Few men in American history have been at once as glorified and maligned as John Brown. From his attack of the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in October 1859, as part of a scheme to free the slaves, Brown has been called a saint and sinner, rogue and redeemer, martyr and madman. Brown rebelled against the American government, and he murdered men in Kansas in order to end the murderous institution of slavery. He denounced war, but made war on his government in order to end an existing war for slavery. This anthology, which presents Brown's writing and diverse responses to his life and raid, offers a lens through which to analyze these tensions and contradictions. Extensive introductions to every source offer a close reading of language and provide full historical and biographical background.

A scrappy Brooklyn orphan turned vengeful assassin narrates a visionary tale of the American West In this panoramic tale of Manifest Destiny—the second stand-alone book in The American Novels series—Stephen Moran comes of age with the young country that he crosses on the Union Pacific, just as the railroad unites the continent. Propelled westward from his Brooklyn neighborhood and the killing fields of the Civil War to the Battle of Little Big Horn, he befriends Walt Whitman, receives a medal from General Grant, becomes a bugler on President Lincoln’s funeral train, goes to work for railroad mogul Thomas Durant, apprentices with frontier photographer William Henry Jackson, and stalks General George Custer. When he comes face-to-face with Crazy Horse, his life will be spared but his dreams haunted for the rest of his days. By turns elegiac and comic, American Meteor is a novel of adventure, ideas, and mourning: a unique vision of America’s fabulous and murderous history.

The first shot of the American Civil War was not fired on April 12, 1861, in Charleston, South Carolina, but instead came on October 16, 1859, in Harpers Ferry, Virginia--or so claimed former slave turned abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The shot came like a meteor in the dark. John Brown, the infamous fighter on the Kansas plains and detester of slavery, led a band of nineteen men on a desperate nighttime raid that targeted the Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. There, they planned to begin a war to end slavery in the United States. But after 36 tumultuous hours, John Brown's Raid failed, and Brown himself became a prisoner of the state of Virginia. Brown's subsequent trial further divided north and south on the issue of slavery as Brown justified his violent actions to a national audience forced to choose sides. Ultimately, Southerners cheered Brown's death at the gallows while Northerners observed it with reverence. The nation's dividing line had been drawn. Herman Melville and Walt Whitman extolled Brown as a "meteor" of the war. Roughly one year after Brown and his men attacked slavery in Virginia, the nation split apart, fueled by Brown's fiery actions. John Brown's Raid tells the story of the first shots that led to disunion. Richly filled with maps and images, it includes a driving and walking tour of sites related to Brown's Raid so visitors today can walk in the footsteps of America's meteor.

William Joseph Cosens Lancaster was the son of a Royal Navy captain and educated at the Naval College, Greenwhich. Even though he had been at sea since the age of 15, he had to abandon a career in the Royal Navy because of severe myopia which kept him from clearly seeing anything more than a few hundred yards away. Undaunted, he became a marine engineer specializing in harbor design. He also became one of the most prolific writers of nautical fiction of his day. Between 1886 and 1913 he wrote 23 nautically-related novels under the pseudonym of "Harry Collingwood"-a name he derived from his hero Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood, Nelson's second in command at Trafalgar. His most commercially successful book was The Pirate Island written in 1884; but Under the Meteor Flag, written the previous year, might be his most action-packed. It is the story of a young midshipman who, like many of Marryat's characters, is trying to make his way in the new and often incomprehensible world of the 18th Century Royal Navy. It is the story of the midshipman that Lancaster never was, but it is written by a man who literally spent his whole life dealing with the sea.

Ulric Dahlgren was a brilliant, ambitious young man who became the youngest full colonel in the United States Army at the age of twenty-one, yet died before his twenty-second birthday. This is the first biography of Dahlgren, and thankfully it was penned by cavalry expert and award-winning author Eric J. Wittenberg. Wittenberg’s account chronicles Dahlgren’s full life story, with a deep look at his military career and extensive connections within the nation’s capital, all of which led to the climax of his life: the notorious Dahlgren Raid. Like a Meteor Burning Brightly: The Short but Controversial Life of Colonel Ulric Dahlgren is based upon a plethora of source material, including previously unknown or little-used archival sources. Anyone interested in the Civil War in general, or just a fascinating life well-told, will want this book on their shelf.

The influential masterpiece of one of the twentieth century’s most brilliant—and neglected—science fiction and horror writers, whom Stephen King called “the best writer of science fiction that England has ever produced.” “[Wyndham] avoids easy allegories and instead questions the relative values of the civilisation that has been lost, the literally blind terror of humanity in the face of dominant nature. . . . Frightening and powerful, Wyndham’s vision remains an important allegory and a gripping story.”—The Guardian What if a meteor shower left most of the world blind—and humanity at the mercy of mysterious carnivorous plants? Bill Masen undergoes eye surgery and awakes the next morning in his hospital bed to find civilization collapsing. Wandering the city, he quickly realizes that surviving in this strange new world requires evading strangers and the seven-foot-tall plants known as triffids—plants that can walk and can kill a man with one quick lash of their poisonous stingers.