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Showing 3181 - 3200 of 5597 items
By Michael Boulter. 2008
Five years after returning from his trip around the world, young Charles Darwin became the owner of Down House in…
Kent, England, where he moved his growing family, far away from the turmoil and distractions of London. He would live there for the rest of his life, and it would become the place where he began work on his masterpiece, On the Origin of Species.For almost twenty years, he used the garden around him as a laboratory. In the orchard, he conducted experiments on pollination. He built a dovecote where breeding new strains of pigeons helped him understand the intricacies of generation. On his daily walk along the sandbank, he observed how plants competed for survival. In solitude he struggled with the ideas of evolution that had haunted him since his voyage, which, in turn, gave him the courage to publish his revolutionary ideas.Bringing Darwin's garden to the present day, Boulter unfolds a shining portrait of the formation of one of England's greatest thinkers and his relationship with the place he loved, and shows how his experiments—conducted more than 150 years ago—are still revealing new proofs as we continue to search for the origins of life.By Anthony Burton. 2019
The story of the innovative genius who became pottery maker to royalty—and to the world: &“You don't have to know…
a glaze from a slip to enjoy this.&” —Kirkus Reviews Born in Staffordshire, England, to a family of traditional potters in 1730, Josiah Wedgwood would grow up to revolutionize the industry, founding the company still world-renowned in the twenty-first century. When he started work, the local ware was either fairly rustic, or made to look a little more sophisticated by the addition of heavy glazes. He worked to produce a lighter colored body and to use designs made to appeal to aristocratic tastes, convinced that where they led the rapidly growing middle class would follow. The result was cream ware which, when a whole service was ordered by the royal family, was soon christened queens ware. But Wedgwood was a distinctive character for more reasons than his artistry. As a businessman, he adopted an early form of mass production, and is believed to be the inventor of many modern marketing techniques such as money-back guarantees and illustrated catalogs. He was also a passionate early abolitionist who used his company to promote the anti-slavery cause, and he pursued the study of chemistry in order to understand the science behind the potter&’s art, eventually inventing a kiln thermometer. This fascinating biography brings to life a remarkable eighteenth-century figure.By Caroline Moorehead. 2017
From the author of the runaway bestseller A Train in Winter comes the extraordinary story of a French village that…
helped save thousands, including many Jewish children, who were pursued by the Gestapo during World War II. Le Chambon-sur-Lignon is a small village of scattered houses high in the mountains of the Ardèche. Surrounded by pastures and thick forests of oak and pine, the plateau Vivarais lies in one of the most remote and inaccessible parts of Eastern France, cut off for long stretches of the winter by snow. During the Second World War, the inhabitants of the area saved thousands wanted by the Gestapo: resisters, freemasons, communists, downed Allied airmen and above all Jews. Many of these were children and babies, whose parents had been deported to the death camps in Poland. After the war, Le Chambon became the only village to be listed in its entirety in Yad Vashem's Dictionary of the Just. Just why and how Le Chambon and its outlying parishes came to save so many people has never been fully told. Acclaimed biographer and historian Caroline Moorehead brings to life a story of outstanding courage and determination, and of what could be done when even a small group of people came together to oppose German rule. It is an extraordinary tale of silence and complicity. In a country infamous throughout the four years of occupation for the number of denunciations to the Gestapo of Jews, resisters and escaping prisoners of war, not one single inhabitant of Le Chambon ever broke silence. The story of Le Chambon is one of a village, bound together by a code of honour, born of centuries of religious oppression. And, though it took a conspiracy of silence by the entire population, it happened because of a small number of heroic individuals, many of them women, for whom saving those hunted by the Nazis became more important than their own lives.By Alex Rovt, Denise Drace-Brownell, Will Brownell. 2016
General Erich Ludendorff was one of the most important military individuals of the last century, yet today, one of the…
