Today I picked up some books at the library book sale. I will post pictures of a few of them and give a little bit of information as to why they caught my eye.

See also: Saturday Book Acquisitions and Saturday Book Acquisitions II

I picked this book up thinking that it might be a biography of Johnny Appleseed. However when I opened up the book I found that The Man who Planted Trees by Jean Giono was about a man in France in the early 20th century. I decided that I would bring the book home and find out more about Elzeard Bouffier.

The book is richly illustrated with wood engravings by Michael McCurdy. I really enjoyed just looking through the pictures.

Another book I picked up was Cowboys of the Wild West by Russell Freedman. I grew up in ranch country in Kansas and also had family members from this time period who owned ranches or worked as cowboys in the Wild West. I want to learn more about this time period. This book also has a lot of great pictures from the time period.

This book has a very long title: A Treasury of Foolishly Forgotten Americans: Pirates, Skinflints, Patriots, and other Colorful Characters Stuck in the Footnotes of History

The book is by Michael Farquhar and explores some of the Americans who are typically left out of our History textbooks. I read the first ten chapters during lunch today and thoroughly enjoyed them. I have another 20 to read now. Of course, I like to read about history and knew details of most of the first ten. However, there are a few in the rest of the book that I know nothing about yet. I look forward to learning more.

The book begins with John Billington: Mayflower Murderer and ends with Dick Fosbury: Father of the Flop.

The illustration on the cover of The Story of Texas caught my eye and I picked it up for a closer look. The text of the book is by John Edward Weems and it is illustrated by Tom Jones.

I scanned through the book and it is full of illustrations similar to the cover art.

The book covers the story of Texas from the time before the arrival of the Spanish to 1986 when it was published. I was actually living in Texas when this book was published and remember well the many celebrations for the Sesquicentennial of Texas that year.

Which of these books would you read first?

Steven