Showing results for "The Rival" in History

Brought to you by Penguin. The bestselling and prize-winning study of one of the most legendary American Presidents in history, Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin is the book that inspired Barack Obama in his presidency. When Barack Obama was asked which book he could not live without in the...

Why is “the scientific community” so unified? In the last 350-odd years, the international “scientific community” has come to be the bastion of consensus and concerted action, especially in the face of two global crises: disastrous climate change, and a deadly pandemic. How did “the...

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Rival Queens by Kate Williams. Elizabeth and Mary: cousins, rivals, queens. They loved each other, they hated each other - they could never escape one another. Kate Williams’ thrilling new history tells the story of Elizabeth I of England and her betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots. At the end of the Tudor era, here were two women on two thrones. But this was a man’s world, and many believed that no woman should govern. 

Cousin to Elizabeth I - and possibly Henry VIII's illegitimate granddaughter - Lettice Knollys had a life of dizzying highs and pitiful lows. Entangled in a love triangle with Robert Dudley and Elizabeth I, banished from court, plagued by scandals, embroiled in treason, Lettice would lose a husband and son to the executioner's ax. In the first ever biography of this remarkable woman, Nicola Tallis takes us through her dramatic life and the grand sweep of the Tudor Age and the events that define it.

At stake in 1896 was the new idea that some landscapes should be collectively, permanently owned by a democratic government. Although many people today think of public lands as an American birthright, their very existence was then in doubt and dependent on a merger of the talents of these two men. Natural Rivals examines a time of environmental threat and political dysfunction not unlike our own and reveals the complex dynamic that gave birth to America’s rich public lands legacy. 

In 1789, James Madison and James Monroe ran against each other for Congress-the only time that two future presidents have contested a congressional seat. But what was at stake, as author Chris DeRose reveals in Founding Rivals: Madison vs. Monroe, the Bill of Rights, and the Election That Saved a Nation, was more than personal ambition. This was a race that determined the future of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the very definition of the United States of America.

We thought we knew the story of the twentieth century. For many in the West, after the two world conflicts and the long cold war, the verdict was clear: democratic values had prevailed over dictatorship. But if the twentieth century meant the triumph of liberalism, as many intellectuals proclaimed, why have the era's darker impulses—ethnic nationalism, racist violence, and populist authoritarianism—revived?

Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower, General George S. Patton, and General Omar N. Bradley engineered the Allied conquest that shattered Hitler’s hold over Europe. But they also shared an intricate web of relationships going back decades. In the cauldron of World War II, they found their prewar friendships complicated by shifting allegiances, jealousy, insecurity, patriotism, and ambition.

From the bestselling author of The Greatest Stories Never Told series, the epic history of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr's illustrious and eccentric political careers and their fateful rivalry. The famous duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr was the culmination of a story three...

Bloomsbury presents Rivals in the Storm by Damian Collins, read by Dyfrig Morris. A vivid biography in cinematic snapshots of David Lloyd George, one of the world’s greatest statesmen. Brought up in rural North Wales, David Lloyd George attended neither a grand school nor ancient university...

An illuminating history of North America's eleven rival cultural regions that explodes the red state-blue state myth—by the bestselling author of Nations Apart North America was settled by people with distinct religious, political, and ethnographic characteristics, creating regional cultures...

Comedy/Stories/Current Events/History/Modern Technology

Long before the rise of Islam, the Kingdom of Axum (c. 100–940 CE) dominated the Red Sea, rivaled Rome and Persia, and minted gold coins bearing the cross of a Christian king. In this series, Lucas and Luna explore how this East African empire—from its capital at Aksum in modern Ethiopia—controlled the ivory, frankincense, and slave trades, launched naval expeditions into Arabia, and defeated the Jewish kingdom of Himyar. They trace Axum's origins as a successor to the D'mt civilization, its adoption of Christianity under King Ezana (c. 320 CE), and its enigmatic decline. They examine ...

The Parthian Empire (247 BCE – 224 CE) was the superpower that Rome could never defeat—until it collapsed from within. Stretching from the Euphrates to the Indus, the Arsacid dynasty ruled a multicultural realm where Hellenistic, Persian, and steppe traditions fused into a unique civilization. Lucas and Luna guide listeners through the Parthian military revolution: the cataphract heavy cavalry and the mounted archers who perfected the 'Parthian shot' and annihilated Crassus at Carrhae (53 BCE). They explore the bustling Silk Road hub of Ctesiphon, the revival of Zoroastrianism, and the ...

From the New York Times bestselling author of Washington’s Spies, the thrilling story of the Confederate spy who came to Britain to turn the tide of the Civil War—and the Union agent resolved to stop him. In 1861, soon after the outbreak of the Civil War, two secret agents—one a...

The “deeply researched, surprise-on-every-page, and altogether marvelous” (Weekly Standard) tale of the five owners who shepherded the NFL through its tumultuous early decades and built the most popular sport in America The National Football League is a towering, distinctly American colossus...

More than 2,000 years ago the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu advised us to know our enemies. The question has always been how. In A Sense of the Enemy, the historian Zachary Shore demonstrates that leaders can best understand an opponent not simply from his pattern of past behavior, but from his behavior at pattern breaks. Meaningful pattern breaks occur during dramatic deviations from the routine, when the enemy imposes costs upon himself. It's at these unexpected moments, Shore explains, that successful leaders can learn what makes their rivals truly tick.

On October 4, 1957, a time of Cold War paranoia, the Soviet Union secretly launched the Earth's first artificial moon. No bigger than a basketball, the tiny satellite was powered by a car battery. Yet, for all its simplicity, Sputnik stunned the world.

In ancient Athens, thousands would attend theatre festivals that turned writing into a fierce battle for fame, money, and laughably large trophies. While the tragedies earned artistic respect, it was the comedies - the raunchy jokes, vulgar innuendo, outrageous invention, and barbed political commentary - that captured the imagination of the city.

Mary Queen of Scots passed her childhood in France and married the Dauphin to become Queen of France at the age of sixteen. Widowed less than two years later, she returned to Scotland as Queen after an absence of thirteen years. Her life then entered its best known phase: the early struggles...