least known. One of the top two German generals of World War I, Ludendorff dominated not only his superior-General Paul von Hindenburg-but also Germany's head of state, Kaiser Wilhelm II. For years, Ludendorff was the military dictator of Germany.Ludendorff not only dictated all aspects of World War I, he refused all opportunities to make peace; he antagonized the Americans until they declared war; he sent Lenin into Russia to forge a revolution in order to shut down the Russian front; and then he pushed for total military victory in 1918, in a rabid slaughter known as "The Ludendorff Offensive."Ludendorff lost the War in 1918. Shortly thereafter, he created the murderous legend that Germany had lost this war only because Jews had conspired on the home front, in what he called a "stab in the back." He soon forged an alliance with Hitler, endorsed the Nazis, and wrote maniacally about how Germans needed a new world war, to redeem the Fatherland.This savage man had staggering designs to build a gigantic state that would dwarf the British Empire, sweep across all of Africa, then the Middle East, Central Europe, Persia and even India. Simply stated, he wanted the world. His plans, person, and ambitions were the prototype for his good younger friend, Adolf Hitler.All in all, Ludendorff was the key German, instrumental in both world wars and the Russian Revolution. He changed the 20th century beyond recognition.By Caroline Moorehead. 2017
"How can you do this work if you have a child?" asked her mother."It is because I have a child…
that I do it," replied Cecile. "This is not a world I wish her to grow up in." On January 24, 1943, 230 women were placed in four cattle trucks on a train in Compiegne, in northeastern France, and the doors bolted shut for the journey to Auschwitz. They were members of the French Resistance, ranging in age from teenagers to the elderly, women who before the war had been doctors, farmers’ wives, secretaries, biochemists, schoolgirls. With immense courage they had taken up arms against a brutal occupying force; now their friendship would give them strength as they experienced unimaginable horrors. Only forty-nine of the Convoi des 31000 would return from the camps in the east; within ten years, a third of these survivors would be dead too, broken by what they had lived through. In this vitally important book, Caroline Moorehead tells the whole story of the 230 women on the train, for the first time. Based on interviews with the few remaining survivors, together with extensive research in French and Polish archives, A Train in Winter is an essential historical document told with the clarity and impact of a great novel. Caroline Moorehead follows the women from the beginning, starting with the disorganized, youthful and high-spirited activists who came together with the Occupation, and chronicling their links with the underground intellectual newspapers and Communist cells that formed soon afterwards. Postering and graffiti grew into sabotage and armed attacks, and the Nazis responded with vicious acts of mass reprisal – which in turn led to the Resistance coalescing and developing. Moorehead chronicles the women’s roles in victories and defeats, their narrow escapes and their capture at the hands of French police eager to assist their Nazi overseers to deport Jews, resisters, Communists and others. Their story moves inevitably through to its horrifying last chapters in Auschwitz: murder, starvation, disease and the desperate struggle to survive. But, as Moorehead notes, even in the most inhuman of places, the women of the Convoi could find moments of human grace in their companionship: "So close did each of the women feel to the others, that to die oneself would be no worse than to see one of the others die."Uncovering a story that has hitherto never been told, Caroline Moorehead exhibits the skills that have made her an acclaimed biographer and historian. In this book she places the reader utterly in the world of wartime France, casting light on what it was like to experience horrific terrors and face impossible moral dilemmas. Through the sensitive interviews on which the book is based, she tells personal and individual stories of courage, solace and companionship. In this way, A Train in Winter ultimately becomes a valuable memorial to a unique group of heroines, and a testimony to the particular power of women’s friendship even in the worst places on earth.In December 1919, Ambrose Small, the mercurial owner of the Grand Opera House in Toronto, closed a deal to sell…
his network of Ontario theatres, deposited a million-dollar cheque in his bank account, and was never seen again. As weeks turned to years, the disappearance became the most "extraordinary unsolved mystery" of its time. Everything about the sensational case would be called into question in the decades to come, including the motivations of his inner circle, his enemies, and the police who followed the trail across the continent, looking for answers in asylums, theatres, and the Pacific Northwest. In The Missing Millionaire, Katie Daubs tells the story of the Small mystery, weaving together a gripping narrative with the social and cultural history of a city undergoing immense change. Daubs examines the characters who were connected to the case as the century carried