Best of
North-American-History
2016
Angels With Dirty Faces: The Footballing History of Argentina
Jonathan Wilson - 2016
Argentina is responsible for some of the greatest footballers on the planet. Their rich, volatile history is made up of both the sublime and the ruthlessly pragmatic.Argentina is a nation obsessed with football, and Jonathan Wilson, having lived there on and off during the last decade, is ideally placed to chart the five phases of Argentinian football: the appropriation of the British game; the golden age of la nuestra, the exuberant style of playing that developed as Juan Perón led the country into isolation; a hardening into the brutal methods of anti-fútbol; the fusing of beauty and efficacy under César Luis Menotti; and the ludicrous (albeit underachieving) creative talent of recent times.More than any other nation Argentina lives and breathes football, its theories and myths. The subject is fiercely debated on street corners and in cafes. It has even preoccupied the country's greatest writers and philosophers.ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES is the definitive history of a great footballing nation and its paradoxes.
The Intimidation Game: How the Left Is Silencing Free Speech
Kimberley Strassel - 2016
For nearly 40 years, Washington and much of the American public have held up disclosure and campaign finance laws as ideals, and the path to cleaner and freer elections. This book will show, through first-hand accounts, how both have been hijacked by the Left as weapons against free speech and free association, becoming the most powerful tools of those intent on silencing their political opposition. THE INTIMIDATION GAME provides a chilling expose of political scare tactics and overreach, including:How Citizens United set off a wave of liberal harassment against conservative politiciansThe targeting of Tea Party groups by the IRSHow Wisconsin prosecutors, state AGs, and a Democratic Congress shut down political activists and businessesThe politicization by the Obama administration of a host of government agencies including the FEC, FCC and the SECTimed to arrive at the height of the 2016 presidential season, THE INTIMIDATION GAME will shine a much-needed light on how liberal governance and the Democratic machine bullies the political process.
Voices in the Stones: Life Lessons from the Native Way
Kent Nerburn - 2016
Voices in the Stones is a unique collection of his encounters, experiences, and reflections during that time.He takes us inside a traditional Native feast to show us how the children are taught to respect the elders. He brings us to an isolated prairie rock outcropping where a young Native man and his father show us how the power of ceremony connects the present with the ancient voices of the past. At a dusty roadside café he introduces us to an elder who remembers the time when his ancestors could talk to animals.In these and other deeply touching stories, Nerburn reveals the spiritual awareness that animates all of Native American life, and shows us how we have much to learn from one another if only we have the heart to listen.
MacArthur at War: World War II in the Pacific
Walter R. Borneman - 2016
Douglas MacArthur changed the course of World War II. MacArthur at War will go deeper into this transformative period of his life than previous biographies, drilling into the military strategy that Walter R. Borneman is so skilled at conveying, and exploring how personality and ego translate into military successes and failures.Architect of stunning triumphs and inexplicable defeats, General MacArthur is the most intriguing military leader of the twentieth century. There was never any middle ground with MacArthur. This in-depth study of the most critical period of his career shows how MacArthur's influence spread far beyond the war-torn Pacific.
Deliverance Mary Fields, First African American Woman Star Route Mail Carrier in the United States: A Montana History
Miantae Metcalf McConnell - 2016
Mary Fields, a fifty-three-year old second-generation slave, emancipated and residing in Toledo, receives news of her friend’s impending death. Remedies packed in her satchel, Mary rushes to board the Northern Pacific. Days later, she arrives in the Montana wilderness to find Mother Mary Amadeus lying on frozen earth in a broken-down cabin. Certain that the cloister of frostbit Ursuline nuns and their students, Indian girls rescued from nearby reservations, will not survive without assistance, Mary decides to stay.She builds a hennery, makes repairs to living quarters, cares for stock, and treks into the mountains to provide food. Brushes with death do not deter her. Mary drives a horse and wagon through perilous terrain and sub zero blizzards to improve the lives of missionaries, homesteaders and Indians and, in the process, her own.After weathering wolf attacks, wagon crashes and treacherous conspiracies by scoundrels, local politicians and the state’s first Catholic bishop, Mary Fields creates another daring plan. An avid patriot, she is determined to register for the vote. The price is high. Will she manifest her personal vision of independence?MIANTAE METCALF MCCONNELL’S RESEARCH enabled USPS historians to verify Mary Fields as the first African American woman star route mail carrier in the United States. A fact-based chronicle of Fields’ life in Montana from 1885 until her death in 1914, the narrative examines women rights, bootleg politics, Montana’s turn-of-the-century transition from territory to state and its scandalous woman suffrage election.PRAISE FOR DELIVERANCE MARY FIELDSMIDWEST BOOK REVIEW“Under McConnell's hand, the atmosphere, frontier challenges, and landscapes of Montana come to life. Mary Fields is a true historical figure, dramatized in novel format. Her story will delight readers who look for a blend of accurate historical facts, hard-hitting drama, and realistic scenes powered by a feisty protagonist whose values and concerns become part of the social changes sweeping the nation.”—Diane Donovan, Midwest Book Reviewer & Editor, California BookwatchMcConnell has fashioned a historical narrative marrying prose and poetry, fact with creative writing. With the discerning eye of a photographer, the deft hand of a historian, and the literary heart of a poet, the life of Mary Fields, legendary black woman of Montana, rises off the page into living history. If the reader has any interest in Mary Fields, aka Stagecoach Mary, Deliverance is the one book you must read.—Cowboy Mike Searles, Author, Professor of History, Augusta University, GA.A great story and history of Mary Fields, an important black westerner. A must read for youths and adults. —Bruce A. Glasrud, Author, Specialist Black American West History, Professor, California State University.
