"Passing Strange" is a uniquely American biography of Clarence King, who hid a secret from his Gilded Age cohorts and prominent family: for 13 years he lived a double life--as the celebrated white explorer, geologist, and writer King and as a black Pullman porter and steelworker named James Todd.

Clarence King is a hero of nineteenth-century western history. Brilliant scientist and witty conversationalist, bestselling author and architect of the great surveys that mapped the West after the Civil War, King hid a secret from his Gilded Age cohorts and prominent Newport family: for thirteen years he lived a double life--as the celebrated white Clarence King and as a black Pullman porter and steelworker. Unable to marry the black woman he loved, the fair-haired, blue-eyed King passed as a Negro, revealing his secret to his wife Ada only on his deathbed. Historian Martha Sandweiss is the first writer to uncover the life that King tried so hard to conceal. She reveals the complexity of a man who, while publicly espousing a personal dream of a uniquely American amalgam of white and black, hid his love for his wife and their five biracial children.--From publisher description.

A haunting image of an unnamed Native child and a recovered story of the American West In 1868, celebrated Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner traveled to Fort Laramie to document the federal government’s treaty negotiations with the Lakota and other tribes of the northern plains. Gardner, known for his iconic portrait of Abraham Lincoln and his visceral pictures of the Confederate dead at Antietam, posed six federal peace commissioners with a young Native girl wrapped in a blanket. The hand-labeled prints carefully name each of the men, but the girl is never identified. As The Girl in the Middle goes in search of her, it draws readers into the entangled lives of the photographer and his subjects. Martha A. Sandweiss paints a riveting portrait of the turbulent age of Reconstruction and westward expansion. She follows Gardner from his birthplace in Scotland to the American frontier, as his dreams of a utopian future across the Atlantic fall to pieces. She recounts the lives of William S. Harney, a slave-owning Union general who earned the Lakota name “Woman Killer,” and Samuel F. Tappan, an abolitionist who led the investigation into the Sand Creek massacre. And she identifies Sophie Mousseau, the girl in Gardner’s photograph, whose life swerved in unexpected directions as American settlers pushed into Indian Country and the federal government confined Native peoples to reservations. Spinning a spellbinding historical tale from a single enigmatic image, The Girl in the Middle reveals how the American nation grappled with what kind of country it would be as it expanded westward in the aftermath of the Civil War.

Resurrecting scores of rare images of the 19th century American West, "Print the Legend" offers engaging tales of ambitious photographic adventurers, and misinterpreted images. Chronicling both the history of a place and the history of a medium, this book portrays how Americans first came to understand western photos and to envision their expanding nation. 138 illustrations.

Presents a visual record of the Mexican War. -- Amazon.com.

These photographic books enabled the images to speak directly to the viewer.