Browse by Categories - History
Toby TalbotThe nation didn't know it, but 1960 would change American film forever, and the revolution would take place nowhere near a Hollywood set. With the opening of the New Yorker Theater, a cinema located at the center of Manhattan's Upper West Side, cutting-edge films from around the world were screened for an eager audience, including the city's most influential producers, directors, critics, and writers.
Mark Lee GardnerBilly the Kid-a.k.a. Henry McCarty, Henry Antrim, and William Bonney - was a horse thief, cattle rustler, charismatic rogue, and cold-blooded killer. A superb shot, the Kid gunned down four men single handedly and five others with the help of cronies. Two of his victims were Lincoln County, NM, deputies, killed during the Kid's brazen daylight escape from the courthouse jail on April 28, 1881. After dispensing with his guards and breaking the chain securing his leg irons, The Kid danced a macabre jig on the jail's porch before riding away on a stolen horse as terrified townspeople - and many sympathizers - watched. For new sheriff, Pat Garrett, the chase was on..."To Hell on a Fast Horse" recreates the thrilling manhunt for the Wild West's most iconic outlaw. It is also the first 'dual biography' of the Kid and Garrett, two larger-than-life figures who would not have become the stuff of legend without the other. Drawing on voluminous primary sources and a wealth of published scholarship, Mark L. Gardner digs beneath the myth to take a fresh look at these two men, their relationship, and what they would come to mean to a public enamoured of the violent past of the Wild West.
Carlos FriasTake Me With You is written through the unique eyes of a first-generation Cuban-American seeing the forbidden country of his ancestry for the first time. Take Me With You provides a fresh view of Cuba, devoid of overt political commentary, focusing instead on the gritty, tangible lives of the people living in Castro's Cuba. Frias takes in the island nation of today and attempts to reconstruct what the past was like for his parents, retracing their footsteps, searching for his roots, and discovering his history. The book creates lasting and unexpected ripples within his family on both sides of the Florida Straits -- and on the author himself.
Thomas G. AndrewsOn a spring morning in 1914, in the stark foothills of southern Colorado, members of the United Mine Workers of America clashed with guards employed by the Rockefeller family, and a state militia beholden to Colorado’s industrial barons. When the dust settled, nineteen men, women, and children among the miners’ families lay dead. The strikers had killed at least thirty men, destroyed six mines, and laid waste to two company towns.
Killing for Coal offers a bold and original perspective on the 1914 Ludlow Massacre and the “Great Coalfield War.” In a sweeping story of transformation that begins in the coal beds and culminates with the deadliest strike in American history, Thomas Andrews illuminates the causes and consequences of the militancy that erupted in colliers’ strikes over the course of nearly half a century. He reveals a complex world shaped by the connected forces of land, labor, corporate industrialization, and workers’ resistance.
Brilliantly conceived and written, this book takes the organic world as its starting point. The resulting elucidation of the coalfield wars goes far beyond traditional labor history. Considering issues of social and environmental justice in the context of an economy dependent on fossil fuel, Andrews makes a powerful case for rethinking the relationships that unite and divide workers, consumers, capitalists, and the natural world.
Kathleen McGowanCultures throughout Europe believed there was once a gospel written in Christ's own hand, a treasure of almost unimaginable magnitude. It was referred to by the Cathar culture in France, who claimed to be direct descendants of Christ, as The Book of Love. But the teachings in The Book of Love were radical and contrary to the political agenda of the Church. Papal forces launched one of the bloodiest crusades in history against the Cathars in an effort to wipe out their 'heresy' - and to gain possession of the original, incendiary manuscript - a document so revolutionary that its contents would be considered ground-breaking and visionary 2000 years later. In The Book of Love, Maureen Paschal continues her journey of discovery begun in The Expected One, following evidence in stone and stained glass, clues left 800 years ago by the ancient architects of the great Gothic cathedrals of Europe. As Maureen and her team get closer to the truth, they find themselves locked in the most ancient human struggle - the epic battle between good and evil.
James L. SwansonBased on rare archival material, obscure trial manuscripts, and interviews with relatives of the conspirators and the manhunters, Chasing Lincoln's Killer is a fast-paced thriller about the pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth: a wild twelve-day chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., across the swamps of Maryland, and into the forests of Virginia.
John F Baker The Wessyngton Plantation was established in 1796 by Joseph Washington 1770-1848, a cousin of President Washington. By 1860 Wessyngton encompassed more than 15,000 acres and held 274 slaves there. Names associated with the plantation include: Washington, Cheatham, Blow, Green, White, Williams, Terry, Lewis, Scott, and Gardner. John F. Baker extensively traces all of the families from this plantation (descendants of the plantation owners and the enslaved population). He finds the familial connection he felt initially to a photograph in a history book, is tied to his true ancestral heritage.
Robert P. CreasePhilosopher and science historian Robert P. Crease tells the stories behind ten of the greatest equations in human history. Was Nobel laureate Richard Feynman really joking when he called Maxwell's electromagnetic equations the most significant event of the nineteenth century? How did Newton's law of gravitation influence young revolutionaries? Why has Euler's formula been called "God's equation," and why did a mysterious ecoterrorist make it his calling card? What role do betrayal, insanity, and suicide play in the second law of thermodynamics?
The Great Equations tells the stories of how these equations were discovered, revealing the personal struggles of their ingenious originators. From "1 + 1 = 2" to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, Crease locates these equations in the panoramic sweep of Western history, showing how they are as integral to their time and place of creation as are great works of art.
Ted GioiaThe blues grew out of the plantations and prisons, the swampy marshes and fertile cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta. With original research and keen insights, Ted Gioia - the author of a landmark study of West Coast jazz and the critically acclaimed The History of Jazz - brings to life the stirring music of the Delta, evoking the legendary figures who shaped its sound and ethos: Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, B. B. King, and others. Tracing the history of the Delta blues from the field hollers and plantation music of the nineteenth century to the exploits of modern-day musicians in the Delta tradition, Delta Blues tells the full story of this timeless and unforgettable music. No cultural force boasts such humble origins or such world-conquering reverberations. In this evocative rags-to-riches tale, Gioia shows how the sounds of the Delta altered the course of popular music in America and in the world beyond.
Annette Gordon-ReedThis epic work tells the story of the Hemingses, whose close blood ties to our third president had been systematically expunged from American history until very recently. Now, historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family's dispersal after Jefferson's death in 1826. It brings to life not only Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson but also their children and Hemings's siblings, who shared a father with Jefferson's wife, Martha. The Hemingses of Monticello sets the family's compelling saga against the backdrop of Revolutionary America, Paris on the eve of its own revolution, 1790s Philadelphia, and plantation life at Monticello. Much anticipated, this book promises to be the most important history of an American slave family ever written.
