Normans History

The famous conqueror from the European continent came ashore with thousands of men, ready to set up a new kingdom in England. The Britons had resisted the amphibious invasion from the moment his forces landed, but he was able to push forward. In a large winter battle, the Britons’ large army attacked the invaders, but was eventually routed, and the conqueror was able to set up a new kingdom.

In late September 1863, the Confederates began laying siege to the Union Army of the Cumberland around Chattanooga in what would be their last gasp for supremacy in the West. Following the devastating Union defeat at the Battle of Chickamauga on September 20, the army and its shaken commander, General William S. Rosecrans, began digging in around the city and waiting for reinforcements to arrive.

It was everywhere. You couldn’t talk about the revolution without using the word freedom in the same breath. But Gideon Jackson knew that freedom meant something different if your skin was black. Fast’s fictional account of the post Civil War era takes us into the life of Gideon Jackson, a black man, newly freed, and determined to make a difference.

Have you ever thought about your own surname? Wondered about the stories behind them, especially if they are unusual?This Amazon NUMBER 1 BESTSELLING BOOK (Genealogy) tells the engaging story of when our surnames first came into use, why they were necessary and how people acquired them. After spending decades writing and researching the history of names, William Lewis presents in ‘What’s in your Surname?’ a journey through the quite diverse origins of English surnames citing hundreds of examples along the way. On this engaging journey you will discover the origin of last names, from ...

It is hard to find an island on the map more central than Sicily. Located at the crossroads between Europe and Africa, and between the eastern and western Mediterranean, Sicily has rarely been governed as an independent, unified state. Nonetheless, the island has been the seat of some of the most important events in history, and nowhere is this more obvious than during antiquity.

Eddie Bielawski was born in the town of Wegrow in Poland in mid-1938. Not a propitious time and place for a Jewish child to be born. As a young child, he sees the Nazi army marching toward Russia. Day and night they marched - soldiers, trucks, tanks, and more soldiers, in a never-ending line - an invincible force. One night, his father had a dream. In this dream, he saw what he had to do: where to build the bunker, how to build it, and even its dimensions. This would be their Noah's Ark, saving them from the initial deluge.

Over 50 years after his death, Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970) is celebrated as the greatest rock guitarist of all time. But before he was setting guitars and the world aflame, James Marshall Hendrix was a shy kid in Seattle, plucking at a broken ukulele and in fear of a father who would hit him for playing left-handed. Bringing Jimi’s story to vivid life against the backdrop of mid-century rock, and with a wealth of new information, acclaimed music biographer Philip Norman delivers a captivating and definitive portrait of a musical legend.

Fatal Colours includes a cast of strong and compelling characters: a warrior queen, a ruthless king-making earl, even a papal legate who excommunicates an entire army. And at its center is the first full explanation for the crippling incapacity of the enduringly childlike Henry VI - founder of Eton and King's College, Cambridge. With a substantive and sparkling introduction by David Starkey, Fatal Colours brings to life a vibrant and violent age.

The Astor surname, one of New York’s most important family names for over a century, is synonymous with American aristocracy, a term that defies simple definition. Unlike Britain, where the term aristocrat had a definite meaning, the New York aristocracy was “at best a metaphor for high social status or prestige in a nation which had unequivocally rejected the mechanisms needed to create and sustain an aristocracy on the European model.”

The driving of the golden spike at Promontory Summit, which marked the completion of the country's first transcontinental railroad, was only the beginning of the race for railroad dominance. In the aftermath of this building feat, dozens of railroads, each with aggressive empire builders at their helms, raced one another for the ultimate prize of a southern transcontinental route that was generally free of snow, shorter in distance, and gentler in gradients. With a meticulous, loving eye, Walter Borneman picks up where most other histories leave off....

The narrative of American history is incomplete without the inclusion of the Native Americans that lived on the continent before European settlers arrived in the 16th and 17th centuries. Among these groups, one of the most famous is the Mohawk, who refer to themselves as Kanien'kehá:ka ("People of the Place of Flint"), but pop culture has a very different image in mind when it comes to the Mohawk. Those unfamiliar with the group associate them with the conspicuous Mohawk haircut, and images of a warlike people who scalp their enemies are still evoked.

Fort Worth has been called The City Where the West Begins, Cowtown, and the silent partner in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. None of these descriptions quite tells the story of this city and its people. Since its founding in the mid nineteenth-century as a military outpost, Fort Worth has gone through many phases - cattle, oil, aviation, and tourist. The little village on the Trinity has grown up to become a global city that is a melting pot of economic forces and diverse cultures.

Fighting for justice, for freedom of speech, and sometimes even for their own lives, some of history's most significant figures demonstrate the finest resources of language in the service of the most dramatic issues of their day.

In 1204, the great Angevin Empire was fragmenting under King John's rule. Unable to withstand France's invasion of Normandy, John also faced difficult relations with the papacy, and rising dissent among his barons. By the time John died in 1216, the failed Magna Carta gave way to civil conflict, and more than half of the country had fallen to the dauphin of France. These troubles were then passed, along with the crown, to John's nine-year-old son, Henry III.

In this succinct portrait of Alexander the Great, distinguished scholar and historian Norman Cantor draws on the major writings of Alexander's contemporaries, as well as the most recent psychological and cultural studies to illuminate this most legendary of men - a great figure in the ancient world whose puzzling personality greatly fueled his military accomplishments.

How did descendants of Viking marauders came to dominate Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East? It is a tale of ambitious adventures and fierce freebooters, of fortunes made and fortunes lost. The Normans made their influence felt across all of western Europe and the Mediterranean, from the British Isles to North Africa, and Lisbon to the Holy Land. In Empires of the Normans we discover how they combined military might and political savvy with deeply held religious beliefs and a profound sense of their own destiny.

In terms of geopolitics, perhaps the most seminal event of the Middle Ages was the successful Ottoman siege of Constantinople in 1453. The city had been an imperial capital as far back as the fourth century, when Constantine the Great shifted the power center of the Roman Empire there, effectively establishing two almost equally powerful halves of antiquity’s greatest empire. Constantinople would continue to serve as the capital of the Byzantine Empire even after the Western half of the Roman Empire collapsed in the late fifth century.

On a small farm in Iowa, from the age of seven Norman would rise before dawn and work the fields. He and his two younger sisters would raise cattle, pigs, and chickens; he would fish and hunt and tend to the corn and oat fields. It was grueling labor, and he hated it. In 1933, Norman left the farm and headed for Minneapolis with $61 in his pocket. He was a determined student and majored in agriculture-forestry at the University of Minnesota. First in Mexico, and then in India, Norman would travel the globe offering his unique knowledge.

The study of the apocryphal gospels, documents about the life or sayings of Jesus that did not become part of the New Testament, is a popular discipline among scholars that now fills several shelves of any respectable library. However, few consider the question of whether the Old Testament, also known as the Hebrew Bible, is "complete" and whether in antiquity there were other books besides "Genesis", the "Exodus" or "Judges", with different histories and unknown characters, that were excluded from the canon and got lost in the sands of time.

"Apollo's history is a confusing one," said the renowned poet and mythologist Robert Graves. This notion is also illustrated in a quote from the sixth century BCE Homeric Hymn to Apollo, which gives the listener a brief glimpse into the confusion surrounding Apollo's multi-faceted nature.