A comprehensive history of the first three decades of underwater exploration in antebellum America. Beginning in 1837, some of the most brilliant engineers of America's Industrial Revolution turned their attention to undersea technology. Inventors developed practical hard-helmet diving suits, as well as new designs of submarines, diving bells, floating cranes, and undersea explosives. These innovations were used to clear shipping lanes, harvest pearls,...

"The Writing Master reveals, for the first time, the career of a nineteenth-century criminal mastermind, James B. Crosse. New research demonstrates that Crosse committed many crimes under undetected aliases: store break-ins, bank robberies, Wall Street stock forgeries, counterfeiting conspiracies, etc. His career revolved around a female blackmailer who matched his capacity for deceit and cunning, Jane Fleming. For several years, his accomplice was...

"Alfred had a long career as a player, manager, and minor league organizer before gaining notoriety as a utopian novelist, philosopher, economic reformer, cult leader, and early aviation promoter. George was a soldier, vaudeville troupe manager, performing hypnotist, medical quack, evangelist, and anti-KKK crusader who sought to break baseball's color line by founding integrated leagues"--Provided by publisher.

"Starting in 1875, at age nineteen, Ernest T. Morris of Indianapolis began a series of seven trips to the Amazon Valley to collect bird, butterfly, beetle, and orchid specimens for wealthy patrons in the United States. He gained fame from his second journey, made in 1876-1877, in which he ventured to the remote highland villages of the Munduruku people and bartered with them for eleven ornamented human trophy heads. In the early 1880s, Morris served...