Birth History

From its inception, Atlantic City has always been a town dedicated to the fast buck, and this wide-reachinghistory offers a riveting account of its past 100 year, from the city's heyday as a Prohibition-era mecca of lawlessness to its rebirth as a legitimate casino resort in the modern era.

In December 1906, two scientists, the Italian Camillo Golgi and the Spaniard Santiago Ramón y Cajal, arrived in Stockholm to jointly receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Golgi had discovered a breakthrough method of visualizing neurons under the microscope in 1873. He also believed that the nervous system was different from the rest of the body: instead of being composed of a multitude of individual cells, he thought it was one vast ‘reticulum’ of cells which were anatomically fused together, making ‘unity of action’ possible. Cajal, a decade younger, had improved on ...

When the United States was founded in 1776, its citizens didn’t think of themselves as “Americans.” They were New Yorkers or Virginians or Pennsylvanians. It was decades later that the seeds of American nationalism—identifying with one’s own nation and supporting its broader interests—began to take root. But what kind of nationalism should Americans embrace? The state-focused and racist nationalism of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson? Or the belief that the US Constitution made all Americans one nation, indivisible, which Daniel Webster and others espoused?

In history class, we’ve been taught that the Great Depression was all about crashing stock markets, snaking breadlines, and ecological disasters. We learned that FDR tried to put it right with the New Deal, but it was only World War II that finally succeeded in revitalizing the American economy. But that’s not the whole story.

In the bleak moments after defeat on mainland Europe in winter 1939, Winston Churchill knew that Britain had to strike back hard. So Britain's wartime leader called for the lightning development of a completely new kind of warfare, recruiting a band of eccentric free-thinking warriors to become the first 'deniable' secret operatives to strike behind enemy lines, offering these volunteers nothing but the potential for glory and all-but-certain death.

Dive into the transformative power and enduring impact of one of the most pivotal events in Christian history with "Tongues of Fire: The Day of Pentecost and the Birth of the Church." In this compelling narrative, Rev. John Eugene Miller brings to life the day the Holy Spirit descended upon the early believers, igniting the flames of faith that would spread Christianity across the globe. This book meticulously explores each aspect of that historic day—from the miraculous signs of wind and fire to the apostles speaking in diverse tongues. Rev. Miller skillfully draws upon scripture to ...

In Azusa Street Mission and Revival, Cecil M. Robeck Jr. brings to bear expertise from decades of focused study in church history to reveal the captivating story of the Apostolic Faith Mission in Los Angeles, which became known as the Azusa Street Mission. From humble beginnings with few resources, this small, uniquely diverse, and inclusive congregation led by William J. Seymour ignited a fire that quickly grew into a blaze and spread across the world, giving rise to the global Pentecostal movement.

The Irish state came into being as a result of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. Signed by a Sinn Féin delegation and the British government at 10 Downing Street in the early hours of 6 December that year, the Treaty was the culmination of both a revolutionary movement that had begun in the previous decade and of centuries of separate nationalist attempts to gain autonomy from the United Kingdom. Although it is the founding document of the Irish state, the Treaty has been the subject of very little critical analysis, certainly in proportion to its significance. In its centenary year, this ...

Listen to Blood and Smoke and go back to when America was first falling in love with automobile racing. Take the driver’s seat on this audio-venture and experience the early days of the Indy 500, the controversies that shaped this iconic race, and the young drivers who risked everything for fame, fortune, and first place.

Author Yuval Levin explores the roots of the left/right political divide in America by examining the views of the men who best represented each side at its origin: Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine. Striving to forge a new political path in the tumultuous age of the American and French revolutions, these two ideological titans sparred over moral and philosophical questions about the nature of political life and the best approach to social change: radical and swift, or gradual and incremental. The division they articulated continues to shape our political life today.

This panoramic book shows how the Greek Revolution was a demographic upheaval more consequential than the overthrow of a ruler. Drawing on Ottoman sources together with archival evidence from Greece, Britain, France, Russia, and Switzerland, the book reframes the birth of modern Greece within the imperial history of the global nineteenth century.

Best-selling author Brian Fagan brings early humans out of the deep freeze with his trademark mix of erudition, cutting-edge science, and vivid storytelling. Cro-Magnon reveals human society in its infancy, facing enormous environmental challenges - including a rival species of humans, the Neanderthals. For ten millennia, Cro-Magnons lived side by side with Neanderthals, an encounter that Fagan fills with drama.

In the 1920s the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. Her relatives were shot and poisoned. And this was just the beginning, as more and more members of the tribe began to die under mysterious circumstances.

Western exceptionalism - the idea that European civilizations are freer, wealthier, and less violent - is a widespread and powerful political idea. It has been a source of peace and prosperity in some societies, and of ethnic cleansing and havoc in others. Yet in The Invention of Power, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita draws on his expertise in political maneuvering, deal-making, and game theory to present a revolutionary new theory of Western exceptionalism: that a single, rarely discussed event in the 12th century changed the course of European and world history.

In this, his first book, Nietzsche developed a way of thinking about the arts that unites the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus as the central symbol of human existence. Although tragedy serves as the focus of this work, music, visual art, dance, and the other arts can also be viewed using Nietzsche's analysis and integration of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The Birth of Tragedy stands alongside Aristotle's Poetics as an essential work for all who seek to understand poetry and its relationship to human life.

On November 20, 1979, worldwide attention was focused on Tehran, where the Iranian hostage crisis was entering its third week. The same morning, the first of a new Muslim century, hundreds of gunmen stunned the world by seizing Islam's holiest shrine, the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Armed with rifles that they had smuggled inside coffins, these men came from more than a dozen countries, launching the first operation of global jihad in modern times.

In the nineteenth century, Russia participated in two "great games": one, pitted the tsar's empire against Britain in Central Asia. The other, saw Russia, China, and Japan vying for domination of the Korean Peninsula. In this eye-opening account, Sheila Miyoshi Jager argues that the contest over Korea, driven both by Korean domestic disputes and by great-power rivalry, set the course for the future of East Asia and the larger global order.

In the space of a few months, across Asia, a miracle became a nightmare. This was the Asian financial crisis of 1995-98. In this economic crisis, hundreds of people died in rioting, political strongmen were removed, and hundreds of billions of dollars were lost by investors. This crisis saw the US dollar value of some Asian stock markets decline by 90 percent. Why did almost no one see it coming? The Asian Financial Crisis 1995–98 charts Russell Napier’s personal journey during that crisis as he wrote daily for institutional investors about an increasingly uncertain future.

The preeminent historian of the American Revolution explains why it remains the most significant event in our history

In 1947, the Cold War came to Hollywood. Over nine tumultuous days in October, the House Un-American Activities Committee held a notorious round of hearings into alleged Communist subversion in the movie industry. The blowback was profound: the major studios pledged to never again employ a known Communist or unrepentant fellow traveler. The declaration marked the onset of the blacklist era, a time when political allegiances, real or suspected, determined employment opportunities in the entertainment industry. Hundreds of artists were shown the dooror had it shut in their faces.