An American Look at Napoleon’s “Dark Age” Press, 1810-1811
Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s key to perpetuating the war despite setbacks was ensuring the compliance of the people at home. Thus total control over French newspapers fueled the constant call for more soldiers.
Read More
Saga of Gisli the Outlaw: Window into the Viking World
The Saga of Gisli Sursson, or Gisli the Outlaw – believed to have been written sometime in the thirteenth century – is an exceptional window into the Viking world during a period of profound and rapid change.
Read More
Colonel Alexander Doniphan’s Epic March in Mexico, 1846-1847
Alexander William Doniphan is well known among Mormons for his saving Joseph Smith from certain death in the 1838 Mormon War, but his Mexican-American War expedition covering swaths of the Southwest was hailed at the time as a military achievement. In the fall of 1846 Doniphan, an attorney-turned-colonel in the expansionist war, led the 1st Regiment of Mounted Missouri Volunteers out of occupied Santa Fe, New Mexico, into hostile lands of the Navajo and northern Mexican states including Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Nuevo Leon.
Read More
Before Marco Polo: William of Rubruck’s Journey to Karakorum and Nestorian Christians, 1253–1255
After a Levantian crusade in 1253, Flemish Franciscan monk William of Rubruck ventured further east on the Silk Road by way of Constantinople and the Black Sea in search of the fabled Mongolian capital of Karakorum.
Read More
Davy Crockett’s “Autobiographies”: The Life and Legend in Literature
In 1923 Charles Scribner’s Sons, the famous New York-based publishing company founded in 1846 by Charles Scribner at the start of the Mexican-American War, released The Autobiography of Davy Crockett (1786-1836) – a work about the famous Tennessee frontiersman-turned politician who died in Texas at the Battle of the Alamo.
Read More