The Wright Brothers is an historical narrative that draws on extensive archival materials, personal journals, and public records to tell the story of the Wright brothers as men of incredible character and determination along the road towards their significant contributions to aviation history. The summary parallels the structure of the book which is divided into three parts. The first part explores the period of the boys’ childhood through their work on flight testing various models of gliders. The second part picks up with the addition of the engine to the Wright planes and traces the brother’s work through the early stages of powered flight, roughly 1903 to 1908. Part three follows the brothers, now globally famous, through the years when they captured the most attention for their accomplishments. A central aspect of this historical account is the development of Orville and Wilbur Wright as individuals who showed fierce determination in the face of relentless setbacks. It also sheds light on their private nature and their deep bond as brothers. McCullough is a two time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for other historical works, Truman and John Adams. He also won the National Book Award twice and is a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His educational background includes a degree in English Literature from Yale University. He is also a well-known narrator, as well as previous host of American Experience. Read more....

    Until now. A Game for Hooligans brings the game's colourful story up to date to include the 2007 World Cup. It covers all of the great matches, teams and players but also explores the social, political and economic changes that have affected the course of rugby's development. It is an international history, covering not only Britain and France but also the great rugby powers of the southern hemisphere and other successful rugby nations, including Argentina, Fiji and Japan. Contained within are the answers to many intriguing questions concerning the game, such as why 1895 is the most important date in both rugby-union and rugby-league history and how New Zealand became so good and have remained so good for so long. There is also a wealth of anecdotes, including allegations of devil-worship at a Welsh rugby club and an account of the game's contribution to the Cuban Revolution. This is a must-read for any fan of the oval ball.

    Tucker covers Stalin’s life from his first revolutionary years until the end of the 1920s. This important period of his life is the key to understanding how a dictator is formed and how his cruel totalitarian regime was born. With an in-depth analysis of Stalin’s personality and beliefs – set against a historical examination of Soviet society – this captivating book helps us to understand how and why Stalinism occurred. Examining the events that led up to one of the 20th century’s most devastating spectacles, Stalin as Revolutionary is an intelligent and informative take on this terrifying political figure. Praise for Stalin as Revolutionary “Tucker has achieved a real breakthrough… his analysis throws a flood of light into previously obscure corners… Tucker with his analysis of Stalin’s personality structure has opened up an enormously promising vein of research.” Robert M. Slusser, American Historical Review “This towering figure of the twentieth century has hitherto lacked a successful and full-scale biography… Robert Tucker marks the beginning of the end of this situation.” Robert H. McNeal, Russian Review “An absorbing narrative and interpretation of Stalin’s early years and his development as a Bolshevik leader up to 1929 when he arrived at the summit of power… A superb work comparable to Isaac Deutscher’s multi-volume history of Trotsky.” George Charney, Library Journal “Years of research and reflection have made this biography of Stalin’s early years a real historical and literary achievement.” Foreign Affairs “[The book] looks like it’s transforming the field of Stalin studies... Tucker best brings the political and economic issues back to life, and the contenders with them.” Michael Ratcliffe, The Times “I am not enamoured of most ‘psychoanalytic history.’ Yet Tucker’s thesis is convincing, because he understands the Bolshevik story, knows that Stalin’s seizure of power was due to more than his machine politics and Machiavellian cunning, important though they were to him.” - Dillon O’Leary, The Ottawa Journal “Having read Robert Tucker’s book, we now understand better, in my view, the causes of the events that we had to live through in the years of Stalinism.” - Mikhail Koriakov, Novoye Russkoye Slovo “In this book, an utterly extraordinary one in my opinion, the riddle of Stalin is at last resolved.” - Dimitry Bezrukikh, Russkaya Mysl Robert C. Tucker (1918 - 2010) was a distinguished Sovietologist at Princeton University whose Stalin biographies commanded wide attention. He was called ‘one of the greatest students of Stalin and Stalinism’ by diplomat and Russian scholar, George F. Kennan. His books are used in college classrooms across the world today.

    Wretched conditions, abusive white supervisors, poor education, and low wages locked most black workers into poverty. Then two sanitation workers were chewed up like garbage in the back of a faulty truck, igniting a public employee strike that brought to a boil long-simmering issues of racial injustice.With novelistic drama and rich scholarly detail, Michael Honey brings to life the magnetic characters who clashed on the Memphis battlefield: stalwart black workers; fiery black ministers; volatile, young, black-power advocates; idealistic organizers and tough-talking unionists; the first black members of the Memphis city council; the white upper crust who sought to prevent change or conflagration; and, finally, the magisterial Martin Luther King Jr., undertaking a Poor People's Campaign at the crossroads of his life, vilified as a subversive, hounded by the FBI, and seeing in the working poor of Memphis his hopes for a better America.

    Left Communism is the theory and practice of worker control and self-organization whose adherents provided the main opposition to the Bolsheviks. Rarely printed, often cited, Pannekoek’s Workers’ Councils is the Das Kapital of Left Communism. This updated edition includes a substantial introduction from Noam Chomsky, illuminating the continuing relevance of this classic text."An urgent message to the future— are we listening?—from the most brilliant theoretician of libertarian com-munism."—Mike Davis, author of City of QuartzAnton Pannekoek was a Dutch worker, Socialist, and astronomer. He wrote Workers’ Councils amidst Nazi occupation of Holland.

