A firsthand look at the Battle of Gettysburg offers Union andConfederate viewpoints of the conflict, recreating the three daysand discussing the decisions of Lee, Longstreet, and Meade.Reprint.
From Midnight to Dawn presents compelling portraitsof the men and women who established the Underground Railroad andtraveled it to find new lives in Canada. Evoking the turmoil andcontroversies of the time, Tobin illuminates the historic eventsthat forever connected American and Canadian history by giving usthe true stories behind well-known figures such as Harriet Tubmanand John Brown. She also profiles lesser-known but equally heroicfigures such as Mary Ann Shadd, who became the first black femalenewspaper editor in North America, and Osborne Perry Anderson, theonly black survivor of the fighting at Harpers Ferry. Anextraordinary examination of a part of American history, FromMidnight to Dawn will captivate readers with its tales of hope,courage, and a people’s determination to live equally under thelaw.
In his writing, Borges always combined high seriousness with awicked sense of fun. Here he reveals his delight in re-creating (ormaking up) colorful stories from the Orient, the Islamic world, andthe Wild West, as well as his horrified fascination with knifefights, political and personal betrayal, and bloodthirsty revenge.Spark-ling with the sheer exuberant pleasure of story-telling, thiscollection marked the emergence of an utterly distinctive literaryvoice.
This provocative work challenges traditional accounts ofMeriwether Lewis and William Clark’s expedition across thecontinent and back again. Uncovering deeper meanings in theexplorers’ journals and lives, Exploring Lewis and Clark exposes their self-perceptions and deceptions, and how theyinteracted with those who traveled with them, the people theydiscovered along the way, the animals they hunted, and the landthey walked across. The book discovers new heroes and brings oldones into historical focus. Thomas P. Slaughter interrogates the explorers’ dreams, how theywrote and what they aimed to possess, their interactions withanimals, Indians, and each other, their sense of themselves asleaders and men, and why they feared that they had failed theirnation and President. Slaughter’s Lewis and Clark are moreconfused, frightened, courageous, and flawed than in previousaccounts. They are more human, their expedition more dramatic, andthus their story is more revealing about our own relationships tohistory
In this unprecedented account, Chandra Manning uses letters,diaries, and regimental newspapers to take the reader inside theminds of Civil War soldiers-black and white, Northern andSouthern-as they fought and marched across a divided country. Withstunning poise and narrative verve, Manning explores how the Unionand Confederate soldiers came to identify slavery as the centralissue of the war and what that meant for a tumultuous nation. Thisis a brilliant and eye-opening debut and an invaluable addition toour understanding of the Civil War as it has never been renderedbefore.
Ernest Furgurson, author of Ashes of Glory and Chancellorsville 1863 , brings his talents to a pivotal andoften neglected Civil War battle–the fierce, unremitting slaughterat Cold Harbor, Virginia, which ended the lives of 10,000 Unionsoldiers. In June of 1864, the Army of the Potomac attacked heavilyentrenched Confederate forces outside of Richmond, hoping to breakthe strength of Robert E. Lee and take the capital. Facing almostcertain death, Union soldiers pinned their names to their uniformsin the forlorn hope that their bodies would be identified andburied. Furgurson sheds new light on the personal conflicts thatled to Grant’s worst defeat and argues that it was a watershedmoment in the war. Offering a panorama rich in detail and revealinganecdotes that brings the dark days of the campaign to life, NotWar But Murder is historical narrative as compelling as anynovel.
The story of Jason and the Argonauts and Homer’s tales ofUlysses are among the greatest ancient epics, but are they merelynautical legends or true stories? Mauricio Obregón has combed through classical texts, focusing onthe smallest details, and with his intimate knowledge of historicalnavigation, brilliantly reenacts the voyages the ancient heroesactually traveled. Using the clues embedded in these epic tales,Obregón deftly argues that many of the legends are not merelyfiction, but are, quite possibly, true adventures.
Throughout history, the Balkans have been a crossroads, a zoneof endless military, cultural, and economic mixing and clashingbetween Europe and Asia, Christianity and Islam, Catholicism andOrthodoxy. In this highly acclaimed short history, Mark Mazowersheds light on what has been called the tinderbox of Europe, whosetroubles have ignited wider wars for hundreds of years. Focusing onevents from the emergence of the nation-state onward, The Balkansreveals with piercing clarity the historical roots of currentconflicts and gives a landmark reassessment of the region’shistory, from the world wars and the Cold War to the collapse ofcommunism, the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and the continuingsearch for stability in southeastern Europe.
During the American Revolution, thousands of slaves fled fromtheir masters to find freedom with the British. Having emancipatedthemselves--and with rhetoric about the inalienable rights of freemen ringing in their ears--these men and women struggledtenaciously to make liberty a reality in their lives. This alternative narrative includes the stories of dozens ofindividuals--including Harry, one of George Washington'sslaves--who left America and forged difficult new lives infar-flung corners of the British Empire. Written in the besttradition of history from the bottom up, this pathbreaking workwill alter the way we think about the American Revolution.
