DescriptionWith his simulated day-by-day reportage, prize-winning journalist-historian Jeffrey St. John makes you an eyewitness to the 1787-1788 political battle to ratify the U.S. Constitution. And what a battle it was! Listeners will discover how the Federalists s…
DescriptionAuthor Marion F. Sturkey, a former Marine "Bonnie-Sue" HMM-265 helicopter pilot, combines fascinating detail with grim realism in this eloquent saga of Marines at war. Weaving actual military records with personal accounts from the helicopter crews, he breathes life into the daily struggle of the soldier. Step through this unique looking-glass into the volatile crucible of combat in Vietnam. Taste the danger and fear, the madness and passion, and experience the love and brotherhood shared by the pilots and aircrewmen of the "Bonnie-Sue".
DescriptionJoshua Chamberlain of Maine forged a remarkable career during the Civil War. An academic and theologian by training, this modest young professor left Bowdoin College to accept a commission as lieutenant colonel of the 20th Maine. He fought at Antietam and Fredericksburg, then led his regiment to glory at Gettysburg, where he ordered the brilliant charge that saved Little Round Top. Promoted to brigade command, Chamberlain won a battlefield promotion to brigadier general from Ulysses S. Grant for his distinguished conduct in the assaults against Petersburg. He was held in such high esteem by his superior officers that Grant accorded him the honor of receiving the formal Confederate surrender at Appomattox. There, Chamberlain endeared himself to succeeding generations with his unforgettable salute to Robert E. Lee's defeated army.
DescriptionThe Sage of Monticello is the sixth and final volume of Dumas Malone's epic masterwork, Jefferson and His Time, a biography begun in 1943 and awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history in 1975. More wide ranging than the preceding volumes, The Sage of Monticello recounts the accomplishments, friendships, and family difficulties of Jefferson's last 17 years, including his retirement from Washington and the presidency, his correspondence with John Adams and James Madison, his mounting personal tribulations, and his major role in the founding of the Library of Congress and the University of Virginia, where he proved himself to be an extraordinary educator and architect as well as a statesman. This is a fitting final chapter in the life of one of America's greatest men.
DescriptionThe fourth volume of this Pulitzer Prize-winning biography vividly recounts Jefferson's eventful first presidential term. Though characterized by calmer seas than his second presidential voyage, Jefferson's first years in office find him confronting a nation deeply divided following the administrations of Washington and Adams, and many subsequent conflicts. He acquires the vast territory of Louisiana for the United States, challenges the growing power of the federal judiciary, and continues to press his opposition to the Hamiltonian doctrine of an overriding central government. He also assumes the unchallenged leadership of his party and is universally acknowledged as the preeminent American patron of science and general learning.
DescriptionNoted historians were invited to choose their favorite stories of underappreciated Americans, resulting in this unique collection of inspiring portraits. It includes stories about great women and men throughout American history, including Stephen Jay Gould on deaf baseball player Dummy Hoy, Alfred Kazin on "the failed president" John Quincy Adams, and Christine Stansell on Margaret Anderson, the publisher of James Joyce's Ulysses . The collection demonstrates that heroes come in many shapes and sizes, and that we all gain when we remember and celebrate them.
DescriptionWe were as brothers, William Tecumseh Sherman said, describing his relationship with Ulysses S. Grant. They were incontestably two of the most important figures in the Civil War, but until now there has been no book about their victorious partnership and…
DescriptionHere is presented a forgotten episode of WWII, the Supreme Court case it sparked, and the precedent it set for secret military tribunals in Guantanamo Bay. In 1942, eight Nazi saboteurs were caught on American beaches after one turned the others in. The execution of the saboteurs was challenged in court but eventually upheld in the Supreme Court's ruling in Ex parte Quirin, a decision that has frequently been cited by the George W. Bush administration in support of its declared power to hold "enemy combatants" and try them by military commission. This use of Ex parte Quirin is clearly on the mind of O'Donnell, a former Supreme Court law clerk, in his narrative of the case, which argues that we should be cautious in applying it as precedence because the process by which it was decided by the Supreme Court was illegitimate.
DescriptionFrom best-selling social commentator and cultural historian Barbara Ehrenreich comes this fascinating exploration of one of humanity's oldest traditions: the celebration of communal joy, historically expressed in ecstatic revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing. Ehrenreich uncovers the origins of communal celebration in human biology and culture, showing that such mass festivities have been indigenous to the West since the ancient Greeks. Though suppressed by elites who fear the undermining of social hierarchies, outbreaks of group revelry still persist, Ehrenreich shows, pointing to the 1960s rock-and-roll rebellion and the more recent "carnivalization" of sports. Original, exhilarating, and deeply optimistic, Dancing in the Streets shows that we are innately social beings, impelled to share our joy and thereby envision a peaceable future.
DescriptionJohn Brown is a lightning rod of history. Yet he is poorly understood and most commonly described in stereotypes, as a madman, martyr, or enigma. Not until Patriotic Treason has a biography or history brought him so fully to life, in scintillating…
