Word soon got out about the fun-house mummy, about whom so little was known that the autopsy took on the character of an archaeological dig. The body looked like something pulled out of a peat bog, or an ice cave high in the Andes. The brain was mummified and like a rock, as were all the other organs....Late in the autopsy came the biggest surprise of all. Removing the jaw, the coroner pulled from the back of the mouth a single green corroded copper penny, dated 1924, and several ticket stubs, one that read "Louis Sonney's Museum of Crime, 524 South Main Street, Los Angeles." After all the careful speculation and surmise, after the body had been completely dismantled, the biggest clue to its identity came straight from the corpse's mouth.Praise for Mark Svenvold: "Mark Svenvold writes with the top down, and his sleek late-model imagination in fifth gear. Honk if you love first books that can cruise or race with full-throated elegance. Here's one!" --J. D. McClatchy

    From the Army's birth at the battle of Edgehill in 1642 to our current conflict in Afghanistan, this is history at its most relevant -- and most dramatic.

    Based on diaries, letters, memoirs, official reports, the works of modern social historians and the literature of every period, The English traces the development of English society over nine hundred years.The chapters range far and wide over life in castles, palaces and monasteries, in the homes of rich merchants and in the hovels of peasants, describing the work and play of the inhabitants, their clothes and food and possessions, their servants and animals, their pleasures and suffering, their beliefs and attitudes, their schools, fairs, shops and markets, hospitals and prisons, theatres and churches, farms and factories, taverns and brothels. Every aspect of medieval and modern life is covered in detail. We learn about medieval meals and games, poachers and priests, tournaments and pageants; fifteenth-century universities; sixteenth-century plagues and seventeenth-century libraries, music rooms, nurseries, and witch-hunts; eighteenth-century parsons, coachmen and doctors; nineteenth-century noblemen, factory girls and cricketers; twentieth-century maidservants, landladies and motorists.

    The post office, Winifred Gallagher argues, has been not just a witness to but a foundational influence on much of the history of the United States of America, particularly for women and African-Americans, who participated in the nation's formation via the post office in pivotal ways. How the Post Office Created America tells this story, tracing the role of a unique institution and its leaders, such as Benjamin Franklin, the Crown's first postmaster general--a position that for a great deal of America's history belonged to the cabinet, and as such was politically important and influential. Taking in all the major events in American history, from the Declaration of Independence to the Civil War to the advent of the Internet, Gallagher tells a vitally important story.  This fascinating and original work of history brings to life a uniquely American institution, one without which our democracy as we know it would not have been possible. Gallagher casts her eyes forward, arguing compellingly that now more than ever before, as we arrive at a fork in the road with the advent of the Internet, we need to ensure that the future of the postal service is not squandered.

     Forty years later, in 1908, Page wrote this memoir to dispel the slanders told about Wirz. Page explains how the prison Wirz was in charge of was designed to hold, at most, 10,000 prisoners. The population quickly swelled to 30,000 prisoners, overwhelming the South's ability to feed, clothe and house the Andersonville prisoners. Over 13,000 POWs died out of 45,000 prisoners due to disease and diet, and Page claims that Wirz was made a scapegoat to appease the wrath of the families of those who had died. ‘a good read and very different than what is force fed us’ - Civil War Talk James Madison Page was born on July 22, 1839 in Crawfordville, Pennsylvania. He served in the Union army as 2d Lieutenant of Company A, Sixth Michigan Cavalry. After participating in many skirmishes and battles, including Gettysburg, Page was captured on September 21, 1863 along the Rapidan in Virginia and spent the next thirteen months in Southern military prisons, seven of which were at Camp Sumter near Andersonville, Georgia. After the war, Page was supoenaed for the war crimes trial of Major Henry Wirz, the former commandant of the prison, but after being interviewed, the prosecution decided not to call him as a witness because his testimony undermined the predetermined guilt of the accused. Having been present at the prison in the summer of 1864, when the atrocities were said to have occurred, Page denied that any of the four murders charged to Wirz had happened, which denial was supported by the fact that the alleged deceased were never named. After being dissuaded by his sister from joining the ill-fated Indian foray in the West under the command of General George Custer, Page instead moved to the Montana Territory in 1866, where he worked as a Government surveyor. The town of Pageville in Madison County was named in his honor. Page spent his final years in Long Beach, California, where he died in 1924. The True Story of Andersonville Prison was first published in 1908.

