Books published by publisher Westphalia Press

Kim Idol is a writer/instructor at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, partial to dogs, guns, rock-climbing and backpack traveling. She has been in love with Nepal since she first visited 8 years ago. She knew she loved the outdoors and that she would love the Himalayas, but she was unexpectedly charmed by the wildlife and the people she met on her first trip and upon returning home immediately began saving and planning in order to return. Eight years later after a tough year at home, a random mouse-click on the word elephant led her to the site that described working at the elephant stables in Chitwan. So she packed up and left home journaling her experiences in Chitwan as she went.Nepal is the mountain, the jungle and the foothills. The country is blessed and cursed with being a popular tourist destination and while its people take advantage of the luck they are also engaged in a vigorous fight to preserve their culture and protect the park and the mountains that are home to some of the last surviving members of several endangered species including the one horned rhinoceros, the Asian elephant, the sloth bear and many bird and crocodile species. This book is about the outdoors, about a culture straddling the past and the present and about a woman finding a little peace as she treks through the result. The trip changed this traveler and she suspects she might be seeing Chitwan again.

John D. Whidden served in various roles on ships since the age of twelve. Although he portrayed himself as a roguish boy, he quickly proved himself as a ship’s gofer, and earned a mate’s position by his early twenties. His travels saw him around the world, with stops at major ports such as Honolulu, Buenos Aires, Calcutta, and Liverpool. His life spans the changes in the shipping industry over the 19th and into the 20th century. During the Civil War, Whidden was heavily involved in profitable island trading in the Bahamas to elude Confederate sailors. However, shortly after the close of the war, in 1870, Whidden left sailing as he found it being overtaken by foreign interests. He wrote this work in 1908, partly as a memoir, but also to offer a snippet of the “old sailing ship days” before major changes occurred to its business environment, fundamentally changing its nature.

Kim Idol is a writer/instructor at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, partial to dogs, guns, rock-climbing and backpack traveling. She has been in love with Nepal since she first visited 8 years ago. She knew she loved the outdoors and that she would love the Himalayas, but she was unexpectedly charmed by the wildlife and the people she met on her first trip and upon returning home immediately began saving and planning in order to return. Eight years later after a tough year at home, a random mouse-click on the word elephant led her to the site that described working at the elephant stables in Chitwan. So she packed up and left home journaling her experiences in Chitwan as she went.Nepal is the mountain, the jungle and the foothills. The country is blessed and cursed with being a popular tourist destination and while its people take advantage of the luck they are also engaged in a vigorous fight to preserve their culture and protect the park and the mountains that are home to some of the last surviving members of several endangered species including the one horned rhinoceros, the Asian elephant, the sloth bear and many bird and crocodile species. This book is about the outdoors, about a culture straddling the past and the present and about a woman finding a little peace as she treks through the result. The trip changed this traveler and she suspects she might be seeing Chitwan again.

Seventy-Five Years in California spans the 19th century, offering William Heath Davis’ view of California’s Pastoral Period. He gives readers a unique look at the disintegration of missions, the rise of the rancheros, the American Invasion, the Gold Rush and the adoption of the territory as a state. Davis himself had an interesting personal history, having been born in Hawaii in 1822, raised in Boston, traveled a great deal by sea, and became one of the most prominent merchants in San Francisco by 1845. The California Gold Rush really was a bonanza. Between 1849 and 1855 the miners gathered more than $400 million dollars; once adjusted, it is a sum today reaching into the trillions. It was a social phenomenon marked by the carnivalesque. In his work Roughing It (1872) Mark Twain’s protagonist remarks as his brother heads West, “Pretty soon he would be hundreds and hundreds of miles away on the great plains and deserts, and among the mountains of the Far West, and would see buffaloes and Indians, and prairie dogs, an antelopes, and have all kinds of adventures, and may be get hanged or scalped, and have ever such a fine time, and write home and tell us all about it, and be a hero…And by and by he would become very rich, and return home by sea, and be able to talk as calmly about San Francisco and ocean, and ‘the isthmus’ as if it was nothing of any consequence to have seen those marvels face to face.” Go they did to the Land of Golden Dreams, in the largest internal migration in American history, and the adventures and tragedies have created a large and memorable literature.

Gage Earle Freeman (1820-1903) wrote a number of articles on falconry. He was introduced to the sport in England and retained a life-long interest in it, often working with kestrel-hawks, peregrine falcons, and sparrow hawks. He was also an esteemed poet, winning four Seatonian Prizes; a father to ten children, and married twice. He attended St. John's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1845 with a B.A. and became an ordained priest in 1847, receiving his M.A. in 1850. In 1889, he became a vicar and a private chaplain to the Earl of Lonsdale, and remained in that position until his death. This new edition is dedicated to the Duke of St. Albans, remembering school days in Judde House, Tonbridge.

