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.

The Checkers speech was made on September 23, 1952, by Sen. Richard Nixon in Los Angeles, six weeks before the 1952 U.S. presidential election, in which he was the Republican nominee for Vice President. Nixon had been accused of improprieties relating to a fund established by his backers to reimburse him for his political expenses. His place was in doubt on the Republican ticket, so he flew to L.A. and delivered an address in which he defended himself, attacked his opponents, and urged the audience to contact the Republican National Committee to tell it whether he should remain on the ticket.

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 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.

The great unknown of the Southwest is conquered by a one-armed man and his crew of adventurers, placing the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon on the map of the American continent. It is a journey no human being had ever made before. Dangerous rapids, narrow canyon walls offering no escape, terrifying river waterfalls, capsized boats, near drowning, lost equipment and disillusioned men are dramatically described by John Wesley Powell, leader of this adventurous party.

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.

Ulysses S. Grant (April 27, 1822-July 23, 1885), born in Point Pleasant, OH, was the 18th president of the United States, serving from 1869 to 1877. A veteran of the Mexican-American War, in 1865, as commanding general, Grant led the Union Army to victory in the American Civil War. As president, Grant stabilized the post-war national economy, supported congressional Reconstruction and the Fifteenth Amendment, and prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan. The following is a reading of President Grant's inaugural address delivered on March 04, 1869.

Rutherford Birchard Hayes (October 4, 1822-January 17, 1893) was the 19th president of the United States, serving from 1877 to 1881. Hayes, a staunch abolitionist, left a fledgling political career to join the Union army as an officer. He was wounded five times, earning a reputation for bravery in combat, and rising in the ranks to serve as brevet major general. The following is a reading of President Grant's inaugural address delivered on March 05, 1877.

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.

Theodore Roosevelt (October 27, 1858-January 6, 1919) was the 26th president of the United States, serving from 1901 to 1909. The following is a reading of President Roosevelt's inaugural address delivered on March 04, 1905.

The following is a reading of President Adams' inaugural address delivered on March 04, 1797.

The story of the Donner Party is very much the story of James F. Reed's family, not simply because the Reeds were prominent members, but because they left much documentary evidence: diaries, memoirs, correspondence, and letters written en route and interviews shortly after the disaster. The adopted daughter of Reed, Virginia Reed Murphy's memoir is a noteworthy recounting of the Donner party disaster and its gruesome end. Her writing is sprightly, informal, and full of human interest.

"Stickeen.... pushed his head past my shoulders, looked down and across, then looked me in the face and began to mutter and whine; saying as plainly as if speaking with words, "Surely, you are not going into that awful place. "As the darkness of a freezing night approaches, an experienced American naturalist and a dog are trapped on an Alaskan Glacier. This is a true story, written by one of the United States' most famous naturalists and explorers.

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."

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.

George Washington (February 22, 1732 - December 14, 1799) was a Founding Father and the first president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. As commander of the Continental Army, Washington led Patriot forces to victory in the American Revolutionary War against the British Empire. He is commonly known as the Father of His Country for his role in bringing about American independence. The following is a reading of President Washington's inaugural address delivered on April 30, 1789.

Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 - July 4, 1826) was an American Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. Following the American Revolutionary War and prior to becoming president in 1801, Jefferson was the nation's first U.S. secretary of state under George Washington and then the nation's second vice president under John Adams.