But it's only recently that scientists have pieced together the elusive, compelling saga of that epic migration. And the more we learn about them, the more we must marvel at the courage, adaptability, enterprise, and enduring resilience of the First Americans. Most of us know little about the early Americans and the wonders they achieved. Some of them learned to hunt forty-ton whales from dugout canoes; others built a vast system of canals that irrigated crops on tens of thousands of acres. Fully a thousand years before the pyramids at Giza went up, people on the Mississippi River were constructing even larger pyramidal earthworks, and later, a thousand miles to the north, others built a city that would remain the largest in North America until after the Revolutionary War. In the cradle of civilization that evolved in Central America, the Olmecs, Mayans, and Aztecs built complex cultures and dazzling cities whose monumental structures and works of art still have the power to awe and inspire. This book describes the peopling of North and Central America and examine their amazing societies - the farmers and cliff-dwellers of the Southwest United States, the mound-builders of the Midwest, the Northwest Coast whale-hunters with their potlatches and totem poles, and the mighty, gods-driven cultures of Mesoamerica. It is a saga as breathtaking as it is surprising.

    Now, James McGrath Morris skillfully illuminates this ambitious, influential, and groundbreaking woman's life, from her childhood growing up in South Chicago to her career as a journalist and network news commentator, reporting on some of the most crucial events in modern American history. Morris draws on a rich and untapped collection of Payne’s personal papers documenting her private and professional affairs. He combed through oral histories, FBI documents, and newspapers to fully capture Payne’s life, her achievements, and her legacy. He introduces us to a journalist who covered such events as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Little Rock school desegregation crisis, the service of black troops in Vietnam, and Henry Kissinger’s 26,000-mile tour of Africa. A self-proclaimed “instrument of change” for her people, Payne broke new ground as the Washington correspondent for the Chicago Defender. She publicly prodded President Dwight D. Eisenhower to support desegregation, and her reporting on legislative and judicial civil rights battles enlightened and activated black readers across the nation. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson recognized Payne’s seminal role by presenting her with a pen used in signing the Civil Rights Act. In 1972, she became the first female African American radio and television commentator on a national network, working for CBS. Her story mirrors the evolution of our own modern society.Inspiring and instructive, moving and comprehensive, Eye on the Struggle illuminates this extraordinary woman and her achievements, and reminds us of the power one person has to transform our lives and our world.

    Joseph Warren, an architect of the colonial rebellion, and a man who might have led the country as Washington or Jefferson did had he not been martyred at Bunker Hill in 1775. Warren was involved in almost every major insurrectionary act in the Boston area for a decade, from the Stamp Act protests to the Boston Massacre to the Boston Tea Party, and his incendiary writings included the famous Suffolk Resolves, which helped unite the colonies against Britain and inspired the Declaration of Independence. Yet after his death, his life and legend faded, leaving his contemporaries to rise to fame in his place and obscuring his essential role in bringing America to independence.Christian Di Spigna's definitive new biography of Warren is a loving work of historical excavation, the product of two decades of research and scores of newly unearthed primary-source documents that have given us this forgotten Founding Father anew. Following Warren from his farming childhood and years at Harvard through his professional success and political radicalization to his role in sparking the rebellion, Di Spigna's thoughtful, judicious retelling not only restores Warren to his rightful place in the pantheon of Revolutionary greats, it deepens our understanding of the nation's dramatic beginnings.

    . . gracefully written" - The New York Times Award-winning historian Lionel Casson paints a vivid portrait of the people of ancient Egypt - from peasants and pharaohs to soldiers and scribes and artists and priests - and what life was like beyond the splendors and treasures that remain with us today.

