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Remember The Alamo?: American History In Bite Sized Chunks


Alison Rattle - 2009
    . . from Plymouth Rock to Pearl Harbor-the history of America in bite-size chunks How did the conquistadors first stumble across America-and what were the Spanish looking for anyway? What was the Dred Scott Supreme Court case and how did it affect the Civil War? And while some of us may indeed remember the Alamo, why were we once urged to "Remember the Maine"? Here, in chronological order, is a rollicking tour of American history from Columbus's arrival through Nixon's resignation, including details about the early colonists, Manifest Destiny, the Civil War-from Southern secession to the surrender at Appomattox-and the nation's plunge into World War I and the end of U.S. isolationism. It's the perfect refresher for all the things we learned in school but may have forgotten since. In concise, highly readable chapters, Remember the Alamo!""tells the most exciting story in the world: the story of America-home of Ben Franklin and Al Capone, Abe Lincoln and Rosa Parks, a nation with a passion and a gift for making history to this day.

A Town of Lawlessness


Ethan Westfield - 2020
    When he is finally ready to turn a new page in life, he shoots for the moon and moves to the town of Moville to work in mining. Feeling like he is one step closer to his dream, little did he know that the life of a miner is more fraught with peril and disappointment than he'd imagined. The moment he discovers that a vicious killer is out there, taking the lives of innocent miners for no apparent reason, he is willing to risk it all to track him down. Will Jack manage to find the answer behind the enigma of the horrible murders? Or will the truth behind them remain forever hidden, haunting the small town?While trying to connect all dots and solve the intriguing mystery, Jack meets Charlotte Campbell, the town's head schoolteacher. Although they get off to a rocky start, he will soon realize that he's not alone in the battle against the town's enemies. Together they will fight the forces that wreak havoc in Moville, a lifetime adventure that will bring them closer. Even though their attraction is impossible to deny, their affection cannot be expressed as long as a criminal is out there. Will they finally have a chance at love, or will their romance be doomed to be lost forever?As the days go by and the murderers continue to bring chaos to what was once a thriving town, Jack feels like his dream is being shattered into a million pieces. Will his valor and wit win out in the end, leading him to the life he has been eagerly waiting for? Or will the cruel felon stop him from riding down the trail to happiness?"A Town of Lawlessness" is a historical adventure novel of approximately 80,000 words. No cliffhangers, only pure unadulterated action.

After the Fall: The Remarkable Comeback of Richard Nixon


Kasey S. Pipes - 2019
    president to resign from office—to avoid almost certain impeachment. Utterly disgraced, he was forced to flee the White House with a small cadre of advisors and family. Richard Nixon was a completely defeated man. Yet only a decade later, Nixon was a trusted advisor to presidents, dispensing wisdom on campaign strategy and foreign policy, shaping the course of U.S.-Soviet summit meetings, and representing the U.S. at state funerals—the very model of an elder statesman.How did he do it? Nixon leveraged his still sharp mind, his peerless political instincts, his deep connections with foreign leaders—but, above all, his stubborn refusal to accept defeat—to achieve a political restoration as astonishing as the fall that preceded it.Kasey S. Pipes, advisor to President George W. Bush, tells the fascinating story of Nixon’s comeback. Using unprecedented access to the private post-presidential documents at the Nixon Library, Pipes reveals inside information that has never been reported about Nixon’s successful campaign to repair his reputation and resuscitate his career, including: The true story behind the supposed medical “hoax” to get Nixon out of testifying at the Watergate trials of his aides in WashingtonThe strategy behind Nixon’s apparently accidental on-air “confession” of the Watergate coverup to interviewer David FrostHow Nixon’s advice on the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) shaped Ronald Reagan’s negotiations with Gorbachev—and changed historyHow Nixon traveled to China after Tiananmen Square to help preserve the U.S.-Chinese relations that he had opened up years earlierThe Saturday morning presidential radio address: a Nixon ideaNixon’s surprising friendship with Bill ClintonAfter the Fall is the gripping and never-before-told story of one of the most remarkable reversals of fortune in American political history.

The Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry: A History of Misery and Medicine


J.P. Webster - 2013
    Webster as he explores the fascinating and complex history of the Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry.The Quaker City and its hospitals were pioneers in the field of mental health. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, its institutions were crowded and patients lived in shocking conditions. The mentally ill were quartered with the dangerously criminal. By 1906, the city had purchased a vast acreage of farmland incorporated into the city, and the Philadelphia Hospital dubbed its new venture Byberry City Farms. From the start, its history was riddled with corruption and committees, investigations and inquests, appropriations and abuse. Yet it is also a story of reform and redemption, of heroes and human dignity--many dedicated staff members did their best to help patients whose mental illnesses were little understood and were stigmatized by society.

Heart of the Trail: The Stories of Eight Wagon Train Women


Mary Barmeyer O'Brien - 1997
    First hand accounts from their letters and diaries, most written on the trail.

The Bern Identity: A Search for Bernie Sanders and the New American Dream (Kindle Single)


Will Bunch - 2015
    How did Bernie Sanders make it out of the backwoods of Vermont – where he lived for a time in a ramshackle off-road “sugar shack” with no electricity, and where he never got more than 6 percent of the vote in a string of doomed, fringe far-left campaigns in the 1970s – to become a leading contender in the 2016 race for the White House? And perhaps more importantly for author Will Bunch, how did this gruff and sometimes didactic gray-haired political survivor make it out of the 1960s and ‘70s to become the last torch-bearer of the youthful idealism of that nearly lost “Age of Aquarius” – The One who didn’t drop out, sell out…or simply give up? In the fall of 2015, Bunch – with the voices of the late Hunter S. Thompson and the other iconic “New Journalists” of that lost era ringing in his ears – set out on a road trip that took him from the battlefields of northern Virginia to the salty air of backwater Boston to the neon sky of the Las Vegas Strip, all to get to the bottom of “The Bern Identity.” He follows the long strange trip of Bernie Sanders – a kid from a cramped Brooklyn flat who couldn’t tell a lie in school, who mourned the migration of his beloved Dodgers and was shaken up by “Death of a Salesman,” who became a campus radical, a dreamer of revolutions, and then almost disappeared before his improbable election of mayor of Burlington in 1981. Sanders’ remarkable bio is interspersed with the tale of the true believers who packed hockey rinks and concrete convention floors in crowds of 20,000 or more, who tweeted incessantly and posted memes of Sanders flying in coach class, and who exploded with excitement at their hero’s call for a “political revolution” to raise the beleaguered middle class. In a time of rampant cynicism about American politics, “The Bern Identity” turns into something most unlikely – a love story, between the long-distance runner who never gave up his fantasy of real social change, and the dreamers and the radicals and the formerly hopeless who were waiting for him at the finish line.THE AUTHOR Will Bunch is senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily News – where he writes the popular political blog Attytood – and also shared the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for spot news reporting in 1992 when he was at New York Newsday. He is the author of two other Kindle Singles: October 1, 2011: The Battle of the Brooklyn Bridge, about the Occupy Wall Street movement, and Give It To Steve!, about the 1948 Philadelphia Eagles winning the NFL title during a raging blizzard. His full-length books include The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama, and Tear Down This Myth: The Right-Wing Distortion of the Reagan Legacy. His articles have also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Mother Jones, The Los Angeles Times, American Prospect, American Journalism Review, and elsewhere. He lives in the Philadelphia suburbs with his family.

Fifty-Five Fathers


Robert Frankenberg - 1970
    Retells the story of the Philadelphia convention in 1787 drawing on the original notes of James Madison and on the diary of William Pierce.