The California Gold Rush really was a bonanza. Between 1849 and 1855 more than $400 million dollars was gathered by the miners; once adjusted, it is a sum today reaching into the trillions. It was a social phenomenon marked by the carnivalesque. In his work Roughing It (1872) Mark Twain’s protagonist remarks as his brother heads West, “Pretty soon he would be hundreds and hundreds of miles away on the great plains and deserts, and among the mountains of the Far West, and would see buffaloes and Indians, and prairie dogs, an antelopes, and have all kinds of adventures, and may be get hanged or scalped, and have ever such a fine time, and write home and tell us all about it, and be a hero…And by and by he would become very rich, and return home by sea, and be able to talk as calmly about San Francisco and ocean, and ‘the isthmus’ as if it was nothing of any consequence to have seen those marvels face to face.” Go they did to the Land of Golden Dreams, in the largest internal migration in American history, and the adventures and tragedies have created a large and memorable literature. The Young Vigilantes tells a story of life on ship and land, centered around California during the Gold Rush.

According to the author, alchemy was the belief that “all the metals (and, indeed, all forms of matter) are one in origin, and are produced by an evolutionary process. The Soul of them all is one and the same; it is only the Soul that is permanent...” Redgrove offers a detailed account of alchemy’s controversial history, treating both the theoretical and physical approaches to the field. Alchemy: Ancient and Modern has long been viewed as a significant introductory text to the subject. Herbert Stanley Redgrove (1887-1943) wrote several texts on similar topics, including A Mathematical Theory of Spirit, Bygone Beliefs and Purpose and Transcendentalism. He was a chemist and a founder of the Alchemical Society in London. This edition is dedicated to Adam Kendall, in his distinctive way an authority on the mysteries of the past.

Matthew Moncrieff Pattison Muir was born into a wealthy Scottish family on April 1, 1848 in Glasgow. He was encouraged through his upbringing in an interest in the natural sciences, and focused on chemistry. He did indeed become a chemistry professor at Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge. By 1881, he became a Fellow, and then the head of the Caius Laboratory. His own research was focused on bismuth compounds. His facility for writing was prized, and he became famous for his textbooks, especially Heroes of Science: Chemists (1883) and History of Chemical Theories and Laws (1907). This is a reprint edition with minor text and illustration imperfections.

The young Horatio Alger heroes often sold newspapers or delivered telegrams, a reminder of how technology has moved on. Alger's tales created youthful heroes whose persistence and pluck triumphed over enormous odds, often having to educate themselves by a flickering candle and late at night. But they hoped for better things and in the Alger novels their diligence and hard work won the day and they ended up getting the educations they deserved and the success that their exemplary morality earned. The reader will find this prototypical Alger story both a good read and food for thought in an era when the technology has indeed moved on but the challenges have remained.The introduction is provided by Dr. Wallace Boston, President of the American Public University System and a Horatio Alger enthusiast.

This work was written and researched by A. M. Brooks, who was born as Abbie M. Brooks, but also wrote as Sylvia Sunshine. She wrote a great deal about Florida, including the work, Petals Plucked From Sunny Climes, which is a highly acclaimed and well researched account of the Florida area prior to the 1870s. This work, The Unwritten History of St. Augustine, is the culmination of a very daunting task, going through five huge volumes of records regarding the development of Florida found in the archives in Seville, Spain. Yet, for all of her hard work, little is known about the life and history of A. M. Brooks. Perhaps ironically, she was always tracking the past, but leaving very little of her own behind, save for her writings.

Slavery was simply an awful institution that even today in its legacy continues to plague the United States. During its height, abolitionists “waved the bloody flag” and vigorously protested to end it, though it took plunging the nation into the Civil War to result in it being finally eradicated. One person that took a memorable, radical, and extreme stand against “the peculiar institution” was John Brown. Though Brown had led forces against pro-slavery opponents earlier, it wasn’t until 1859 when he turned to violence on the national stage and led forces, particularly enslaved African Americans, at Harper’s Ferry. The movement was ultimately unsuccessful, and Brown was captured and tried for treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia (before Harper’s Ferry was part of West Virginia). He was hanged despite vocal opposition from his supporters, and his work as an abolitionist created ripples of tension that significantly fueled the drift towards war. His acts’ effectiveness has long been a source of debate. This volume by Oswald Garrison Villard gives the opinions of a prominent early voice in the conversation about Brown’s life and impact. It is dedicated to Judy Rich Lauder, enthusiast for Civil War history in the schools and libraries.