    An immediate European bestseller, optioned by Indian/German producers who commissioned a six-hour mini-series, then Canadian producers with BBC.Based on real people (ca. 1620), THE MOGHUL begins in a rip-roaring sea battle north of Bombay in which the vastly out-gunned adventurer, Brian Hawksworth, ship's captain and emissary of King James, blows away a flotilla of Portuguese galleons to gain access to an Indian port. He's come to open trade for “barbaric” England and squeeze out the Portuguese, who try to kill him at every turn. But once on land, he’s captive: the beauty and romance of the exquisite Moghul Empire seduce him from his material goals to a new quest – of supreme sensuality in music, visions, and sacred lovemaking. India, ruled by the son of great Akbar, is about to pass to one of his sons. Hawksworth must choose sides, but will he choose right? The future of England, and of India, depend on it. Assailed by intrigue and assassination, tormented by a forbidden love, enthralled by a mystic poet, Hawksworth engages war elephants, tiger hunts, the harem of the Red Fort of Agra, the Rajput warriors at Udaipur, becomes intimate champion to Shah Jahan, (builder of the Taj Mahal), and, in his supreme test, plays the sitar with a touch that elicits from the great Shah – “Finally, my English friend – you understand.”

    Acclaimed historians Robert M. Utley and Wilcomb E. Washburn examine both small battles and major wars - from the Native rebellion of 1492 to Crazy Horse and the Sioux War to the massacre at Wounded Knee.

    But that didn’t stop him.Ben Mattlin lives a normal, independent life. Why is that interesting? Because Mattlin was born with spinal muscular atrophy, a congenital weakness from which he was expected to die in childhood. Not only did Mattlin live through childhood, he became one of the first students in a wheelchair to attend Harvard, from which he graduated and became a professional writer. His advantage? Mattlin’s life happened to parallel the growth of the disability rights movement, so that in many ways he did not feel that he was disadvantaged at all, merely different. Miracle Boy Grows Up is a witty, unsentimental memoir that you won’t forget, told with engrossing intelligence and a unique perspective on living with a disability in the United States.

    The financial and economic crisis has touched the lives of millions of Americans who have lost their jobs and their homes, but many have little understanding of how it happened. Now, in this very accessible report, readers can get the facts. Formed in May 2009, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) is a panel of 10 commissioners with experience in business, regulations, economics, and housing, chosen by Congress to explain what happened and why it happened. This panel has had subpoena power that enabled them to interview people and examine documents that no reporter had access to. The FCIC has reviewed millions of pages of documents, and interviewed more than 600 leaders, experts, and participants in the financial markets and government regulatory agencies, as well as individuals and businesses affected by the crisis. In the tradition of The 9/11 Commission Report, "The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report" will be a comprehensive book for the lay reader, complete with a glossary, charts, and easy-to-read diagrams, and a timeline that includes important events. It will be read by policy makers, corporate executives, regulators, government agencies, and the American people.

    As one of the disaster's survivors, she took it upon herself to write an account of what happened in the event's aftermath. Women of the Titanic Disaster details Sylvia Caldwell's journey immediately following the sinking of the Titanic, and it gives us a fresh perspective on this historic event. With a foreword by Julie Hedgepeth Williams, author of A Rare Titanic Family: The Caldwells' Story of Survival, a biography of Sylvia Caldwell and her family.

    Wills's masterful history ushers us into the worlds of 1688, from the suicidal exaltation of Russian Old Believers to the ravishing voice of the haiku poet Basho. Witness the splendor of the Chinese imperial court as the Kangxi emperor publicly mourns the death of his grandmother and shrewdly consolidates his power. Join the great caravans of Muslims on their annual pilgrimage from Damascus and Cairo to Mecca. Walk the pungent streets of Amsterdam and enter the Rasp House, where vagrants, beggars, and petty criminals labored to produce powdered brazilwood for the dyeworks. Through these stories and many others, Wills paints a detailed picture of how the global connections of power, money, and belief were beginning to lend the world its modern form. "A vivid picture of life in 1688...filled with terrifying violence, frightening diseases...comfortingly familiar human kindnesses...and the intellectual achievements of Leibniz, Locke, and Newton."—Publishers Weekly

