Essential reading for anyone interested in the leaders whoshaped our nation. Popular interest in the Founding Fathers has surged over the pastdecade and is beginning to rival interest in the Civil War. Peopleare increasingly looking back to the generation that invented thiscountry's political ideas and institutions for help in today'scomplex political world. The Complete Idiot's Guide(r) to theFounding Fathers presents the Founding Fathers through the issuesthat defined them-issues that are with the country today.
Shed some light on one of history?’s darkest periods. The Complete Idiot?’s Guide? to the Middle Ages givesreaders the beginning, middle, and end of the era, starting withthe fall of the Roman Empire in the year 550 and ending with theRenaissance in 1500?— and covers some uncomfortable similaritiesbetween the so-called ?“Dark Ages?” and today?’s ?“modernworld.?” ??A fascinating, fact-filled book that delivers more than athousand years of history in easy-to-understand chapters ??Many AP European History students are urged to read an overviewof medieval Europe to aid in their understanding of modern Europe,and a number of high schools have adopted elective courses inmedieval history ??Complete with a timeline, a who?’s who, and guides to furtherreading and the Middle Ages in film
In 1648, Europe was essentially a medieval society. By 1815, itwas the powerhouse of the modern world. In exuberant prose, TimBlanning investigates ?“the very hinge of European history?”( The New York Times ) between the end of the Thirty Y ears?’War and the Battle of Waterloo that witnessed five of the modernworld?’s great revolutions: scientific, industrial, American,French, and romantic. Blanning renders this vast subject digestibleand absorbing by making fresh connections between the most mundanedetails of life and the major cultural, political, andtechnological transformations that birthed the modern age.
The Battle ofNormandy was the greatest offensive campaign the world had everseen. Millions of soldiers struggling for the control of Europewere thrust onto the front lines of a massive war unlike anyexperienced in history. But this greatest of clashes would prove tobe the crucible in which the outcome of World War II would bedecided. It began on D-Day. June 6, 1944-the day that the Allied Forceslaunched Operation Overlord: the great crusade to free Europe fromthe iron grip of Nazi Germany. But only when the troops were ashoredid the real battle begin. With Nazi defenders marshaling to stop the invaders, Hitler and hisgenerals schemed to counterattack. Tightly constricted hedgerowcountry and bitter German resistance held the Allied advance to acrawl. Suddenly the Allies broke through and trapped the Naziarmies. Yet within weeks of this stunning disaster, the Germanssmashed the most dangerous Allied offensive yet. How was this possible? In Normandy Crucible , noted authorJohn Prados offers a penetrating acco
More dramtatic than fiction...THE GUNS OF AUGUST is amagnificent narrative--beautifully organized, elegantly phrased,skillfully paced and sustained....The product of painstaking andsophisticated research. CHICAGO TRIBUNE Historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Tuchman hasbrought to life again the people and events that led up to Worl WarI. With attention to fascinating detail, and an intense knowledgeof her subject and its characters, Ms. Tuchman reveals, for thefirst time, just how the war started, why, and why it could havebeen stopped but wasn't. A classic historical survey of a time anda people we all need to know more about, THE GUNS OF AUGUST willnot be forgotten.
Mark Kurlansky, the bestselling author of Cod and The Basque History of the World , here turns his attention toa common household item with a long and intriguing history: salt.The only rock we eat, salt has shaped civilization from the verybeginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part ofthe history of humankind. A substance so valuable it served ascurrency, salt has influenced the establishment of trade routes andcities, provoked and financed wars, secured empires, and inspiredrevolutions. Populated by colorful characters and filled with anunending series of fascinating details, Kurlansky's kaleidoscopichistory is a supremely entertaining, multi-layered masterpiece.
Covering the dramatic rise of German science in the nineteenthcentury, its preeminence in the early twentieth, and thefrightening developments that led to its collapse in 1945, this isthe compelling story of German scientists under Hitler’s regime.Weaving the history of science and technology with the fortunes ofwar and the stories of men and women whose discoveries brought bothbenefits and destruction to the world, Hitler’s Scientists raises questions that are still urgent today. As science becomesembroiled in new generations of weapons of mass destruction and thewar against terrorism, as advances in biotechnology outstriptraditional ethics, this powerful account of Nazi science forms acrucial commentary on the ethical role of science.
