Murphy, Jim

James Edmond, a sixteen-year-old orphan, keeps a journal of his experiences and those of "G" Company which he joined as a volunteer in the Union Army during the Civil War.

Includes drawings of unusual inventions submitted to the patent office, with clues to aid the reader in guessing the purpose of each invention.

Relates Henry David Thoreau's adventure through the Maine wilderness recording all the details of the untouched forest.

Photographs and text, along with personal accounts of actual survivors tell the story of the great fire of 1871 in Chicago.

Surveys the history of the whaling industry from its earliest days to the present, focusing on the young boys who managed to sign on for whaling voyages.

An overview of the struggle between the Texan settlers and Mexico's General Santa Anna for control of Texas, with a detailed description of the 1836 siege of the Alamo. Includes biographical sketches and quotations of some of those involved.

A biography of an Italian peasant who immigrated to America in the early twentieth century and endured poverty and the difficult life of an unskilled laborer, determined to become a published poet.

A description of the Cardiff Giant mystery in which a man in upstate New York buried a ten-foot-tall, petrified model of a man, which was discovered by well diggers a year later, and set into motion a money-making spectacle.

A young arctic wolf has a harrowing adventure trying to find his way back to the pack after being separated from them during a caribou hunt. Also includes a chapter with general information about wolves.

A fictional diary in which young Brian Doyle records how he ran away from his home in San Francisco in 1784, joined the crew of a whaling ship, and endured storms, hostile shipmates, and being stranded in the Arctic.