    And then she laughs.” In this volume, which collects and amplifies two-and-a-half years’ worth of blog entries, he combs through the first three novels in Austen’s canon — Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Mansfield Park — with the aim of charting her growth as both a novelist and a humorist, and of shattering the notion that she’s a romantic of any kind (“Weddings bore her, and the unrelenting vulgarity of our modern wedding industry — which strives to turn each marriage ceremony into the kind of blockbuster apotheosis that makes grand opera look like a campfire sing along — would appall her into derisive laughter”).“Hilarious…Rodi’s title is a tribute. He’s angry that the Austen craze has defanged a novelist who’s ‘wicked, arch, and utterly merciless. She skewers the pompous, the pious, and the libidinous with the animal glee of a natural-born sadist’…Like Rodi, I believe Austen deserves to join the grand pantheon of gadflies: Voltaire and Swift, Twain and Mencken.” Lev Raphael, The Huffington Post

    The revolutionary movement faced many problems from the beginning, including splintered leadership, disorganized support, opposition from moderate supporters of home rule, and prepared retaliation from the British. Inside you will read about... ✓ Background of the Easter Rebellion ✓ Planning the Easter Rising ✓ The Easter Rising Begins ✓ The Easter Rising, Days Two and Three ✓ The Easter Rising, Days Four and Five, and the Easter Rising Across Ireland ✓ The Easter Rising Comes to an End on Saturday ✓ Aftermath of the Easter Rising Even though the rebels did not achieve their ultimate goal of Irish independence, they were successful, because they rallied many more of their countrymen to the cause of independence. The legacy of their bravery and love of country inspired generations of Irish men and women, and helped lead to independence. This is the story of what led to the uprising, the events of the rising, and its impact.

    He was of Timurid descent; the son of Humayun, and the grandson of Babur who founded the dynasty. At the end of his reign in 1605 the Mughal empire covered most of Northern India. George Bruce Malleson (1825-1898) was an English officer in India and an author, born in Wimbledon. Educated at Winchester, he obtained a cadetship in the Bengal infantry in 1842, and served through the second Burmese War. His subsequent appointments were in the civil line, the last being that of guardian to the young maharaja of Mysore. He retired with the rank of colonel in 1877, having been created C. S.I. in 1872. He was a voluminous writer, his first work to attract attention being the famous Red Pamphlet, published at Calcutta in 1857, when the Mutiny was at its height. He continued, and considerably rewrote the History of the Indian Mutiny (6 vols., 1878-1880), which was begun but left unfinished by Sir John Kaye. Among his other books the most valuable are History of the French in India (2nd ed., 1893) and The Decisive Battles of India (3rd ed., 1888).

    Eight were first-generation immigrants. It was in recognition of the mixed European background of so many Americans that John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson proposed that the seal of the United States bear the national emblems of France, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Scotland, and England, thus "pointing out the countries from which these States have been peopled." Many came, as Thomas Paine stated, in search of asylum. But they also came with an intent to preserve and refresh aspects of life in their homelands. In 1776, Europe boasted a rich civilization, alive with dynamic ideas, flourishing arts, and promising concepts in science. The foundations of industry and business were established, and social reforms were being undertaken, which Europeans took with them as they colonized and traded. They had come in contact with Eastern civilizations, above all, China. Here, from award-winning historian Marshall B. Davidson, is the story of the world of 1776.

    At the time, author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist C.L. Sulzberger received widespread praise for his authoritative account of the six-year war that involved more than fifty-six nations, resulted in the death of some 22 million people, and shaped the course of history. His work became a standard reference on the war. Stephen E. Ambrose, one of the most highly regarded historians of our time, oversaw a major revision of this classic work. Seamlessly incorporating new material and insights, Ambrose produced a comprehensive and riveting account of the war’s key characters and events. In planes and foxholes, in deserts and jungles, on ships and beaches, Ambrose shines a light on the people involved - the leaders, the fighters, the victims. He also added new chapters on the atrocities of the Holocaust and revelations about the secret war of espionage. Ambrose’s analysis also offers insight into the events that precipitated the Cold War. This book captures the courage, commitment, military genius, and horror of the war that gave birth to a new era in world politics. For students, history buffs, and fascinated readers, The American Heritage History of World War II is the definitive single-volume work on the subject and will endure as a major narrative of world history.