take a ringside seat for the gunfight at the OK Corral, ride Apollo 11 to the moon, hear Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech, join with Harry S. Truman on the A-bomb deliberations, land with John Smith at Virginia, ride against Custer at Little Horn, get on down to Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, march to 'The Grapes of Wrath' at Shiloh, work your fingers to the bone at Henry Ford's car plant . . . this is America - the beautiful, the powerful, the tragic, the glorious. The Mammoth Book of How It Happened: America is the story of the making of America in the very words of those who were there, from its 'discovery' by Christopher Columbus to George W. Bush's War Against Terrorism. Composed of firsthand eye-witness accounts of the seminal moments in US history, this is an intimate, revealing, insightful guide to the greatest nation on earth. In five chronological sections, this volume tracks the main phases of American history: Discovery, including the exploration and settlement of America; Independence, the Revolution and wars against British rule; Destiny, covering expansion into the West and the split between North and South; Frontier, including the settlement of the American West and the Indian Wars; and finally Century, the 100 years that saw America becoming a superpower on the world's political stage.

Takes a snapshot view of history from 2700 B.C. to 2000 A.D. and offers a collection of eyewitness accounts of the most memorable historical and social events taken from memoirs, diaries, letters and journals. Original.

An anthology focusing on newer elements of steampunk, one which deconstructs the staples of the genre and expands on them, rather than simply repeating them, with a greater spread both in terms of location and character. This is steampunk with a modern, post-colonial sensibility. Contributors include: Jeff VanderMeer, Caitlín Kiernan, Mary Robinette Kowal, Jay Lake, Cherie Priest, Cat Rambo, Catherynne M. Valente, Genevieve Valentine and many more.

Here are 25 stories of science fiction that push the envelope, by the biggest names in an emerging new crop of high-tech futuristic SF - including Charles Stross, Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Peter Hamilton and Neal Asher. High-tech SF has made a significant comeback in the last decade, as bestselling authors successfully blend the super-science of 'hard science fiction' with real characters in an understandable scenario. It is perhaps a reflection of how technologically controlled our world is that readers increasingly look for science fiction that considers the fates of mankind as a result of increasing scientific domination. This anthology brings together the most extreme examples of the new high-tech, far-future science fiction, pushing the limits way beyond normal boundaries. The stories include: "A Perpetual War Fought Within a Cosmic String", "A Weapon That Could Destroy the Universe", "A Machine That Detects Alternate Worlds and Creates a Choice of Christs", "An Immortal Dead Man Sent To The End of the Universe", "Murder in Virtual Reality", "A Spaceship So Large That There is An Entire Planetary System Within It", and "An Analytical Engine At The End of Time", and "Encountering the Untouchable."

Every short story in this wonderfully varied collection has one thing in common: each features some alteration in history, some divergence from historical reality, which results in a world very different from the one we know today. As well as original stories specially commissioned from bestselling writers such as James Morrow, Stephen Baxter and Ken MacLeod, there are genre classics such as Kim Stanley Robinson's story of how World War II atomic bomber the Enola Gay, having crashed on a training flight, is replaced by the Lucky Strike with profoundly different consequences. Praise for the editors: 'Mr Watson wreaks havoc with what is accepted - and acceptable.' The Times 'One of Britain's consistently finest science fiction writers.' New Scientist

A fresh, new look at gangs in every part of the world which deliberately avoids the stories that have been done to death - about Capone, Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde - and focuses on less well-known gangs such as 'Ma' Barker's Boys; the Smaldones of Denver; Scotland Yard's 1960s' Flying Squad, the so-called Firm within a Firm; Dr Death, the Melbourne drug dealer and Andre Stander, the former South African police officer who led a gang of bank robbers before being shot dead in Fort Lauderdale having fled a 17-year sentence.

Encyclopedic in scope, this reference to the American West shatters numerous misconceptions about the nation's primary source of historical and cultural mythology, covering Indian history with both cultural sensitivity and candor. Original.