As a senior foreign correspondent for The Times ofLondon, Janine di Giovanni was a firsthand witness to the brutaland protracted break-up of Yugoslavia. With unflinchingsensitivity, Madness Visible follows the arc of the wars inthe Balkans through the experience of those caught up in them:soldiers numbed by the atrocities they commit, women driven todespair by their life in paramilitary rape camps, civilians (diGiovanni among them) caught in bombing raids of uncertain origin,babies murdered in hate-induced rage. Di Giovanni’s searing memoir examines the turmoil of the Balkansin acute detail, and uncovers the motives of the leaders whocreated hell on earth; it raises challenging questions about ethnicconflict and the responsibilities of foreign governments in timesof mass murder. Perceptive and compelling, this unique work ofreportage from the physical and psychological front lines makes themadness of war wholly visible.
Robert Carter III, thegrandson of Tidewater legend Robert “King” Carter, was born intothe highest circles of Virginia’s Colonial aristocracy. He wasneighbor and kin to the Washingtons and Lees and a friend and peerto Thomas Jefferson and George Mason. But on September 5, 1791,Carter severed his ties with this glamorous elite at the stroke ofa pen. In a document he called his Deed of Gift, Carter declaredhis intent to set free nearly five hundred slaves in the largestsingle act of liberation in the history of American slavery beforethe Emancipation Proclamation. How did Carter succeed in the very action that George Washingtonand Thomas Jefferson claimed they fervently desired but werepowerless to effect? And why has his name all but vanished from theannals of American history? In this haunting, brilliantly originalwork, Andrew Levy traces the confluence of circumstance,conviction, war, and passion that led to Carter’s extraordinaryact. At the dawn of the Revolutionary War, Carter was one of thewealt
Propelled by the discovery of an ancient book and a cache ofyellowing letters, a young woman plunges into a labyrinth where thesecrets of her family's past connect to an inconceivable evil: thedark reign of Vlad the Impaler and a time-defying pact that mayhave kept his awful work alive through the ages. The search for thethe truth becomes an adventure of monumental propportions, takingus from monasteries and dusty libraries to the captitals of EasternEurope - in a feat of storytelling so rich, so exciting, sosuspenseful that it has enthralled readers around he world.
In this lively and engaging history, Stephen Puleo tells thestory of the Boston Italians from their earliest years, when alargely illiterate and impoverished people in a strange landrecreated the bonds of village and region in the cramped quartersof the North End. Focusing on this first and crucial Italianenclave in Boston, Puleo describes the experience of Italianimmigrants as they battled poverty, illiteracy, and prejudice;explains their transformation into Italian Americans during theDepression and World War II; and chronicles their rich history inBoston up to the present day.
In 1971 a young French ethnologist named Francois Bizot wastaken prisoner by forces of the Khmer Rouge who kept him chained ina jungle camp for months before releasing him. Four years laterBizot became the intermediary between the now victorious KhmerRouge and the occupants of the besieged French embassy in PhnomPenh, eventually leading a desperate convoy of foreigners to safetyacross the Thai border. Out of those ordeals comes this transfixing book. At its centerlies the relationship between Bizot and his principal captor, a mannamed Douch, who is today known as the most notorious of the KhmerRouge’s torturers but who, for a while, was Bizot’s protector andfriend. Written with the immediacy of a great novel, unsparing inits understanding of evil, The Gate manages to be at oncewrenching and redemptive.
Georges Duby, one of this century's great medieval historians,has brought to life with exceptional brilliance and imaginationWilliam Marshal, adviser to the Plantagenets, knightextraordinaire, the flower of chivalry. A marvel of historicalreconstruction, William Marshal is based on a biographical poemwritten in the thirteenth century, and offers an evocation ofchivalric life -- the contests and tournaments, the rites of war,the daily details of medieval existence -- unlike any we have everseen. An enchanting and profoundly instructive book....Owing in signalpart to the imaginative scholarship of Georges Duby, darkness ismore and more receding from the Dark Ages." George Steiner New Yorker "A small masterpiece of its genre....It is a splendid story andProfessor Duby tells it splendidly....Duby has reconstructed aliving picture of a particular sector of society at a crucialmoment, at the brink of great change. The vividness, the intimacy,and the historical perception with which he presents his picture ofth
At the age of thirty-three, Ekow Eshun—born in London toAfrican-born parents—travels to Ghana in search of his roots. Hegoes from Accra, Ghana’s cosmopolitan capital city, to the storiedslave forts of Elmina, and on to the historic warrior kingdom ofAsante. During his journey, Eshun uncovers a long-held secret abouthis lineage that will compel him to question everything he knowsabout himself and where he comes from. From the London suburbs ofhis childhood to the twenty-first century African metropolis,Eshun’s is a moving chronicle of one man’s search for home, and ofthe pleasures and pitfalls of fashioning an identity in thesevibrant contemporary worlds.