We Lived in a Little Cabin in the Yard: Personal Accounts of Slavery in Virginia


Belinda Hurmence - 1994
    Those ex-slaves were in their declining years by the time of the Great Depression, but Elizabeth Sparks, Elige Davison, and others like them nonetheless provided a priceless record of life under the yoke: where slaves lived, how they were treated, what they ate, how they worked, how they adjusted to freedom. Here, Belinda Hurmence presents the interviews of 21 former Virginia slaves. This is a companion volume to Hurmence's popular collections of North Carolina and South Carolina slave narratives, My Folks Don't Want Me to Talk About Slaveryand Before Freedom, When I Just Can Remember.

The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth: Mountaineer, Scout, and Pioneer, and Chief of the Crow Nation of Indians


James P. Beckwourth - 1902
    Beckwourth would go on to become one of the most remarkable mountain men to have ever lived. In 1824 Beckwourth left Missouri to head to the Rocky Mountains to work for William Ashley’s Rocky Mountain Fur Company. He would never turn back. In his fascinating life, spent in the mountains and plains of the West, he lived as a trapper, hunter, guide, horse thief and Indian fighter. What is particularly fascinating about Beckwourth’s book is his insight into the culture of the Native Americans, as for many years, this son of a slave and a slave owner, lived with the Crow Nation, trapping, hunting, marrying two of their women and raiding alongside them. It is even stated that he rose to the position of Chief of the Crow Nation. First published in 1856, The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth is a unique account of life in pioneer America in the early-nineteenth century. "This is a book of great importance to an understanding of the mountains, plains, and Great Basin West." California Historical Quarterly "It remains what it always has been since its first appearance in 1856—a rousing adventure story in which Jim Beckwourth plays the leading role." San Francisco Chronicle James Beckwourth was the only African American in the West to have his life story published. He was credited with the discovery of Beckwourth Pass which aided pioneers in reaching their destination in the West. He died in 1866.

Apollo 1: The Tragedy That Put Us on the Moon


Ryan S. Walters - 2021
    All three astronauts were experienced pilots and had dreams of one day walking on the moon, but little did they know, nor did anyone else, that once they entered the spacecraft that cold winter day they would never leave it alive. The Apollo program would be perilously close to failure before it ever got off the ground. But rather than dooming the space program, this tragedy caused the spacecraft to be completely overhauled, creating a stellar flying machine to achieve the program’s primary goal: putting man on the moon. Apollo 1 is a candid portrayal of the astronauts, the disaster that killed them, and its aftermath. In it, readers will learn: How the Apollo 1 spacecraft was doomed from the start, with miles of uninsulated wiring and tons of flammable materials in a pure oxygen atmosphere, along with a hatch that wouldn’t open How, due to political pressure, the government contract to build the Apollo 1 craft went to a bidder with an inferior plan How public opinion polls were beginning to turn against the space control before the tragedy and got much worse after Apollo 1 is about America fulfilling its destiny of man setting foot on the moon. It’s also about the three American heroes who lost their lives in the tragedy, but whose lives were not lost in vain.

The Banditti of the Plains: Or The Cattlemen's Invasion of Wyoming in 1892


Asa Shinn Mercer - 1896
    It does not mince words … [and] is a timely contribution to the history of the West. That it recites the facts of a deep and damning crime detracts not the least from its value." - Denver Daily News The Banditti of the Plains, first published in 1894 is an eyewitness exposé of Wyoming's Johnson County range war of the early 1890s. The conflict between cattlemen and small homesteaders, began when cattle companies ruthlessly persecuted supposed cattle-rustlers in Wyoming. As tensions mounted between the large ranchers and the smaller settlers, the cattlemen hired armed gunmen to invade Johnson County and destroy the competition for the limited supply of forage and water. As the fighting spread, the homesteaders and smaller ranchers, as well as the state lawmen, formed a posse of 200 men to oppose them. The fighting ended when the U.S. Cavalry, on the orders of President Benjamin Harrison, relieved the two opposing forces took the cattlemen and hired guns into protective custody. Subsequent legal (and illegal) maneuvering permitted the invaders to go unpunished, but the cattlemen never again resorted to violence in their effort to control Wyoming's rangeland. Asa Shinn Mercer (June 6, 1839 – August 10, 1917) was the first president of the Territorial University of Washington and a member of the Washington State Senate. He is remembered primarily for his role in three milestones of the old American West: the founding of the University of Washington, the Mercer Girls, and the Johnson County War. Mercer became well known throughout the West as a publisher, and eventually found his way to Cheyenne, Wyoming, where he published the Northwestern Livestock Journal, a public relations vehicle for the moneyed cattle interests. As Mercer came to see the clearly underhanded treatment of individual ranchers by the cartels, he began to write more scathing accounts of the events that were unfolding on the open range. His account is told in his book The Banditti of the Plains (1894), which was suppressed in its day, and is still difficult to find in public libraries in some parts of the Western U.S. Following the events of the Johnson County War, which included destruction of his newspaper office by arson, Mercer settled into the quiet life of a successful rancher in Hyattville, Wyoming, where he died in 1917.