on: Ambrose's religious wife, Theresa; his long-time secretary, Jack Doughty; his two unmarried sisters, Florence and Gertrude; Patrick Sullivan, a lawless ex-policeman; and Austin Mitchell, an overwhelmed detective. A series of trials exposed Small’s tumultuous business and personal relationships, while allegations and confessions swirled. But as the main players in the Small mystery died, they took their secrets to the grave, and Ambrose Small would be forever missing. Drawing on extensive research, newly discovered archival material, and her own interviews with the descendants of key figures, Katie Daubs offers a rich portrait of life in an evolving city in the early twentieth century. Delving into a crime story about the power of the elite, she vividly recounts the page-turning tale of a cold case that is truly stranger than fiction.By Mr N. S. Vinodh. 2021
Amongst the multitude of tombs in the City of the Dead in Cairo, there lies buried a lone Indian —…
a scholar, writer, debonair statesman and a leader of the freedom movement. Who is he? How did he get there? For a man who used both the lectern and the pen to devastating effect during the Indian Independence movement led by the likes of Gandhi and Nehru, little is known of Syud Hossain. Born to an aristocratic family in Calcutta, he forayed into journalism early in life and became the editor of Motilal Nehru&’s nationalist newspaper, The Independent. After a brief elopement with Motilal&’s daughter, Sarup (aka Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit), Hossain, under immense pressure from Nehru and Gandhi, annulled the marriage and stayed away from the country. Thus began several years of exile. Eventually, he landed in the United States. Flitting from one place to another, making homes of hotel rooms, he imparted Gandhi&’s message across the country. He fought for India&’s cause from afar, garnering support in the United States and decrying British oppression. Syud Hossain inspired and irked in equal measure; with every speech he delivered and every editorial he penned, he sent a shiver down the spine of the colonial ruler. In addition, Hossain took on the fight for Indian immigrant rights in the United States, one that successfully culminated in President Truman signing the Luce-Celler Bill into an Act in 1946. Hossain returned to India to witness the triumph of her independence as well as the tragedy of Gandhi&’s assassination. Thereafter appointed India&’s first ambassador to Egypt, he died while in service and was laid to rest in Cairo.A Forgotten Ambassador in Cairo offers an illuminating narrative of Hossain&’s life interspersed with historical details that landscapes a vivid political picture of that era. Through primary sources that include Hossain&’s private papers, British Intelligence files, and contemporary correspondence and newspapers, N.S. Vinodh brilliantly brings to life a man who has been relegated far too long to the shadows of time.By Fanny Stenhouse. 2008
After the 1872 publication of Expose',Fanny Stenhouse became a celebrity in the cultural wars between Mormons and much of America.…
An English convert, she had grown disillusioned with the Mormon Church and polygamy, which her husband practiced before associating with a circle of dissident Utah intellectuals and merchants. Stenhouse’s critique of plural marriage, Brigham Young, and Mormonism was also a sympathetic look at Utah’s people and honest recounting of her life. Before long, she created a new edition, titled "Tell It All," which ensured her notoriety in Utah and popularity elsewhere but turned her thoughtful memoir into a more polemical, true expose' of Polygamy. Since 1874, it has stayed in print, in multiple, varying editions. The original book, meanwhile, is less known, though more readable. Tracing the literary history of Stenhouse’s important piece of Americana, Linda DeSimone rescues an important autobiographical and historical record from the baggage notoriety brought to it.By Anthony Quiroz. 2016
Leaders of the Mexican American Generation explores the lives of a wide range of influential members of the US Mexican…
American community between 1920 and 1965 who paved the way for major changes in their social, political, and economic status within the United States. Including feminist Alice Dickerson Montemayor, to San Antonio attorney Gus García, and labor activist and scholar Ernesto Galarza, the subjects of these biographies include some of the most prominent idealists and actors of the time. Whether debating in a court of law, writing for a major newspaper, producing reports for governmental agencies, organizing workers, holding public office, or otherwise shaping space for the Mexican American identity in the United States, these subjects embody the core values and diversity of their generation. More than a chronicle of personalities who left their mark on Mexican American history, Leaders of the Mexican American Generation cements these individuals as major players in the history of activism and civil rights in the United States. It is a rich collection of historical biographies that will enlighten and enliven our understanding of Mexican American history.By Pamela Murray. 2020
