Book picks similar to
Inventing America: The Life of Benjamin Franklin by Mark Essig


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Dream West


David Nevin - 1983
    Telling the amazing true story of America's famed explorer, John Charles Fremont, and his beloved supporter and muse, Jessie Benton, it quickly found its way onto the New York Times bestsellers list and adapted into a CBS mini-series starring Richard Chamberlain. Now available for the first time ever in trade paperback, Nevin's epic of adventure and discovery will once again give readers a chance to witness the passion of an early explorers dreams of the great unknown, and the love and perserverance that saw his dream come to life.

Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music


Phil Ramone - 2007
    Streisand. Dylan. Pavarotti. McCartney. Sting. Madonna. What do these musicians have in common besides their super-stardom? They have all worked with legendary music producer Phil Ramone. For almost five decades, Phil Ramone has been a force in the music industry. He has produced records and collaborated with almost every major talent in the business. There is a craft to making records, and Phil has spent his life mastering it. For the first time ever, he shares the secrets of his trade.Making Records is a fascinating look "behind the glass" of a recording studio. From Phil's exhilarating early days recording jazz and commercial jingles at A&R, to his first studio, and eventual legendary producer status, Phil allows you to sit in on the sessions that created some of the most memorable music of the 20th century -- including Frank Sinatra's Duets album, Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, Ray Charles's Genius Loves Company and Paul Simon's Still Crazy After All These Years. In addition to being a ringside seat for contemporary popular music history, Making Records is an unprecedented tutorial on the magic behind what music producers and engineers do. In these pages, Phil offers a rare peek inside the way music is made . . . illuminating the creative thought processes behind some of the most influential sessions in music history. This is a book about the art that is making records -- the way it began, the way it is now, and everything in between.

History of the Early Settlement and Indian Wars of West Virginia


Wills De Hass - 1851
     This area was dangerous and many who had ventured there alone had never returned. But slowly over the course of this century settlers continued to push further west until regions such as West Virginia were populated with more and more adventurous young men and women. The settlement of these lands did not occur without difficulties and colonizers frequently came into conflict with the local Native American populations. Wills De Hass’s remarkable book History of the Early Settlement and Indian Wars of West Virginia is a fascinating history of how the lands of the west were first settled by white emigrants in the eighteenth century and how these settlers came into frequent strife with the Native American tribes who had previously lived there. Beginning with Columbus’ discovery of this great continent Wills De Hass charts the colonization of this expansive land. He records with brilliant detail the early encounters that Europeans had with the men and women that they found already living across the region and explains how various nations from across the Atlantic made their first tentative footholds on this newly discovered land. De Hass records how settlers were not only conflict with Native Americans but also with each other as this region descended into war, firstly during the French and Indian War and shortly afterwards during the American War of Independence. Particularly fascinating throughout the book are the biographical sketches of various well-known frontiersmen who were particularly influential in the Ohio Valley and northwestern Virginia. This book is perfect for anyone interested in the early settlement of western regions prior to 1795 and how this area was frequently in conflict as settlers attempted to assert their rights against the wishes of the Native American populations. Wills de Hass was a lecturer and writer on archaeological and historical subjects. His book History of the Early Settlement and Indian Wars of Western Virginia was first published in 1851 and De Hass passed away 1910.

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.

The Chinese


Jasper Becker - 1991
    For nearly two decades Becker has lived in China, and reported from areas where most visitors do not reach. Here he is at his most candid, reporting from all over the country: from tiny, crowded homes in the swollen cities of the southeast rim to a vast, secret network of thousands of defense bunkers in the northwest. He exposes Chinese society in all of its layers: from remote, illiterate peasants; to the rising classes of businessmen; to local despots; the twenty grades of Party apparatchicks; to the dominant, comparatively small caste of Party leaders who are often ignorant of the people they rule.Becker lets the Chinese speak for themselves, in voices that are rich and moving. He teaches a great deal about the magnitude--and the false face--of China's vaunted economic boom, and further shows the pervasive institutionalized crime that has risen out of economic poverty. In all, Becker reveals a China very different than our long-held assumptions depict. The Chinese is the hidden story of people of the world's largest nation--a nation so poorly understood and so vital to the future.

The Hole in the Flag: A Romanian Exile's Story of Return & Revolution


Andrei Codrescu - 1991
    A Hole in the Flag is both a chronicle of the changes that have taken place in Romania over the past year, and a personal portrait of a man and his emotional attachment to his mother country--a poetic look at joy and disappointment.

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.

Meade at Gettysburg: A Study in Command


Kent Masterson Brown - 2021
    Meade guided his forces to victory in the Civil War's most pivotal battle. Commentators often dismiss Meade when discussing the great leaders of the Civil War. But in this long-anticipated book, Kent Masterson Brown draws on an expansive archive to reappraise Meade's leadership during the Battle of Gettysburg. Using Meade's published and unpublished papers alongside diaries, letters, and memoirs of fellow officers and enlisted men, Brown highlights how Meade's rapid advance of the army to Gettysburg on July 1, his tactical control and coordination of the army in the desperate fighting on July 2, and his determination to hold his positions on July 3 insured victory.Brown argues that supply deficiencies, brought about by the army's unexpected need to advance to Gettysburg, were crippling. In spite of that, Meade pursued Lee's retreating army rapidly, and his decision not to blindly attack Lee's formidable defenses near Williamsport on July 13 was entirely correct in spite of subsequent harsh criticism. Combining compelling narrative with incisive analysis, this finely rendered work of military history deepens our understanding of the Army of the Potomac as well as the machinations of the Gettysburg Campaign, restoring Meade to his rightful place in the Gettysburg narrative.

