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This critical edition explores the past and future of wolves in Colorado. Originally published in 1929, The Last Stand of the Pack is a historical account of the extermination of what were then believed to be the last wolves in Colorado. Arthur H. Carhart and Stanley P. Young describe the wolves’ extermination and extoll the bravery of the federal trappers hunting them down while simultaneously characterizing the wolves as cunning individuals and noble adversaries to the growth of the livestock industry and the settlement of the West. This is nature writing at its best, even if the worldview expressed is at times jarring to the twenty-first-century reader.

Now, almost 100 years later, much has been learned about ecology and the role of top-tier predators within ecosystems. In this new edition, Carhart and Young’s original text is accompanied by an extensive introduction with biographical details on Arthur Carhart and an overview of the history of wolf eradication in the west; chapters by prominent wildlife biologists, environmentalists, wolf reintroduction activists, and ranchers Tom Compton, Bonnie Brown, Mike Phillips, Norman A. Bishop, and Cheney Gardner; and an epilogue considering current issues surrounding the reintroduction of wolves in Colorado. Presenting a balanced perspective, these additional chapters address views both in support of and opposed to wolf reintroduction.

Coloradans are deeply interested in wilderness and the debate surrounding wolf reintroduction, but for wolves to have a future in Colorado we must first understand the past. The Last Stand of the Pack: Critical Edition presents both important historical scholarship and contemporary ecological ideas, offering a complete picture of the impact of wolves in Colorado.

The research Alexander von Humboldt amassed during his five-year trek through the Americas in the early nineteenth-century proved foundational to the fields of botany, geography, and geology. But his visit to Cuba during this time yielded observations that extended far beyond the natural world. Political Essay on the Island of Cuba is a physical and cultural study of the island nation. In it, Humboldt denounces colonial slavery on both moral and economic grounds and stresses the vital importance of improving intercultural relations throughout the Americas.

Humboldt’s most controversial book, Political Essay on the Island of Cuba was banned, censored, and willfully mistranslated to suppress Humboldt’s strong antislavery sentiments. It reemerges here, newly translated from the original two volume French edition, to introduce a new generation of readers to Humboldt’s astonishing multiplicity of scientific and philosophical perspectives. In their critical introduction, Vera Kutzinski and Ottmar Ette emphasize Humboldt’s rare ability to combine scientific rigor with a cosmopolitan consciousness and a deeply felt philosophical humanism. The result is a work on Cuba of historical import that will attract historians of science as well as cultural historians, political scientists, and literary scholars.

First published in 1912, Theodore Dreiser's third novel, The Financier, captures the ruthlessness and sparkle of the Gilded Age alongside the charismatic amorality of the power brokers and bankers of the mid-nineteenth century. This volume is the first modern edition of The Financier to draw on the uncorrected page proofs of the original 1912 version, which established Dreiser as a master of the American business novel. The novel was the first volume of Dreiser’s Trilogy of Desire, also known as the Cowperwood Trilogy, which includes The Titan (1914) and The Stoic (1947).

Dreiser laboriously researched the business practices and personal exploits of real-life robber baron Charles Yerkes to narrate Frank Algernon Cowperwood's early career in The Financier, which explores the unscrupulous world of finance from the Civil War through the panic incited by the 1871 Chicago fire. In 1927, the monumental novel reappeared in a radically revised version for which Dreiser, notorious for lengthy novels, agreed to cut more than two hundred and seventy pages. This revised version became the most familiar, reprinted by publishers and studied by scholars for decades.

For this new edition, Roark Mulligan meticulously reviewed earlier versions of the novel and its publication history, including the last-minute removal of paragraphs, pages, and even whole chapters from the 1912 edition, cuts based mainly on the advice of H. L. Mencken. The restored text better matches Dreiser's original vision for the work. More than three hundred additional pages not available to modern readers--including those cut from the 1927 edition and more than seventy hastily removed from the manuscript just days before publication in 1912--more effectively establish characterization and motivation. Restored passages dedicated to the internal thoughts of major and minor characters bring a softer dimension to a novel primarily celebrated for its realistic attention to the cold external world of finance.

Mulligan's historical commentary reveals new insights into Dreiser's creative practices and how his business knowledge shaped The Financier. This supplemental material considers the novel's place within the tradition of American business novels and its reflections on the scandalous business practices of the robber baron era.

A fully annotated edition of a classic work detailing the cultures of five southeastern American Indian tribes during the Contact Period