Wasatch County Library

"Spanning much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the novel follows the fortunes of the extraordinary Whittaker family as led by the enterprising Henry Whittaker--a poor-born Englishman who makes a great fortune in the South American quinine trade, eventually becoming the richest man in Philadelphia. Born in 1800, Henry's brilliant daughter, Alma (who inherits both her father's money and his mind), ultimately becomes a botanist of considerable...

Annabelle Stirling is a cloth merchant in Leeds in Regency Britain who, in her enthusiasm for the industrial revolution, runs afoul of a group of Luddites, one of whom is her fiance and another her brother, Wesley who destroy her new milling machine. When the authorities refuse to help, Belle naively thinks a royal audience will get justice done, and she journeys to London from Yorkshire to present her case at Parliament. The prince regent isn't much...

"From the author of 1491--the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas--a deeply engaging new history that explores the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs. More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed totally different suites of plants and animals. Columbus's voyages brought them back together--and marked the beginning...