Showing results for "American Biography" in Americas

Abraham Lincoln by Pradeep Pandit is a biography that chronicles the life of Abraham Lincoln, focusing on his role as a nation-changer and American president during a critical time in U.S. history.

Welcome to the era of true marriages of convenience. Discover the reality of trading someone’s hand in marriage, such as an American heiress, in exchange for money, power, or political clout through compelling history lectures. Showcased in novels such as Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence and in present day pop culture through works like Downtown Abbey, the Gilded Age was an era of contradictions. Life on both sides of the Atlantic was grimy and glamorous, prosperous and impoverished, traditional and revolutionary.

President Theodore Roosevelt forever transformed America, ushering the country into the arena of world supremacy. His brand of leadership was entirely American: confident, compassionate, energetic, diverse, visionary. But Roosevelt was not a born leader; his ascent to the apex of power was not a foregone conclusion.

In July 2004, Barack Obama electrified the Democratic National Convention with an address that spoke to Americans across the political spectrum. Now, in The Audacity of Hope, Senator Obama calls for a different brand of politics–a politics for those weary of bitter partisanship and alienated...

From Wall Street to Main Street, John Brooks, longtime contributor to the New Yorker, brings to life in vivid fashion twelve classic and timeless tales of corporate and financial life in America. What do the $350 million Ford Motor Company disaster known as the Edsel, the fast and incredible...

In the wake of the Tour de France’s fallen heroes, the story of one of history’s most legendary cyclists provides a much-needed antidote. In 1907 the world’s most popular athlete was not Cy Young or Ty Cobb. Rather, he was a black bicycle racer named "Major” Taylor. In his day, Taylor became a spiritual and athletic idol. He was the fastest man in America and a champion who prevailed over unspeakable cruelty. The men who aided him were among the most colorful to emerge from the era.

Taken from George Armstrong Custer's own writings, An Autobiography of General Custer is the “true story” of one of the most praised, most despised, but surely most remembered American military heroes. Indeed, few figures in our history were - in their own time, as well as in our own - so wildly cheered and so roundly hated.

Nothing casts a more sinister shadow over our nation's history than the gruesome lynchings that happened between 1882 and 1937, claiming 4,680 victims. Often, in a show of racist violence, the lynchers tortured their victims before murdering them. Most killers were never brought to justice; some were instead celebrated as heroes, their victims' bodies displayed or even cut up and distributed as trophies.

An absorbing and original narrative history of American capitalism NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2017 BY THE ECONOMIST From the days of the Mayflower and the Virginia Company, America has been a place for people to dream, invent, build, tinker, and bet the farm in pursuit of a better life. Americana...

This life-sized portrait of Stuart surveys his life from childhood through his training at West Point, his years on the Western frontier, and his decision to stand with Virginia when war arrived. His brilliant Civil War career is covered in detail, from the raid on Chambersburg to his final, fatal clash at Yellow Tavern.

First published in 1875, General William T. Sherman's memoir was one of the first from the Civil War and was offered to the public because, as Sherman wrote in his dedication, "no satisfactory history" of the war was yet available. Although Memoirs has been revised and corrected many times over the years, Sherman famously never changed the original text of his recollections.

To many in the age of Obama, America had succeeded in "going beyond race", putting the divisions of the past behind us. And then 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot by a wannabe cop in Florida; and then 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; and then Baltimore blew up; and then gunfire shattered a prayer meeting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. Suddenly the entire country awakened to a stark fact: Young Black men are an endangered species.

The author was a cannoneer in the historic Rockbridge (Va.) Artillery, which made for itself, from Manassas to Appomattox, a reputation second to none in the Confederate service. No more vivid picture has been presented of the private soldier in camp, on the march, or in action. It was written evidently not with any commercial view, but was an undertaking from a conviction that its performance was a question of duty to his comrades.

Inside the greatest diplomatic negotiations of the past 50 years. In one readable volume, diplomat and negotiator Stuart E. Eizenstat covers every major contemporary international agreement, from the treaty to end the Vietnam War to the Kyoto Protocols and the Iranian Nuclear Accord. Written from the perspective that only a participant in top level negotiations can bring, Eizenstat recounts the events that led up to the negotiation, the drama that took place around the table, and draws lessons from successful and unsuccessful strategies and tactics.

For the first time ever, the intimate thoughts and political decisions of Abraham Lincoln’s entire presidency - day by day. In a startlingly innovative format, journalist Stephen A. Wynalda has constructed a painstakingly detailed day-by-day breakdown of president Abraham Lincoln’s decisions in office - including his signing of the Homestead Act on May 20, 1862; his signing of the legislation enacting the first federal income tax on August 5, 1861; and more personal incidents like the day his 11-year-old son, Willie, died.

A vivid portrait of the unsung American women from 1776 to today who changed the course of history in their fight for freedom and helped shape a more perfect union “This terrific book reveals the central, though often hidden role that women have played at every stage of our country’s history...

In the 1970s, Frank Lucas was the king of the Harlem drug trade, bringing in over a million dollars a day. He lived a glamorous life, hobnobbing with athletes, musicians, and politicians, but Lucas was a ruthless gangster. He was notorious for using the coffins of dead GIs to smuggle heroin into the United States, and, before being sentenced to 70 years in prison, he played a major role in the near death of New York City.

In this pioneering new work, celebrated historian David Nasaw examines the life of Joseph P. Kennedy, the founder of the twentieth century's most famous political dynasty. Drawing on never-before-published materials from archives on three continents and interviews with Kennedy family members and...

Born in Hamburg in the 1930s, Marione Ingram fled Nazi Germany only to find racism as pervasive in the American South as anti-Semitism was in Europe. As a white woman and a Holocaust refugee, Marione was the most unlikely of heroes in the fight for civil rights for African Americans. This is her empowering story - a tale of courage, strength, and determination.

Thomas Jefferson was arguably the most brilliant and inspiring political writer in American history. But the ethical realities of his personal life and political career did not live up to his soaring rhetoric. Indeed, three tensions defined Jefferson’s moral life: democracy versus slavery, republican virtue versus dissolute consumption, and veneration for Jesus versus skepticism about Christianity. In this book, Thomas S. Kidd tells the story of Jefferson’s ethical life through the lens of these tensions.