Definitive account covers every aspect of steamboat's development: its construction, equipment and operation; the organization and conduct of steamboat transportation as a business enterprise; the hazards and amenities of shipboard life; steamboat races on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers; collisions, explosions and fires; the rise of competition; the ultimate decline, and much more.

The custom of Indian enslavement during colonial times came from the necessity of disposing of war captives, from the greed of traders, and from the demand for labour. In his 1913 book "Indian Slavery in Colonial Times," Almon Wheeler Lauber broadly defines "slave" as a "prisoner held by his captor as an inferior and forced to labor for him, or sold into servitude or freedom for the financial benefit of his captor." His book describes four kinds...