Captivating History West

Deadwood, 1876: a notorious little mining town in modern-day South Dakota that was a hive of criminal activity. Thieves, drunkards, prostitutes, and murderers ran rampant among its booming streets. There were over 300 murders in this town during the first year of its existence. When Wild Bill Hickok was brutally shot and killed at point-blank range in the back of the head, it was obvious that someone had to rise up and save the town of Deadwood from itself.

The Haitian Revolution was a slave rebellion that began in 1791 in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, now known as Haiti. On this small island, the tyrants were the slave owners, people who not only denied their slaves freedom, but felt justified in killing them. The Haitian Revolution began to change the way slaves were viewed all over the world.

In the minds of many Americans, the name of Jesse James and the Wild West are practically synonymous. Jesse James was a robber, a murderer, and a notorious outlaw, who carried as many weapons as he could. He could shoot with both hands while he held the reins of his horse in his teeth. He was an extremely popular man in his day, a phenomenon that he readily accepted because he was a person who craved attention.

Billy the Kid once said that he killed 22 men - one for each year that he lived. While it’s more likely that he only killed eight or nine, this young outlaw was clearly deadly. But his brief and brutal life reveals how his tragic existence led him into a life of crime. After growing up in poverty as an Irish immigrant in New York City and losing his father at a young age, Billy the Kid had to endure losing his mother when he was only 15.

How could Annie Oakley, a woman of barely 110 pounds with a childlike beauty, beat so many of the greatest sharpshooters with her skill and talent? The name is probably familiar to most people, but not many know about her early life or her great love for her husband, who was also a sharpshooter. We are taking you back more than a century to meet one of the greatest American folklore heroines who ever existed.

This book brings our Adventist pioneers to life. It is your tour guide to the lives, mission, and places of those who kindled the Seventh-day Adventist flame in California. Let your imagination hear the rhythm of their footsteps—footsteps of women and men who walked with purpose. Picture their brown eyes and blue eyes and green eyes darting between fear and hope. Listen to the passion tremble in their voices. Taste the dust on the wind that tugs at their beards and bonnets. Feel the shivers of discoveries and breakthroughs climb your own spine and bloom into a smile on your face.

Do you like epic tales that sing the deeds of the world’s greatest heroes? If so, you will love this volume of epics from the West African country of Mali. Each is full of battles, derring-do, magic, and prophecies based on historical events.

Containing delightful stories from the Yoruba and other West African peoples, this book presents tales of courage and cunning, virtue and vice, and fortunes found and lost. Some of these stories draw upon actual historical persons and events, while others are purely fictional, but each story has something to delight any listener.