Showing results for "Barons" in Americas

In the early 1900s, many Americans actually believed we had discovered intelligent life on Mars, as bestselling science writer David Baron chronicles in The Martians, his truly bizarre tale of a nation swept up in Mars mania. At the center of Baron's historical drama is Percival Lowell, the Boston Brahmin and Harvard scion, who observed "canals" etched into the surface of Mars. Lowell devised a grand theory that the red planet was home to a utopian society that had built gargantuan ditches to funnel precious meltwater from the polar icecaps to desert farms and oasis cities.

Marty Baron took charge of The Washington Post newsroom in 2013, after nearly a dozen years leading The Boston Globe. Just seven months into his new job, Baron received explosive news: Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, would buy the Post, marking a sudden end to control by the venerated family that had presided over the paper for 80 years. Just over two years later, Donald Trump won the presidency.

In the scorching summer of 1878, with the Gilded Age in its infancy, three tenacious and brilliant scientists raced to Wyoming and Colorado to observe a rare total solar eclipse. One sought to discover a new planet. Another - an adventuresome female astronomer - fought to prove that science was not anathema to femininity. And a young megalomaniacal inventor, with the tabloid press fast on his heels, sought to test his scientific bona fides and light the world through his revelations.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER The definitive history of combat aviation and fighter aircraft, from World War I to present INCLUDES 32 PAGES OF PHOTOGRAPHS AND 12 MAPS Lords of the Sky is the “dramatic, fast-paced, and definitive"" (Michael Korda) history of fighter pilots and aircraft and their...

The image of the Baron de Steuben training Washington's ragged, demoralized troops in the snow at Valley Forge is part of the iconography of our Revolutionary heritage, but most history fans know little more about this fascinating figure.

"Great Speeches by Frederick Douglass" is a pivotal collection showcasing Frederick Douglass's eloquence, determination, and leadership in advocating for the abolition of slavery and civil rights.

The great American automotive pioneers were entrepreneurial inventors and visionaries who changed the American landscape and brought us a new national culture. The dawn of the automobile ushered away the ubiquitous horse-drawn carriages and the rutted, dusty and wash-boarded dirt roads they traveled on, and replaced them with cars powered by steam, electricity and gasoline.

A Road Well Traveled offers many lessons to be drawn from the pioneers of the automotive industry and the fascinating lives they led. Some became fabulously wealthy; others died in obscurity. But they developed America's largest industry in the space of one generation and demonstrated the skills and characteristics necessary to achieve such success.

Here's a biographical profile of the Freelan and Francis Stanley, identical twins who developed the Stanley Steamers, cars powered by steam engines. In 1897 the brothers, dressed alike in overcoats, bowler hats and sporting thick black beards appeared on Maple Street in Watertown, Mass., driving a horseless carriage that was nearly soundless. Spectators were stunned by the quick pace and eerie silence. One observer later recalled: "It was like watching a pair of pants run down the street with nobody in them."

Here's a biographical profile of Ransom E. Olds, regarded as the first of the great American automobile pioneers. He not only sold the first car manufactured in America, his company was the first of the great automobile enterprises, a model and training ground for the Dodge brothers, Henry Ford, Henry Leland (founder of Cadillac and Lincoln), and other automotive trailblazers.

Here's a biographical profile of Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., a fashionable dresser whose starched and pressed stiff-collared shirts, double-breasted suits, spats, and a pearl tie pin gave him the appearance of a dandy, of a playboy. But Sloan, who built General Motors into the largest corporation in the world through hard work and vision, and devoted the same zeal to philanthropy, had no time for play.

Here's a biographical profile of Henry J. Kaiser, a great industrialist and philanthropist who had a profound impact on America's ability to prevail in World War II. People tend to regard the great American titans of the past as robber barons, men who made their fortunes off the backs of the oppressed, flaunting laws and living like nabobs while others had to scratch for a living.