Early History

After the guns of Manassas fell silent, the opposing armies grappled for position wondering what would come next. Popular history has us believe that daily briefings reported something along the lines of “All quiet along the Potomac.” Reality was altogether different. In fact, the fall and early winter of 1861 was a hotbed of activity that culminated in the December combat at Dranesville. The Union victory—sorely needed after the string of defeats at Bull Run, Wilson’s Creek, and Ball’s Bluff—was small when measured against what was to come; it also helped shape the bloody years to follow.

Much of the contemporary discussion of the Jesus tradition has focused on aspects of oral performance, storytelling, and social memory, on the premise that the practice of communal reading of written texts was a phenomenon documented no earlier than the second century CE. Brian J. Wright overturns that premise by examining evidence that demonstrates communal reading events in the first century.

This audiobook is the first audiobook in the new academic book series, Hermit Kingdom Studies in Christianity and Judaism, which seeks to encourage advancement of knowledge in the area of Hebrew language studies, Jewish historical studies, and Early Christianity/New Testament studies. The academic series particularly encourages the use of interdisciplinary approaches and creative thinking.

Early Christians were called "heretics" and "atheists" when they denied the gods of Rome, in particular the divinity of the emperor and the statism he embodied in his personality cult. These Christians knew that Jesus Christ, not the state, was their Lord and that this faith required a different kind of relationship to the state than the state demanded. Because Jesus Christ was their acknowledged sovereign, they consciously denied such esteem to all other claimants. Today, the church must take a similar stand before the modern state.

In The Sum of Our Dreams, Louis P. Masur offers a sweeping yet compact history of America from its beginnings to the current moment. Evoking Barack Obama's belief that America remains the "sum of its dreams", Masur locates the origin of those dreams - of freedom, equality, and opportunity - and traces their progress chronologically, illuminating the nation's struggle over time to articulate and fulfill their promise.

While the majority of scholarship on early Washington focuses on its political and physical development, in Incidental Architect Gordon S. Brown describes the intellectual and social scene of the late 1700s through the lives of a prominent couple whose cultural aspirations served as both model and mirror for the city’s own.

This is a copy of a manuscript that was written in 1991 but never published. W. T. made copies and distributed them to several local libraries. Most of the original files were not available, so this book is an OCR of one of the library's copies I was able to locate. When available, the original files and images were used instead of the photocopied files/images. If the original photographs were not available, I scanned the images from the library's photocopied images which were extremely low quality and then performed some image enhancements to improve them a small amount. My initial ...

This is a copy of a manuscript that was written in 1991 but never published. W. T. made copies and distributed them to several local libraries. Half of the original files were not available, so this book is an OCR of one of the library's copies I was able to locate. When available, the original files and images were used instead of the photocopied images. If the original photographs were not available, I scanned the images from the library's photocopied images which were extremely low quality and then performed some image enhancements to improve them a small amount. My initial instinct was ...

This is a copy of a manuscript which was written in 1991 but never published. W. T. made copies and distributed them to several local libraries. I was able to locate the original computer files that made up the text of the document, but not all the original photographs. If the original photographs were not available, I scanned the images from the library's photocopied images which were extremely low quality and then performed some image enhancements to improve them a small amount. Also, I added an extensive index to allow researchers to easily identify the people that are mentioned in the ...

In Wild, Amy Jeffs journeys—on foot and through medieval texts—from landscapes of desolation to hope, offering the listener an insight into a world at once distant and profoundly close to home. The seven chapters, entitled Earth, Ocean, Forest, Beast, Fen, Catastrophe, Paradise, open with fiction and close with reflection. They blend reflections of travels through fen, forest and cave, with retelling of medieval texts that offer rich depictions of the natural world.

The Letters: A Historical and Scriptural Journey Through the Letters to the 7 Churches of Asia provides commentary on the letters while also serving as a traveler's guide to the historical locations of the 7 Churches. Dr. Johnny King, with his years of experience and knowledge, expertly guides one through the historical and archaeological facts regarding the locations as well as giving insight to the spiritual climate, the church and the pastor each of the letters were addressed to. The letters become alive and applicable to any “who hath an ear to hear.” This book is a great traveling ...

The Short History of Museums relates the story of the museum from the early, ancient museums up to the current, leading world museums. The Smithsonian and other museums in Washington DC are also included. The book also features a listing of state museum and historical societies in every state in the United States.

The story of the New Testament’s transmission is one of dedication, resilience, and faithfulness. In The Early Versions of the New Testament: Their Origins, Transmission, and Reliability, Edward D. Andrews recounts how imperfect yet committed individuals worked tirelessly to translate and preserve the sacred texts, ensuring that the message of the apostles could be shared with people across the world. This book provides an in-depth exploration of the major early versions, including the Diatessaron of Tatian, the Syriac translations (Old Syriac, Peshitta, Philoxenian, and Harklean), the ...

The early years of English settlement in America were characterized by catastrophe: starvation, disease, extreme violence, and ruinous ignorance. Seasons of Misery offers a provocative reexamination of the British colonies' chaotic and profoundly unstable beginnings, placing crisis at the center of the story. At the outposts of a fledgling empire and disconnected from the social order of their home society, English settlers were both physically and psychologically estranged from their European identities.

¡Descubra la fascinante historia de las primeras guerras estadounidenses en África! A través de este libro conocerá las guerras berberiscas de 1801 a 1805 y de 1815, las primeras guerras estadounidenses fuera de Norteamérica. Los enemigos eran los piratas berberiscos musulmanes de la costa norteafricana. Descubra cómo los marineros estadounidenses fueron capturados y convertidos en esclavos en Marruecos, Argel, Túnez y Trípoli. ¿Por qué ocurrió esto?

Discover the young life that shaped a great man. Few famous humans came into the world under such humble circumstances as Abraham Lincoln on February 12, 1809. But it may very well be that the humble and unassuming life he lived actually served to shape him into the solid, moral, honest, decent, hard-working adult that he became. What were those circumstances, the formula so to speak, that molded this future president? This biography looks at the childhood and young adulthood of Abraham Lincoln.

When people think about unidentified flying objects (UFOs), they tend to think of flying discs piloted by gray beings with large heads and enormous eyes. They also might believe that these sightings only started relatively recently and that belief in UFOs is some sort of modern phenomenon brought on, perhaps, by the very justifiable fears of a nuclear age. But a study of UFOs quickly reveals that people have been reporting the existence of unidentified flying objects since the beginning of recorded history, and perhaps a lot longer than that.

In Cords of Affection: Constructing Constitutional Union in Early American History Emily Pears investigates efforts by the founding generation's leadership to construct and strengthen political attachments in and among the citizens of the new republic. These emotional connections between citizens and their institutions were critical to the success of the new nation.

Riots are an aspect of American history that do not show up much in history textbooks, except for famous disturbances like the Boston Tea Party or the infamous New York City draft riots of 1863. The reality is that the country has experienced thousands of riots, from early colonial times through to the present, and the issues leading up to some of the riots may seem quite peculiar to modern Americans.

Technically speaking, slavery was not legal in the English-speaking world before the mid-17th century. But long before race-based slavery was entrenched in law and practice, English men and women were well aware of the various forms of human bondage practiced in other nations and, in less systematic ways, their own country. In wide-ranging detail, Slaves and Englishmen demonstrates how slavery shaped the ways the English interacted with people and places throughout the Atlantic world. As this revealing history shows, the implications of slavery were closely connected to the question of what it meant to be English.