Temptations


Otis Williams - 1988
    Through the years, the group's trademark razor-sharp choreography, finely tuned harmonies, and compelling vocals made them the exemplars of the Motown style. This is the frank, revealing story of the legendary supergroup, told by its founder.

A History of France from the Earliest Times to the Treaty of Versailles


William Stearns Davis - 1919
    It is better to study her annals than those of any other one country in Europe, if the reader would get a general view of universal history. France has been a participant in, or interested spectator of, nearly every great war or diplomatic contest for over a thousand years; and a very great proportion of all the religious, intellectual, social, and economic movements which have affected the world either began in France or were speedily caught up and acted upon by Frenchmen soon after they had commenced their working elsewhere.Contents: The Land of the Gauls and the French – The Roman Province and the Frankish Kingdom – From Franks to Frenchmen – The Golden Age of Feudalism: 996-1270 – Life in the Feudal Ages – The Dawn of the Modern Era: 1270-1483. The Hundred Years' War – The Turbulent Sixteenth Century: 1483-1610 – The Great Cardinal and His Successor – Louis XIV, the Sun King–His Work in France – Louis XIV Dominator of Europe – The Wane of the Old Monarchy – France the Homeland of New Ideas – Old France on the Eve of the Revolution – The Fiery Coming of the New Régime: 1789-92 – The Years of Blood and Wrath: 1792-95 – Napoleon Bonaparte, as Master of Europe – The Napoleonic Régime in France. The Consulate and the Empire – "Glory and Madness"–Moscow, Leipzig, and Waterloo – The Restored Bourbons and their Exit – The "Citizen-King" and the Rule of the Bourgeois – Radical Outbreaks and the Reaction to Cæsarism. The Second Republic: 1848-51 – Napoleon the Little: His Prosperity and Decadence – The Crucifixion by Prussia: 1870-71 – The Painful Birth of the Third Republic – The Years of Peace: 1879-1914 – France Herself AgainThis book was originally intended for members of the American army who naturally would desire to know something of the past of the great French nation on whose soil they expected to do battle for Liberty. The happy but abrupt close of the war vitiated this purpose, but the volume was continued and was extended on a somewhat more ambitious scale to assist in making intelligent Americans in general acquainted with the history of a country with which we have established an ever-deepening friendship...

Basin and Range


John McPhee - 1981
    The title refers to the physiographic province of the United States that reaches from eastern Utah to eastern California, a silent world of austere beauty, of hundreds of discrete high mountain ranges that are green with junipers and often white with snow. The terrain becomes the setting for a lyrical evocation of the science of geology, with important digressions into the plate-tectonics revolution and the history of the geologic time scale.

Jamestown


Marshall William Fishwick - 2017
    They would establish a British colony, find gold, and discover a water route to Asia. But what awaited them was far different - fire, hunger, sickness, death, even cannibalism. Here, from the noted historian Marshall W. Fishwick, is the dramatic story of Jamestown and the struggle of its leader, Captain John Smith, who, with the help of Pocahontas, daughter of the Algonquian chief Powhatan, succeeded against all odds.

Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb?: A Tour of Presidential Gravesites


Brian Lamb - 2000
    Brian Lamb has visited the gravesites of every American president, living and dead, in order to put together this book, with assistance from the staff of C-SPAN. Heavily illustrated and with contributions from historians Richard Norton Smith and Douglas Brinkley, Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb? is about the presidents' lives as much as it is about their final resting places. The book's collection of the presidents' last words, from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "I have a terrific headache" to John Adams's "Thomas Jefferson still survives" offers a poignant and sometimes humorous look at the last moments of the great men. This is a great way to encounter the presidents, from the great ones to the near-forgottens. Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb? belongs in the glove box of every traveler and the bedside table of every fan of the American presidency and American history.

Surf City: The Jan and Dean Story


Dean Torrence - 2016
    As a memoir The Jan and Dean Story has elements of humor, tragedy and redemption. It tells their story from the early high school friendship struck up between Jan Berry and Dean Torrence and their ascent to the dizzying heights of stardom riding the crest of the “surf” craze. The Jan and Dean Story is as much about the culture of the 1960s as it is about music. Dean has lived an incredible life and continues to promote a lifestyle and surf culture that is now universally admired and followed throughout the world.The story also recounts Jan’s tragic car accident and his ability to recover enough to continue to perform will be inspiring to many readers even those not familiar with surf music. For pop culture addicts and music buffs alike this book is indispensable. As early teen icons, Jan and Dean left an indelible mark on the music of the 60’s and the American psyche.Dean Torrence is still touring and creating music and often appears with the Beach Boys and other groups from the heyday of surf music.

Island of Hope, Island of Tears: The Story of Those Who Entered the New World through Ellis Island-In Their Own Words


David M. Brownstone - 1979
    Here are the stories of those extraordinary immigrants, largely in their own poignant words. Coming primarily from Southern and Eastern Europe, and from widely diverse backgrounds, the émigrés represented in this remarkable volume recount their adventures with dignity, wit, and unflagging honesty. Among the dozens of unforgettable narrators you'll meet are a Greek boy who, forced into the Turkish Army, escaped to the U.S. with the help of the Russian Orthodox Church; a young Polish girl who made the harrowing journey only to have to flee a "white slaver"; and a Czech woman who fooled doctors into letting her travel despite being eight months pregnant.