    “Pages of dreary emptiness,” sniffed a leading American conductor. Yet today, almost one hundred years later, Mahler has displaced Beethoven as a box-office draw and exerts a unique influence on both popular music and film scores. Mahler’s coming-of-age began with such 1960s phenomena as Leonard Bernstein’s boxed set of his symphonies and Luchino Visconti’s film Death in Venice, which used Mahler’s music in its sound track. But that was just the first in a series of waves that established Mahler not just as a great composer but also as an oracle with a personal message for every listener. There are now almost two thousand recordings of his music, which has become an irresistible launchpad for young maestros such as Gustavo Dudamel. Why Mahler? Why does his music affect us in the way it does?  Norman Lebrecht, one of the world’s most widely read cultural commentators, has been wrestling obsessively with Mahler for half his life. Pacing out his every footstep from birthplace to grave, scrutinizing his manuscripts, talking to those who knew him, Lebrecht constructs a compelling new portrait of Mahler as a man who lived determinedly outside his own times. Mahler was—along with Picasso, Einstein, Freud, Kafka, and Joyce—a maker of our modern world. “Mahler dealt with issues I could recognize,” writes Lebrecht, “with racism, workplace  chaos, social conflict, relationship breakdown, alienation, depression, and the limitations of medical knowledge.” Why Mahler? is a book that shows how music can change our lives.

    But from the very beginning, many accounts have obscured a fascinating truth: the Massacre arose from conflicts that were as personal as they were political.     Professor Serena Zabin draws on original sources and lively stories to follow British troops as they are dispatched from Ireland to Boston in 1768 to subdue the increasingly rebellious colonists. And she reveals a forgotten world hidden in plain sight: the many regimental wives and children who accompanied these armies. We see these families jostling with Bostonians for living space, finding common cause in the search for a lost child, trading barbs and and sharing baptisms. Becoming, in other words, neighbors. When soldiers shot unarmed citizens in the street, it was these intensely human, now broken bonds that fueled what quickly became a bitterly fought American Revolution.    Serena Zabin’s The Boston Massacre delivers an indelible new slant on iconic American Revolutionary history.

    Stated First Edition, number line counts to 1. The riveting story of Washington, D.C. and the men who built it. Fine/Fine.

    From activist wives Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary Clinton to reluctant occupants Bess Truman and Jacqueline Kennedy, to those such as Mary Todd Lincoln, Dolley Madison, and madcap debutante Alice Roosevelt, who embraced their new address and status, here is an unforgettable human portrait of our First Families and how they coped, stumbled, or thrived in the national spotlight.

    Emily Eden, Charlotte Canning, Edith Lytton and Mary Curzon were well-born, cultivated women who experienced the extremes of decadence in a country gripped by poverty. Emily Eden imagined an India of dazzling splendor but found a land of dark secrets. Charlotte Canning painted delicate watercolors while the carnage of the Great Mutiny raged. Edith Lytton feared the moral laxity and adultery of India but indulged her husband rather than restraining him. Mary Curzon, an insecure American heiress in thrall to her husband unwittingly was almost crushed by him.Marian Fowler, “both scholarly and tart,” recounts their adventures in this classic work of colonial and women’s history.

