Books in Landmark Books series

Seventeen-year-old Moses Schallenberger wanted to go to California. In 1844, he joined a wagon train to do just that. There was only one problem: Nobody had ever made it to California by wagon before. For a year, he and 50 others struggled through high mountain passes and across wide rushing rivers, enduring dangerous encounters with Indians and buffalo, inclement weather, difficult terrain, near-starvation and disaster.Ultimately, Moses and his friends succeeded–becoming the first pioneers to cross the Sierra Nevadas by wagon. Today, the trail they blazed is a major route into California.

Historian, scholar, and award-winning author Milton Meltzer outlines the struggle of African Americans for "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," starting with the landing of the first slave ships on colonial shores. How did over 300 years of slavery, segregation, and Jim Crow laws come to an end in the civil rights movement of the 1960s? What was achieved, and what are the problems still facing us today?

Eastern State Penitentiary: A History documents the stories of the men and the method that shaped one of Philadelphia’s most recognizable landmarks. In this superbly balanced and thoroughly researched volume,Paul Kahan presents the history of this revolutionary penitentiary, from its inception as a model of the revolutionary Pennsylvania System of incarceration in 1829 to the demands for its closure in the wake of ever-increasing violence in 1971. Through tales of spectacular escapes, official corruption, reformation and retribution, Kahan chronicles the tensions that plagued Eastern State since the arrival of its first prisoners.

Author Linda Lowery chronicles the extraordinary–but little-known–life of black pioneer Aunt Clara Brown. Aunt Clara bought herself out of slavery, crossed the country on foot to reach the frontier, became a wealthy entrepreneur, aided other freed slaves, and eventually tracked down her lost daughter, sold away from Clara 47 years before. An inspiring piece of American history.