Una biografía sobre esta gran mujer. Manuelita Sáenz (1797-1856) fue ignorada por la mayoría de los historiadores profesionales, cuyos sesgos…
de género la relegaron a un papel menor. Chica mala, loca, indecente y hasta ninfómana son algunos de los calificativos que ha usado la historia oficial para definirla. Pero su vida fue la de una mujer decidida, que intervino el mundo militar y de la política, entonces reservado a los hombres. Incómoda para muchos, Manuelita regresa en este dedicado trabajo de investigación que sigue sus pasos en Perú, Ecuador y Colombia. En su brillante biografía, Murray presenta a Manuelita como una de las más grandes figuras femeninas del hemisferio, precursora de una nueva revolución en América Latina: la emancipación e igualdad de las mujeres.By Francie Chassen-López. 2020
«Juana Cata nunca se casó, así que fue libre, independiente y empresaria en una época en la que eso no…
era bien visto en una mujer.» Fuera de Oaxaca y, en particular, de su natal Tehuantepec, el nombre de Juana Catarina Romero es poco conocido. Si acaso detona alguna referencia, es como la supuesta "amante zapoteca" del joven Porfirio Díaz. Además de que este hecho nunca ha sido comprobado, se ha convertido en un mito que opaca una vida extraordinaria: la de una mujer de origen humilde, quien en su juventud fue vendedora ambulante de cigarrillos y espía del ejército liberal en la Guerra de Reforma, y quien, gracias a su tenacidad y habilidad política, llegó a ser una exitosa empresaria azucarera, una comerciante internacional y el árbitro de la sociedad tehuantepecana. Juana Cata tuvo una vida fuera de serie, entretejida con tres periodos cruciales de la historia de México: la ReformaLiberal, el porfirismo y la Revolución. Fue una mujer independiente que logró abrirse camino en un mundo dominado por los hombres, aunque su vida no estuvo exenta de contradicciones. Ella fue una impulsora de la modernidad, pero de una modernidad a la tehuantepecana, la cual unía el progreso, el catolicismo y las tradiciones zapotecas del istmo. El presente estudio es la biografía más completa de Juana Catarina Romero, sustentado en una investigación exhaustiva de muchos años. Al mismo tiempo que recrea la trayectoria de este sorprendente personaje -cómo una mujer humilde y analfabeta llegó a los altos rangos de la sociedad mexicana-, esta biografía proporciona una nueva perspectiva sobre la vida y el papel de las mujeres mexicanas en el siglo xix.By Andrea Bernstein. 2020
A multigenerational saga of two families who rose from immigrant roots to the pinnacle of U.S. power that tracks the…
unraveling of American democracy. In American Oligarchs, award-winning investigative journalist Andrea Bernstein creates a vivid portrait of two emblematic American families. Their journey to the White House is a story of survival and loss, crime and betrayal, which stretches from the Gilded Age through Nazi-occupied Poland to the rising nationalism and inequality of the twenty-first century. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and over 100,000 pages of documents, many previously unseen or long forgotten, Bernstein traces how the families grew rich on federal programs that bolstered the middle class, and then sheltered their wealth from tax collectors. Wielding half-truths, secrecy, and media manipulation, they blurred the lines between public and private interests, then leveraged political, prosecutorial, and judicial power to avoid legal consequences. At once intimate and sweeping, American Oligarchs reveals how these dynasties encouraged and profited from a system of political dark money that has pushed America to the precipice of oligarchyBy Emily Herring Wilson. 2017
The Three Graces of Val-Kill changes the way we think about Eleanor Roosevelt. Emily Wilson examines what she calls the…
most formative period in Roosevelt's life, from 1922 to 1936, when she cultivated an intimate friendship with Marion Dickerman and Nancy Cook, who helped her build a cottage on the Val-Kill Creek in Hyde Park on the Roosevelt family land. In the early years, the three women--the "three graces," as Franklin Delano Roosevelt called them--were nearly inseparable and forged a female-centered community for each other, for family, and for New York's progressive women. Examining this network of close female friends gives readers a more comprehensive picture of the Roosevelts and Eleanor's burgeoning independence in the years that marked Franklin's rise to power in politics. Wilson takes care to show all the nuances and complexities of the women's relationship, which blended the political with the personal. Val-Kill was not only home to Eleanor Roosevelt but also a crucial part of how she became one of the most admired American political figures of the twentieth century. In Wilson's telling, she emerges out of the shadows of monumental histories and documentaries as a woman in search of herself.By Henry B. Lovejoy. 2018