    Read on your PC, Mac, smart phone, tablet or Kindle device. When male serial killers are on the loose they tend to make headlines, for example Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer. Men like these are infamous for the terror that they inflicted in the general population. Many of these men are diagnosed as psychopaths. The reasons for them going down the paths that they chose are analysed and studied and read about. There was a time however that all such crimes were always automatically linked to a man. A general perception was quite common; that there is no such thing as women serial killers and psychopaths. In fact, women killers can sometimes be more lethal, and the murders that they have committed can be just as cold and calculated as a man's. When women and men turn to murder and crime, they leave a wake of disappearances and blood in their path, a path that may be discovered after years have passed. Now, be it male or female, analysts have sat them down and assessed their mental progress. Things have changed over the decades. Their crimes are weighed in the same scales as their male counterparts, and now they can't hide themselves by claiming to be absolutely innocent. Here Is A Preview Of What You'll Learn... Women Who Kill – Delphine La Laurie and Her House of Horrors Women Who Kill – Elizabeth Bathory – The Blood Countess Women Who Kill – Nannie Doss – Nancy Hazel – The Husband Killer Women Who Kill – Nannie Doss – The Second Husband Women Who Kill – Nannie Doss – The Third Victim Women Who Kill – Nannie Doss – Four Husbands in a Row Women Who Kill – Nannie Doss – Last Man Standing Much, much more! Download your copy today! Take action today and download this book for a limited time discount of only $2.99! If you're intrigued by the women killers of our time then download this book now! Tags: women who kill, women killers, killer women, true crime, true murder stories, murder mysteries, cold cases true crime, murders solved, killer families, unsolved murders, crimes, true crime stories,

    Each story features a short synopsis of the crime and the journey through the justice system that brought them to the execution chamber.

    If you wish to learn to pray effectively, you can have no better example than the life of John Hyde."One of the results of reading this book will be the enlistment of many and better intercessors." -- J. Pengwern Jones"We take our stand near the prayer closet of John Hyde, and are permitted to hear the sighing and the groaning, and to see the tears coursing down his face, to see his frame weakened by foodless days and sleepless nights, shaken with sobs as he pleads, 'O God, give me souls or I die!'" --Francis A. McGaw

    Cole tells his story with care, sympathy, and where necessary, sternness. This book is a great, and sometimes harrowing read." —Richard Brookhiser, senior editor at National Review and author of Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington Who was "Light-Horse Harry" Lee?  Gallant Revolutionary War hero. Quintessential Virginia cavalryman. George Washington’s trusted subordinate and immortal eulogist. Robert E. Lee’s beloved father. Founding father who shepherded the Constitution through the Virginia Ratifying Convention. But Light-Horse Harry Lee was also a con man. A beachcomber. Imprisoned for debt. Caught up in sordid squabbles over squalid land deals. Maimed for life by an angry political mob. Light-Horse Harry Lee’s life was tragic, glorious, and dramatic, but perhaps because of its sad, ignominious conclusion historians have rarely given him his due—until now. Now historian Ryan Cole presents this soldier and statesman of the founding generation with all the vim and vigor that typified Lee himself. Scouring hundreds of contemporary documents and reading his way into Lee’s life, political philosophy, and character, Cole gives us the most intimate picture to date of this greatly awed but hugely talented man whose influence has reverberated from the founding of the United States to the present day.

    In Unfamiliar Fishes, Sarah Vowell argues that 1898 might be a year just as defining, when, in an orgy of imperialism, the United States annexed Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and invaded first Cuba, then the Philippines, becoming an international superpower practically overnight.Among the developments in these outposts of 1898, Vowell considers the Americanization of Hawaii the most intriguing. From the arrival of New England missionaries in 1820, their goal to Christianize the local heathen, to the coup d'état of the missionaries' sons in 1893, which overthrew the Hawaiian queen, the events leading up to American annexation feature a cast of beguiling, and often appealing or tragic, characters: whalers who fired cannons at the Bible-thumpers denying them their God-given right to whores, an incestuous princess pulled between her new god and her brother-husband, sugar barons, lepers, con men, Theodore Roosevelt, and the last Hawaiian queen, a songwriter whose sentimental ode "Aloha 'Oe" serenaded the first Hawaiian president of the United States during his 2009 inaugural parade.With her trademark smart-alecky insights and reporting, Vowell lights out to discover the off, emblematic, and exceptional history of the fiftieth state, and in so doing finds America, warts and all.