Might always makes right, until it's too late, and we say itwas wrong after all. Surely one of the biggest illegal land grabsin history took place right here in River City, otherwise known asthe USA. Over a period of three hundred years, the originalinhabitants of this vast country were dispossessed of nearlyeverything---their land, their pride, their language, theirculture, and in many cases, their right to live. Brushed off as"savages", "primitive", "children of nature" and by other edifyingepithets, by 1900, the surviving American Indians had been confinedto a gulag archipelago of reservations, some of only a fewacres---though these lands were at least nominally controlled bythem. Alcohol and disease had brought them low, combined withmassacres and forced migrations. And these were the lucky ones !Many tribes, especially in the east, lost everything, reduced toremnants whose language and culture were all but destroyed, barelymanaging to hang on amidst the sea of uncaring white immigrants.Although th
This compelling Icelandic history describes the life of KingHarald Hardradi, from his battles across Europe and Russia to hisfinal assault on England in 1066, less than three weeks before theinvasion of William the Conqueror. It was a battle that led to hisdeath and marked the end of an era in which Europe had beendominated by the threat of Scandinavian forces. Despite England'striumph, it also played a crucial part in fatally weakening theEnglish army immediately prior to the Norman Conquest, changing thecourse of history. Taken from the Heimskringla Snorri Sturluson'scomplete account of Norway from prehistoric times to 1177 this is abrilliantly human depiction of the turbulent life and savage deathof the last great Norse warrior-king.
Completed in 1136, "The History of the Kings of Britain"traces the story of the realm from its supposed foundation byBrutus to the coming of the Saxons some two thousand years later.Vividly portraying legendary and semi-legendary figures such asLear, Cymbeline, Merlin the magician and the most famous of allBritish heroes, King Arthur, it is as much myth as it is historyand its veracity was questioned by other medieval writers. ButGeoffrey of Monmouth's powerful evocation of illustrious men anddeeds captured the imagination of subsequent generations, and hisinfluence can be traced through the works of Malory, Shakespeare,Dryden and Tennyson.
This is the story of John McKinney who received the Medal ofHonor for his actions against a Japanese surprise attack. On May11, 1945, McKinney returned fire on the Japanese attacking hisunit, using every available weapon-even his fists-standing aloneagainst wave after wave of dedicated Japanese soldiers. At the end,John McKinney was alive-with over forty Japanese bodies beforehim. This is the story of an extraordinary man whose courage andfortitude in battle saved many American lives, and whose legacy hasbeen sadly forgotten by all but a few. Here, the proud legacy ofJohn McKinney lives on.
The remarkable life of Alexander the Great, one of thegreatest military geniuses of all time, vividly told by one of theworld's leading exp erts in Greek history. With all theintensity, insight, and narrative drive that made The Spartans sucha hit with critics and readers, Paul Cartledge's Alexander theGreat: glowingly illuminates the brief but iconic life of Alexander(356-323 BC), king of Macedon, conqueror of the Persian Empire, andfounder of a new world order. Cartledge, the distinguished scholarand historian long acknowledged as the leading internationalauthority on ancient Sparta and Greece, brilliantly evokesAlexander's remarkable political and military accomplishments,leads us along the geographical path of his victorious armies, andcompellingly charting the tremendous field of this warrior hero'sinfluence. Alexander's legacy has had an astounding impact onmilitary tacticians, scholars, and statesmen—in his own lifetimeand in ours. In various countries and at various times he has beenseen as
The story of our nation from the A-bomb to theiPhone-from bestselling historian H.W. Brands With keen insight and an impeccable sense of thespirit of the times, H. W. Brands, one of today's preeminenthistorians, captures the American experience through the last sixdecades. As he chronicles politics, pop culture, and everything inbetween, Brands traces the changes we have gone through as anation, recounting the great themes and events that have drivenAmerica- from the Yalta conference to the fall of the Berlin Wall,Apollo 11 to 9/11, My Lai to "shock and awe." In his adroit hands,movements and trends unfold through a character- driven narrativethat shines a brilliant light on America's watershed moments andreveals a still unfolding legacy of dreams.
True tales of life and death as told by those who fought inthe briny depths. From the undersea warfare of World War II through the Cold Warstand-offs in the deep to the cutting-edge technology of the modernU.S. Navy, submarines have evolved into the front line of ournation's defense at sea. And the men who sail them have becomeheroes above and below the waves. These are their stories. Compiled from interviews and recollections from submarineveterans and accompanied by detailed photos and illustrations ofboth man and machine at work, Sub is a gripping chronicle ofundersea warfare as told by those who know firsthand what it meansto drop through the hull of a boat, to sink into the dark, freezingwaters of the deep-and to have death never more than one torpedoaway.
