First Encounters. Lost and Found in History. Epic True Stories of Cultural Collision and Conquest.

'First Encounters' is a book of first contact moments drawn from over 500 years of human exploration, adventure and discovery. Divided into sections, this is a book filled with historial moments that have become the stuff of controversy, myth and legend.

Joseph Cummins is the author of History's Great Untold Stories, History's Greatest Hits, Turn Around and Run Like Hell, Great Rivals in History, Cast Away and Eaten By A Giant Clam (April 2010) for Murdoch Books, as well as Anything for a Vote: A History of Dirty Tricks and October Surprises in America's Presidential Elections (Quirk). He has also edited two anthologies for Lyon's Press, Cannibals: Shocking True Stories of the Last Taboo on Land and at Sea (2002) and The Greatest Search and Rescue Stories Ever Told (2001), and written a novel called The Snow Train (Akashic Books, 2001). He lives in Maplewood, New Jersey.