    Tragically, liberal historians and educators have virtually erased traditional American heroes from history. According to the Left, the Founding Fathers were not noble architects of America, but selfish demagogues. And self–made entrepreneurs like Rockefeller were robber–barons and corporate polluters. Instead of honoring great men from America’s past, kids today now idolize rock stars, pro athletes and Hollywood celebrities.In his new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide™ to Real American Heroes, author Brion McClanahan rescues the legendary deeds of the greatest Americans and shows why we ought to venerate heroes like Captain John Smith, adventurer Daniel Boone, General Robert E. Lee and many more. The Politically Incorrect Guide™ to Real American Heroes not only resuscitates America’s forgotten heroes, but sheds light on the Left’s most cherished figures, including Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Kennedys.With biting wit and devastating detail, McClanahan strikes back against the multicultural narrative peddled by liberal historians who make heroes out of pop culture icons and corrupt politicians. In America’s hour of peril, McClanahan’s book is a timely and entertaining call to remember the heritage of this great nation and the heroes who built it.

     From the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, the first real factories in America, to the triumph of unions in the twentieth century and their waning influence today, the con­test between labor and capital for their share of American bounty has shaped our national experience. Philip Dray’s ambition is to show us the vital accomplishments of organized labor in that time and illuminate its central role in our social, political, economic, and cultural evolution. There Is Power in a Union is an epic, character-driven narrative that locates this struggle for security and dignity in all its various settings: on picket lines and in union halls, jails, assembly lines, corporate boardrooms, the courts, the halls of Congress, and the White House. The author demonstrates, viscerally and dramatically, the urgency of the fight for fairness and economic democracy—a struggle that remains especially urgent today, when ordinary Americans are so anxious and beset by eco­nomic woes.

    "As he has recorded the events of history, man has often forgotten to mention the hand that rocked the cradle." These remarkable Mormon women gave their all for the gospel of Christ. With drama and emotion stronger than that found in any work of fiction, the inspirational stories in Heroic Mormon Women will bring to light the incredible strength, virtue, and faith of the heroic women of the restoration. Some women included in this book are: Rachel Ivins Grant Jane Grover Jane Elizabeth Manning James Sarah Melissa Granger Kimball Heroic Marys Elizabeth Claridge McCune Sarah Pea Rich Aurelia Spencer Rogers Amanda Barnes Smith Eliza Roxey Snow Amanda Barnes Smith Lucy Mack Smith Emma Hale Smith

     You, as a free, beautiful, independent human being with inalienable rights, own yourself! You can do what you want with your own body and the product of your labor. All human interactions should be free of force and coercion, and we are free to exercise our rights, limited only by respect for the rights of others. Governments rely on force, and force is a poor substitute for persuasion. When you learned "don't hit," "don't steal," and “don’t kill,” it wasn't, "unless you work for the government." Governments frighten us into thinking we need them, but we are moving past the statist paradigm and rendering them obsolete. This book will empower YOU to be more happy, free, and prosperous, while putting you in a position to help shape our destiny.

    Since the term itself—anarchism—is a negation, there is a great deal of disagreement on what the positive alternative would look like. The black flag comes in many colors.The Anarchist Handbook is an opportunity for all these many varied voices to speak for themselves, from across the decades. These were human beings who saw things differently from their fellow men. They fought and they loved. They lived and they died. They disagreed on much, but they all shared one vision: Freedom.

    presidents on an all-time ranking: Certain presidents were “Great,” others were “Near-Great,” and so on down to “Failures” and “Unmitigated Disasters.” (OK, we made that last category up.) But as Alvin Felzenberg points out, there are many flaws with these rating systems. Despite reams of new historical information, the rankings never seem to change very much. They all favor a certain kind of president-those who tended to increase executive power. That aside, the idea of rating presidential performance on a simple linear scale is absurd. The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn’t) breaks presidential performance into easily understandable categories-character, vision, competence, foreign policy, economic policy, human rights, and legacy-and assesses, for each category, the best and worst. The result is a surprisingly fresh look at how the various presidents stack up against each other, with some of the “greats” coming off far worse than their supposedly mediocre colleagues.

    David Montgomery, Farnam Professor of History at Yale University since 1979, is the author of Worker's Control in America (CUP, 1979) and is co-editor of the journal International Labor and Working Class History.

    There was blood in the air that year,†a witness later recalled, there truly was. In New York, the year had opened with bright expectations, but 1914 quickly tumbled into disillusionment and violence. For John Purroy Mitchel, the city's new boy mayor, the trouble started in January, when a crushing winter caused homeless shelters to overflow. By April, anarchist throngs paraded past industrialists mansions, and tens of thousands filled Union Square demanding Bread or Revolution. Then, on July 4, 1914, a detonation destroyed a seven-story Harlem tenement. It was the largest explosion the city had ever known. Among the dead were three bomb makers; incited by anarchist Alexander Berkman, they had been preparing to dynamite the estate of John D. Rockefeller Jr., son of a plutocratic dynasty and widely vilified for a massacre of his company's striking workers in Colorado earlier that spring. More Powerful Than Dynamite charts how anarchist anger, progressive idealism, and plutocratic paternalism converged in that July explosion. Its cast ranges from celebrated figures such as Emma Goldman, Upton Sinclair, and Andrew Carnegie to the fascinating and heretofore little known: Frank Tannenbaum, a homeless teenager who dared to lead his followers into the city's churches; police inspector Max Schmittberger, too honest for his department and too crooked for everyone else; and Becky Edelsohn, a young anarchist known for her red tights and for spitting in millionaires faces. Historian and journalist Thai Jones creates a fascinating portrait of a city on the edge of chaos coming to terms with modernity.

    A classic study of an influential American religion....Provides both the specialist in religion and the general reader with a thoughtful history of this complex religion.