David Kertzer's absorbing history presents an astonishingaccount of the birth of modern Italy and the clandestine politicsbehind the Vatican's last stand in the battle between church andthe newly created Italian state. Taking advantage of a wealth ofsecret documents long buried in the Vatican archives, Prisoner ofthe Vatican begins by looking at the embattled Pius IX. WhenItaly's armies seized the Holy City and claimed it for the Italiancapital, the pope, outraged, retreated to the Vatican and declaredhimself a prisoner, calling on foreign powers to force the Italiansout of Rome. The action set in motion decades of politicalintrigues, little known until now, that hinged on such fascinatingcharacters as Garibaldi, Napoleon III, and Chancellor Bismarck. Noone who reads this eye-opening book will ever think of Italy, orthe Vatican, in quite the same way again.
Spanning 50 years, moving fluidly between one war and the next, "Footnotes inGaza"--Sacco's most ambitious work to date--transforms a critical conflict ofour age into intimate and immediate experience.
A look at America's foreign policy over the past two hundredyears posits the theory that America is struggling with two visionsof itself as reflected in its foreign policy.
The newest addition to the Penguin Library of American IndianHistory explores the most influential Native AmericanConfederacy More than perhaps any other Native American group, the Iroquoisfound it to their advantage to interact with and adapt to whitesettlers. Despite being known as fierce warriors, the Iroquois werejust as reliant on political prowess and sophisticated diplomacy tomaintain their strategic position between New France and NewYork. Colonial observers marveled at what Benjamin Franklin calledtheir "method of doing business" as Europeans learned to useIroquois ceremonies and objects to remain in their good graces.Though the Iroquois negotiated with the colonial governments, theyrefused to be pawns of European empires, and their savvy kept themin control of much of the Northeast until the American Revolution.Iroquois Diplomacy and the Early American Frontier is a must-readfor anyone fascinated by Native American history or interested in aunique perspective on the dawn of Americ
This classic remains one of Karl Popper's most wide-ranging and popular works, notable not only for its acute insight into the way scientific knowledge grows, but also for applying those insights to politics and to history.
An updated edition of this classic collection of more than 500years of Native American history Revised to bring this important chronicle to the end of themillennium, anthropologist Peter Nabokov presents a history ofNative American and white relations as seen though Indian eyes andtold through Indian voices. Beginning with the Indians' firstencounters with European explorers, traders, missionaries,settlers, and soldiers to the challenges confronting NativeAmerican culture today, Native American Testimony is a series ofpowerful and moving documents spanning five hundred years ofinterchange between the two peoples. Drawing from a wide range ofsources--traditional narratives, Indian autobiographies, governmenttran*s, firsthand interviews, and more--Nabokov has assembleda remarkably rich and vivid collection, representing nothing lessthan an alternate history of North America. * Updated with new material on Native Americans facing thetwenty-first century "A strong and moving reminder of a
A masterly and beautifully written account of theimpact of Alexander von Humboldt on nineteenth-century Americanhistory and culture The naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859)achieved unparalleled fame in his own time. Today, however, he andhis enormous legacy to American thought are virtually unknown. In The Humboldt Current , Aaron Sachs traces Humboldt’spervasive influence on American history through examining the workof four explorers—J. N. Reynolds, Clarence King, George Wallace,and John Muir—who embraced Humboldt’s idea of a "chain ofconnection" uniting all peoples and all environments. A skillfulblend of narrative and interpretation that also discussesHumboldt’s influence on Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau, Melville, andPoe, The Humboldt Current offers a colorful, passionate, andsuperbly written reinterpretation of nineteenth-century Americanhistory.
"As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams" is a unique autobiography inwhich the anonymous writer known as Lady Sarashina interspersespersonal reflections, anecdotes and lyrical poems with accounts ofher travels and evocative de*ions of the Japanese countryside.Born in AD 1008, Lady Sarashina felt an acute sense of melancholythat led her to withdraw into the more congenial realm of theimagination - this deeply introspective work presents her vision ofthe world. While barely alluding to certain aspects of her lifesuch as marriage, she illuminates her pilgrimages to temples andmystical dreams in exquisite prose, describing a profound emotionaljourney that can be read as a metaphor for life itself.
In this "informative and inspiring volume" (Chicago Tribune),Robert Harvey reconstructs in vivid detail the gripping story ofLatin America's independence and those who made it possible.Treated with contempt by their Spanish overlords, given todissipation and grandiose proclamations, these fearless mennonetheless achieved military feats unsurpassed elsewhere inhistory. The aristocratic Simón Bolívar led his guerilla armiesthrough swamp, jungle, and Andean ice to surprise his enemies andliberate most of northern South America. The inarticulate SanMartín joined Bernardo O'Higgins, illegitimate son of a Spanishviceroy, to do the same in the south. These and five others wagedthe war for freedom against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars,the American Revolution, the collapse of the Spanish Empire, andthe revolutionary ferment of the nineteenth century. Despite thesuccess of their revolutions, all seven liberators died in poverty,disgrace, or oblivion. This fascinating and dramatic story takes in a