The Oracle of Oil: A Maverick Geologist's Quest for a Sustainable Future
Mason Inman - 2016
Addressing the American Petroleum Institute, Hubbert dropped a bombshell on his audience: U.S. oil production would peak by 1970 and decline steadily thereafter. World production would follow the same fate, reaching its peak soon after the turn of the millennium. In battles stretching over decades, Hubbert defended his forecasts against opponents from both the oil industry and government. Hubbert was proved largely correct during the energy crises of the 1970s and hailed as a "prophet" and an "oracle." Even amid our twenty-first-century fracking boom, Hubbert’s underlying logic holds true—while remaining a source of debate and controversy.A rich biography of the man behind peak oil, The Oracle of Oil follows Hubbert from his early days as a University of Chicago undergraduate to his first, ill-fated forays into politics in the midcentury Technocracy movement, and charts his rise as a top geologist in the oil industry and energy expert within the U.S. government. In a deeply researched narrative that mines Hubbert's papers and correspondence for the first time, award-winning journalist Mason Inman rescues the story of a man who shocked the scientific community with his eccentric brilliance. The Oracle of Oil also skillfully situates Hubbert in his era: a time of great intellectual ferment and discovery, tinged by dark undercurrents of intellectual witch hunts. Hubbert emerges as an unapologetic iconoclast who championed sustainability through his lifelong quest to wean the United States—and the wider world—off fossil fuels, as well as by questioning the pursuit of never-ending growth.In its portrait of a man whose prescient ideas still resonate today, The Oracle of Oil looks to the past to find a guiding philosophy for our future.
PTSD: Time To Heal
Cathy O'Brien - 2016
Whether your traumatic experience peaks the top of PTSD's sliding scale the way Cathy's Pentagon level MK Ultra mind control programming did; or is from the horrors of war; or even if it is simply resultant from socially engineered information control and fears, this book is for you. These step by step healing methods intelligence insider Mark Phillips taught Cathy can help anyone willing to reclaim control over their own mind and life just as she did. Their journey to release PTSD: Time to Heal has been politically strenuous until now! Positive change through public awareness and overwhelming global demand prompted this release of otherwise suppressed easy to follow step-by-step healing methods Mark taught Cathy for successfully reclaiming her mind and life after decades of torturous MK Ultra mind control. Since PTSD: Time to Heal is a workbook journal, it is not authorized in either eBook form or used copy. From it's cover to unconventional layout to insights within, PTSD: Time to Heal reverberates with introspective inspirations.
Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation
Matthew F. Delmont - 2016
Board of Education Supreme Court decision, busing to achieve school desegregation became one of the nation’s most controversial civil rights issues. Why Busing Failed is the first book to examine the pitched battles over busing on a national scale, focusing on cities such as Boston, Chicago, New York, and Pontiac, Michigan. This groundbreaking book shows how school officials, politicians, the courts, and the media gave precedence to the desires of white parents who opposed school desegregation over the civil rights of black students. This broad and incisive history of busing features a cast of characters that includes national political figures such as then-president Richard Nixon, Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, and antibusing advocate Louise Day Hicks, as well as some lesser-known activists on both sides of the issue—Boston civil rights leaders Ruth Batson and Ellen Jackson, who opposed segregated schools, and Pontiac housewife and antibusing activist Irene McCabe, black conservative Clay Smothers, and Florida governor Claude Kirk, all supporters of school segregation. Why Busing Failed shows how antibusing parents and politicians ultimately succeeded in preventing full public school desegregation.