This Atlantic world history centers on the life of Juan Nepomuceno Prieto (c. 1773–c. 1835), a member of the West…
African Yoruba people enslaved and taken to Havana during the era of the Atlantic slave trade. Richly situating Prieto's story within the context of colonial Cuba, Henry B. Lovejoy illuminates the vast process by which thousands of Yoruba speakers were forced into life-and-death struggles in a strange land. In Havana, Prieto and most of the people of the Yoruba diaspora were identified by the colonial authorities as Lucumi. Prieto's evolving identity becomes the fascinating fulcrum of the book. Drafted as an enslaved soldier for Spain, Prieto achieved self-manumission while still in the military. Rising steadily in his dangerous new world, he became the religious leader of Havana's most famous Lucumi cabildo, where he contributed to the development of the Afro-Cuban religion of Santeria. Then he was arrested on suspicion of fomenting slave rebellion. Trial testimony shows that he fell ill, but his ultimate fate is unknown. Despite the silences and contradictions that will never be fully resolved, Prieto's life opens a window onto how Africans creatively developed multiple forms of identity and resistance in Cuba and in the Atlantic world more broadly.By William Marvel. 2015
Edwin M. Stanton (1814-1869), one of the nineteenth century's most impressive legal and political minds, wielded enormous influence and power…
as Lincoln's Secretary of War during most of the Civil War and under Johnson during the early years of Reconstruction. In the first full biography of Stanton in more than fifty years, William Marvel offers a detailed reexamination of Stanton's life, career, and legacy. Marvel argues that while Stanton was a formidable advocate and politician, his character was hardly benign. Climbing from a difficult youth to the pinnacle of power, Stanton used his authority--and the public coffers--to pursue political vendettas, and he exercised sweeping wartime powers with a cavalier disregard for civil liberties. Though Lincoln's ability to harness a cabinet with sharp divisions and strong personalities is widely celebrated, Marvel suggests that Stanton's tenure raises important questions about Lincoln's actual control over the executive branch. This insightful biography also reveals why men like Ulysses S. Grant considered Stanton a coward and a bully, who was unashamed to use political power for partisan enforcement and personal preservation.By Nancy A. Hewitt. 2018
A pillar of radical activism in nineteenth-century America, Amy Kirby Post (1802@–89) participated in a wide range of movements and…
labored tirelessly to orchestrate ties between issues, causes, and activists. A conductor on the Underground Railroad, co-organizer of the 1848 Rochester Woman's Rights Convention, and a key figure in progressive Quaker, antislavery, feminist, and spiritualist communities, Post sustained movements locally, regionally, and nationally over many decades. But more than simply telling the story of her role as a local leader or a bridge between local and national arenas of activism, Nancy A. Hewitt argues that Post's radical vision offers a critical perspective on current conceptualizations of social activism in the nineteenth century.While some individual radicals in this period have received contemporary attention—most notably William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and Lucretia Mott (all of whom were friends of Post)—the existence of an extensive network of radical activists bound together across eight decades by ties of family, friendship, and faith has been largely ignored. In this in-depth biography of Post, Hewitt demonstrates a vibrant radical tradition of social justice that sought to transform the nation.By D. H. Dilbeck. 2018
From his enslavement to freedom, Frederick Douglass was one of America's most extraordinary champions of liberty and equality. Throughout his…
long life, Douglass was also a man of profound religious conviction. In this concise and original biography, D. H. Dilbeck offers a provocative interpretation of Douglass's life through the lens of his faith. In an era when the role of religion in public life is as contentious as ever, Dilbeck provides essential new perspective on Douglass's place in American history. Douglass came to faith as a teenager among African American Methodists in Baltimore. For the rest of his life, he adhered to a distinctly prophetic Christianity. Imitating the ancient Hebrew prophets and Jesus Christ, Douglass boldly condemned evil and oppression, especially when committed by the powerful. Dilbeck shows how Douglass's prophetic Christianity provided purpose and unity to his wide-ranging work as an author, editor, orator, and reformer. As "America's Prophet," Douglass exposed his nation's moral failures and hypocrisies in the hopes of creating a more just society. He admonished his fellow Americans to truly abide by the political and religious ideals they professed to hold most dear. Two hundred years after his birth, Douglass's prophetic voice remains as timely as ever.By Gareth Dale. 2016
