Early History

First published in 1903, this groundbreaking work is a cornerstone of African American literary history and a foundational text in the field of sociology. In these fourteen essays, W. E. B. Du Bois introduces and explores the concept of “double-consciousness”—a term he uses to describe the experience of living as an African American and having a “sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others.” Though an examination of Black life in post-Civil War America, The Souls of Black Folk has had a lasting impact on civil rights and the discussion of race in the United States.

Ulysses S. Grant, 18th President of the United States and commander of the Union forces in the Civil War, tells the story of his life in his own words. In this opening volume, Grant covers his early years, including his time at the U.S. military academy at West Point and his service during the Mexican War under Zachary Taylor. Grant wrote his memoirs in order to rescue his family from debt and they were published as he lay dying of throat cancer. Today, they are an American classic.

In the real world, England and France allowed Adolf Hitler to gobble up the Sudetenland in 1938. Once Hitler finished dismembering Czechoslovakia, he was ready to go to war over Poland a year later. But Hitler had always been eager to seize Czechoslovakia, no matter the consequences. So what if England and France had stood up to the Nazis from the start, and not 11 months later? That is the question behind the War That Came Early series.

In this extensive sequel to Science Education in the Early Roman Empire, Dr. Richard Carrier explores the social history of scientists in the Roman era. Was science in decline or experiencing a revival under the Romans? What was an ancient scientist thought to be and do? Who were they, and who funded their research? And how did pagans differ from their Christian peers in their views toward science and scientists?

From classics such as the Odyssey and the Aeneid to fifth-century Christian apocrypha, narratives that described guided tours of the afterlife played a major role in shaping ancient notions of morality and ethics. In this new account, acclaimed author Bart Ehrman contextualizes early Christian narratives of heaven and hell within the broader intellectual and cultural worlds from which they emerged.

THE LADY OF THE LAKE —-The mystery of Lake Ronkonkoma Legends such as The Loch Ness Monster, Atlantis, Big Foot, and the Bermuda Triangle, the Lady of the Lake on Long Island have mystified people for centuries. As the story goes, an Indian princess became romantically involved with an English woodcutter who toiled across the lake from the Indian camp. When her father, Chief of the Setauket Tribe, discovered her love affair with the English settler, he forbid her from seeing him again. Saddened with depression, the princess rowed to the deepest part of Lake Ronkonkoma and took her own ...

Debates over paper money and banking are older than the United States of America itself. Eighteenth and 19th century Americans were deeply ambivalent about paper money and central banks, and political fights over these issues were among the bitterest in American history. In fact, controversies over the country’s central bank birthed both the first (1792-1824) and second (1828-1852) party systems. Frequently, policymakers crafted responses to the crisis at hand, and as a result, they implemented policies that were inadequate to the challenges the country faced in the future.

The Dīghanikāya or Long Discourses of the Buddha is one of the four major collections of teachings from the early period of Buddhism. Its 34 suttas (in Sanskrit, sutras) demonstrate remarkable breadth in both content and style, forming a comprehensive collection. The Art of Listening gives an introduction to the Dīghanikāya and demonstrates the historical, cultural, and spiritual insights that emerge when we view the Buddhist suttas as oral literature.

A land of almost 3 million square miles has lain since time immemorial on the southern flank of the planet, so isolated that it remained entirely outside of European knowledge until 1770. However, the first human footprints on this vast territory were felt 70,000 years earlier. The history of the indigenous inhabitants of Australia is a complex. For generations after the arrival of whites in Australia, the Aboriginal people were disregarded and marginalized, largely because they offered little in the way of a labor resource, and they occupied land required for European settlement.

In How to Be, Adam Nicolson takes us on a glorious, immersive journey. Grounded in the belief that places give access to minds, however distant and strange, this book reintroduces us to our earliest thinkers through the lands they inhabited. To know the mental occupations of Homer or Heraclitus, one must visit their cities, sail their seas, and find landscapes not overwhelmed by the millennia that have passed but retain the atmosphere of that ancient life. Nicolson takes us to the dawn of investigative thought and a nexus of cross-cultural connection.

Beginning with Charlemagne, the great and educated king who would serve as an inspiration for world leaders from Frederick II to Adolf Hitler, the Holy Roman Empire’s intricate ties with the Roman Catholic Church would provide for plenty of excitement and drama in its early years. However, as the empire staggered through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, it would eventually be forced to declare its allegiance with a new way of thinking: Protestantism.

After a hiatus to allow his damaged shoulder to heal, Patrick Moses is put in charge of an investigation into the lynching murder of a young black boy. No one in the mostly-Irish section of town knows anything; Chicago's black community is horrified. The same day, Moses receives news from his former home at Holy Trinity Orphanage that a young female resident has disappeared. Fear is she has been abducted. The aldermen John Coughlin and Hinky Dink Kenna return to the precinct to complain about the murder of Albert Butross, the owner of Lustland, a prominent brothel. The alleged killer, a ...

No sport has been more associated with America’s sense of itself, with its identity, than baseball. No sport has been so inextricably bound with America’s traditions—with its notions of democracy and fair play—than baseball. And no professional sport in America has been as dramatically connected to social change as Major League Baseball when it became racially integrated the moment Jackie Robinson took the field with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947.

Red is a brilliantly told, captivating history of red hair throughout the ages. An audiobook that breaks new ground, dispels myths, and reinforces the special nature of being a redhead, with a look at multiple disciplines, including science, religion, politics, feminism and sexuality, literature, and art. With an obsessive fascination that is as contagious as it is compelling, author Jacky Colliss Harvey (herself a redhead) begins her exploration of red hair in prehistory and traces the redhead gene as it made its way out of Africa with the early human diaspora.

This book provides an interesting view of Peace Corps in the "Olden Days". The days when training included 2-3 months at a US University, a month of outward bound hiking/mountain climbing/ocean swimming, and a week or two in the cross-cultural setting of a poverty ridden neighborhood, be it urban slum or rural Appalachia, migrant stream camp or Native American reservation. The book then takes us through arrival in-country and three days later delivery to the village or neighborhood of assignment. Those were the days when little or no advance program planning had been done by PC staff at ...

Ever wonder what cadet life at West Point was like in the early days of the Academy prior to World War I? Through first-hand accounts and comprehensive historical research, author Robert C Richardson Jr. explores the origins of the United States Military Academy during the Revolutionary War and describes in intimate detail the four year cadet journey during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Covering topics from summer training and hazing to academics and social life, readers will learn how much has and hasn't changed over the years.Richardson himself was a 1904 USMA grad who would go on to ...

Maximum Volume offers a glimpse into the mind, the music, and the man behind the sound of the Beatles. George Martin's working-class childhood and musical influences profoundly shaped his early career in the BBC's Classical Music department and as head of the EMI Group's Parlophone Records. Out of them flowed the genius behind his seven years producing the Beatles' incredible body of work, including such albums as Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Abbey Road.

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 a work that fundamentally recasts the history of colonial America, Wendy Warren shows how the institution of slavery was inexorably linked with the first century of English colonization of New England. While most histories of slavery in early America confine themselves to the Southern colonies and the Caribbean, New England Bound forcefully widens the historical aperture to include the entirety of English North America.

Only two people were in a position to experience all the events leading up to the first flight of a viable airplane, and here in three short essays they report how it came about.The idea of powered flight was so new that there were not even accepted methods of measuring the forces at play on a machine in-flight.