Showing results for "Listen!" in Americas

A "radiantly accomplished" (Wall Street Journal) music scholar presents an accessible introduction to the art of listening to jazz In How to Listen to Jazz, award-winning music scholar Ted Gioia presents a lively introduction to one of America's premier art forms. He tells us what to listen for...

At thirty-five, Elsie Robinson feared she’d lost it all. Reeling from a divorce in 1917, she had no means to support herself and her chronically ill son. She dreamed of becoming a writer and was willing to sacrifice everything for this goal, even swinging a pickax in a gold mine to pay the bills. When the mine shut down, she moved to the Bay Area, where she barged into the offices of the Oakland Tribune and was hired on the spot. She went on to become a nationally syndicated columnist and household name whose column ran for over thirty years and garnered fifty million readers.

William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857-March 8, 1930), born in Cincinnati, Ohio, served as Secretary of War under President Theodore Roosevelt, then was elected on the Republican ticket as the 27th president of the United States from 1909 to 1913, and, later, named the tenth chief justice of the United States from 1921 to 1930. He is the only person to have held both offices. The following recordings are from the campaign trail in 1908, and, later, in 1912.

The Civil War, the most dramatic moment in this nation's history, also produced some of our greatest literature. From tragic charges to prison escapes to the desolation wrought on those who stayed behind, Blood is an extraordinary collection of reminiscences, fiction, and excerpts from diaries and letters by an array of soldiers, writers, and observers.

Mob opens terrifying windows on the brutal and mysterious world of organized crime. You'll meet murderous wiseguys, scheming Dons and undercover agents risking their lives to break the Mob's most powerful syndicates. The picture that emerges from these stories is astoundingly complex and all too human: a world of warped desire and violent consequences that is at once shocking and fascinating.

Robert George Seale (born October 22, 1936) is an African American revolutionary, political activist and author. Seale is widely known for co-founding the Marxist-Leninist and black power political organization the Black Panther Party (originally called the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) with fellow activist Huey P. Newton to monitor police activities and challenge police brutality in black communities, first in Oakland, California, and later in cities throughout the United States.

The Rebel Yell was a battle cry used by Confederate soldiers during the Civil War as a way to intimidate the enemy and to boost their own morale. The Rebel Yell stood in for the flag as a symbol of Confederate heritage and Southern defiance. At veteran’s reunions, the Rebel Yell represented Confederate heroism. In the first thirty or forty years of the twentieth century, a number of aging Confederate veterans got together for reunions and recorded their versions of the Rebel Yell. The following recording includes Rebel Yells from one of these reunions from the 1920s.

Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837-June 24, 1908), born in Caldwell, New Jersey, was the 22nd and 24th president of the United States, serving from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897. He was the first Democrat to get elected to the presidency after the Civil War and the first U.S. president to serve nonconsecutive terms. Previous to the presidency, Cleveland was elected mayor of Buffalo in 1881, and governor of New York in 1882. The following is a reading of President Grant's inaugural address delivered on March 04, 1885.

Abraham Lincoln's carefully crafted Gettysburg Address was originally meant to be secondary to other presentations that day, following on as it did from a two hour speech by the orator Edward Everett. Although Lincoln's speech was only just over two minutes long, it came to be regarded as one of the greatest speeches in American history. In it's short span, Lincoln reiterated the principles of human equality espoused by the Declaration of Independence and proclaimed the Civil War as a struggle for the preservation of the Union sundered by the secession crisis.

On January 17, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower delivered his political farewell to the American people on national television from the Oval Office of the White House. Those who expected the military leader and hero of World War II to depart his Presidency with a nostalgic, "old soldier" speech like Gen. Douglas MacArthur's, were surprised at his strong warnings about the dangers of the "military-industrial complex."

Hear the actual recording of "The Price of Free World Victory" speech given by Vice President Henry Wallace at a dinner of the Free World Association in New York City on May 8th, 1942.

The following recordings include Will Rogers a comedic keynote speech to a collection of bankers in 1924 and his first political speech made in support of a New York candidate for Congress.

Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin (April 16, 1889 to December 25, 1977), born in London, was an English actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered one of the film industry's most important figures. His career spanned more than 75 years, from childhood in the Victorian era until a year before his death in 1977.

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy made a speech to the Fort Worth, Texas, Chamber of Commerce; he was assassinated later that afternoon. Kennedy had traveled to the state to unite Texas Democrats where party leaders were feuding and extremists were contributing to political tensions. Kennedy knew an intra-party feud in Texas could jeopardize his chances of carrying the state for his 1964 re-election campaign.

On October 22, 1962, President John F. Kennedy gave a televised address informing the American public that the Soviet Union had installed missiles in Cuba. Kennedy announced a US naval blockade around the island to prevent further delivery of such weapons, essentially declaring that any missile launched from Cuba against the Western Hemisphere would be considered an attack by the Soviet Union, and would prompt a full US retaliatory response. Kennedy demanded the removal of the missiles from Cuba and warned of serious consequences if the Soviets did not comply.

Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913-April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was the 36th vice president from 1953 to 1961 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Dan Akee was part of the Navajo code talker units of the US Marine Corps that relayed radio and phone messages in their native dialect during World War II operations. The method was fast and indecipherable to enemy eavesdroppers, as Navajo is an unwritten language of extreme complexity—with its syntax, tonal qualities, and various dialects—making it unintelligible to anyone without extensive exposure and training. It has no alphabet or symbols, and is spoken only on the Navajo lands of the American Southwest. The following are two recordings from code talker Dan Akee.

Wernher von Braun ( March 23, 1912 - June 16, 1977) was a German aerospace engineer and space architect. He was the leading figure in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany and a pioneer of space technology and science in the United States. After World War II, von Braun was secretly moved to the US, along with roughly 1,600 other German scientists, engineers, and technicians, as part of Operation Paperclip.

Amelia Mary Earhart, an American aviation pioneer and author, was born on July 24, 1897. Earhart was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She set numerous other aviation records, wrote best-selling books about her flying experiences, and was instrumental in the formation of The Ninety-Nines, an organization for female pilots. The following is a recording of her famous 1935 radio-broadcast speech: A Woman's Place in Science.

As a 25-year old US Air Mail pilot, Charles Lindbergh emerged from virtual obscurity to instantaneous world fame as the result of his Ortieg Prize-winning solo nonstop flight on May 20 and 21, 1927. The trip spanned the distance from Roosevelt Field in Garden City on New York's Long Island to Le Bourget Field in Paris, France—a distance of nearly 3,000 statue miles.