Karl Polanyi (1886–1964) was one of the twentieth century's most original interpreters of the market economy. His penetrating analysis of…
globalization's disruptions and the Great Depression's underlying causes still serves as an effective counterargument to free market fundamentalism. This biography shows how the major personal and historical events of his life transformed him from a bourgeois radical into a Christian socialist but also informed his ambivalent stance on social democracy, communism, the New Deal, and the shifting intellectual scene of postwar America.The book begins with Polanyi's childhood in the Habsburg Empire and his involvement with the Great War and Hungary's postwar revolution. It connects Polanyi's idealistic radicalism to the political promise and intellectual ferment of Red Vienna and the horror of fascism. The narrative revisits Polanyi's oeuvre in English, German, and Hungarian, includes exhaustive research in five archives, and features interviews with Polanyi's daughter, students, and colleagues, clarifying the contradictory aspects of the thinker's work. These personal accounts also shed light on Polanyi's connections to scholars, Christians, atheists, journalists, hot and cold warriors, and socialists of all stripes. Karl Polanyi: A Life on the Left engages with Polanyi's biography as a reflection and condensation of extraordinary times. It highlights the historical ruptures, tensions, and upheavals that the thinker sought to capture and comprehend and, in telling his story, engages with the intellectual and political history of a turbulent epoch.Simon Scarrow's four classic novels based on the lives of the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon Bonaparte are published together…
in one superb-value ebook volume not to be missed by readers of Bernard Cornwell. Arthur, Duke of Wellington, and Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte were adversaries on an epic scale. Across Europe and beyond, the armies of Great Britain and France clashed, from the Iberian Peninsula to India, from Austerlitz to the final confrontation at Waterloo. What drove the two clever, ambitious, determined men who masterminded these military campaigns? How did the underdog from Corsica develop the strategic military skills and the political cunning that gave him power over swathes of Europe? And how did Wellington, born to be a leader, hone his talents and drive an army to victory after victory?From an outstanding historian and novelist come four epic novels, now available in one volume for the first time, which tell the full story of both these men, from their very early days till the momentous battle at Waterloo which decided the future of Europe.INCLUDES MAPSBy Rouben Cholakian, Patricia Francis Cholakian. 2006
Sister to the king of France, queen of Navarre, gifted writer, religious reformer, and patron of the arts—in her many…
roles, Marguerite de Navarre (1492-1549) was one of the most important figures of the French Renaissance. In this, the first major biography in English, Patricia F. Cholakian and Rouben C. Cholakian draw on her writings to provide a vivid portrait of Marguerite's public and private life. Freeing her from the shadow of her brother François I, they recognize her immense influence on French politics and culture, and they challenge conventional views of her family relationships.The authors highlight Marguerite's considerable role in advancing the cause of religious reform in France-her support of vernacular translations of sacred works, her denunciation of ecclesiastical corruption, her founding of orphanages and hospitals, and her defense and protection of persecuted reformists. Had this plucky and spirited woman not been sister to the king, she would most likely have ended up at the stake. Though she remained a devout catholic, her theological poem Miroir de l'âme pécheresse, a mystical summa of evangelical doctrine that was viciously attacked by conservatives, remains to this day an important part of the Protestant corpus. Marguerite, along with her brother the king, was a key architect and animator of the refined entertainments that became the hallmark of the French court. Always eager to encourage new ideas, she supported many of the illustrious writers and thinkers of her time. Moreover, uniquely for a queen, she was herself a prolific poet, dramatist, and prose writer and published a two-volume anthology of her works. In reassessing Marguerite's enormous oeuvre, the authors reveal the range and quality of her work beyond her famous collection of tales, posthumously called the Heptaméron. The Cholakians' groundbreaking reading of the rich body of her work, which uncovers autobiographical elements previously unrecognized by most scholars, and their study of her surviving correspondence portray a life that fully justifies Marguerite's sobriquet, "Mother of the Renaissance."