The Big War


Anton Myrer - 1957
    They were Americans and Marines. And this is their story: The Big War, Anton Myrer's panoramic novel of Marines in the Pacific in World War II. This is the story of Alan Newcombe, the Boston society Harvard man; Danny Kantaylis, the natural-born leader; Jay O'Neill, the barroom scrapper. Myrer does not glorify war; he does not flinch from describing what the actual experience of warfare was like for a desperate group of Marines trapped in some of the worst fighting conditions of the war. We learn about their lives at home and their fates on the battlefield.

Wah-to-yah, and the Taos Trail; or Prairie travel and scalp dances, with a look at Los Rancheros from Muleback and the Rocky Mountain Campfire


Lewis Hector Garrard - 1972
     Beginning in what is now Kansas City he joined a caravan headed for Bent’s Fort in southeastern Colorado near the Spanish Peaks, which was known to the Native Americans as Wah-to-Yah. Just before Garrard had arrived in the southwest Charles Bent, who was the recently appointed Governor of the newly acquired New Mexico Territory, was scalped and killed by Pueblo warriors during the Taos Revolt. Garrard’s account is therefore a vivid first-hand account of the Taos Revolt and its aftermath. Through the course of Wah-to-yah and the Taos Trail Garrard explains how he came into contact with some of the most famous figures of western history, including Kit Carson, Jim Beckwourth, Ceran St. Vrain, George F. Ruxton, William Bent, and others. Scholars like Robert Gale have highlighted how the book provides “anthropologically accurate” descriptions of the Cheyenne Indians and other Native American tribes in the southwest of America. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the old west, for as the Pulitzer Prize winning author A. B. Guthrie Jr. stated, it is “the genuine article” and brilliantly depicts “the Indian, the trader, the mountain man, their dress, and behavior and speech and the country and climate they lived in.” Lewis Hector Garrard was the son of a prominent family from Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1846 he set out for a ten-month trip to the southwestern United States. While in Taos, Garrard attended the trial of some of the Mexicans and Pueblos who had revolted against U.S. rule of New Mexico, newly captured in the Mexican-American War. Garrard wrote the only eye witness account of the trial and hanging of six convicted men. His book Wah-to-Yah was first published in 1850 and he passed away in 1887.

First Along The River: A Brief History Of The Us Environmental Movement


Benjamin Kline - 1997
    environmental movement that covers the colonial period through 1999. It provides students with a balanced, historical perspective on the history of the environmental movement in relation to major social and political events in U.S. history. The book highlights important people and events, places critical concepts in context, and shows the impact of government, industry, and population on the American landscape. Comprehensive yet brief, First Along the River discusses the religious and philosophical beliefs that shaped Americans' relationship to the environment, traces the origins and development of government regulations that impact Americans' use of natural resources, and shows why popular environmental groups were founded and how they changed over time.

लक्ष्यवेध


रणजित देसाई
    Apart from this, many a times each state of each nation has role models from the past but not forgotten history. Maharashtra has its own idols. The greatest and most loved of them all is shivaji maharaj.