After a few interim owners, he was sold to a wealthy slaveowner who had a home near Memphis and plantation nearby in Mississippi. Hughes lived there as a house servant until near the end of the Civil War, when he escaped to the Union lines and then, in a daring adventure with the paid help of two Union soldiers, returned to the plantation for his wife. The couple made their way to Canada and after the war to Chicago and Detroit, eventually settling in Milwaukee. There Hughes became relatively comfortable as a hotel attendant and as an entrepreneur laundry operator. Self-educated and eloquent, Hughes wrote and privately published this memoir in 1897. It is a compelling account, by turns searing and compassionate about slavery, slaves, and slaveowners. No reader can be unmoved as Hughes tells about his five attempts to escape, about having to stand by helplessly while watching his wife whipped, of the joy of finally meeting again the brother whom he had not seen since they were little children in Virginia. Yet he also writes knowingly about the economics of slavery and the day-to-day business of the plantation, and the glass-house relationships between slaves and masters. Hughes died in Milwaukee in 1913.This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

     Slavery in the United States has left deep, unhealed wounds in American society. It was a dark period in American history that saw the emergence of a number of heroes. One of these was a small woman, about five feet tall, who was a former slave. Her name was Harriet Tubman and she changed the world. After escaping from a life of slavery that left her with permanent scars including a lifelong disability, she dedicated herself to freeing other slaves and working tirelessly for equality for oppressed people. Inside you will read about... ✓ Slavery in a new world: The foundation of a new economy ✓ Araminta “Minty” Ross: Harriet Tubman’s early years ✓ Tubman, the freedom fighter: Her years as a conductor ✓ Civil War in the United States: Tubman’s role in a country divided ✓ Life after freedom: Tubman’s later years ✓ Lessons learned: Tubman’s legacy And much more! Harriet Tubman was an uncommonly brave person who, on several occasions, put her life at risk to re-enter slave territory, and later, to assist the Union army in the American Civil War. She was the first black woman to lead an assault in the war. After the war, she dedicated herself to the cause of women’s suffrage. She used any money she made in any of her endeavors to help those less fortunate than herself, despite the fact that this caused her to live a life of poverty. She is the definition of a true American hero and her legacy includes inspiring millions of oppressed people worldwide to fight for equality. Her memory will live on as an example of a life well-done.

    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.

    In his first-ever work of autobiography, the comedian and New York Times bestselling author tells how a freakish medical condition descended upon him one October afternoon and led him to the brink of death – in a New York hospital “consistently rated one of the ten best in the country.” What happens when “one of the funniest people in America” (CBS News Sunday Morning) comes face to face with his own mortality? An Unexpected Twist is in equal parts harrowing and hilarious – and a moving affirmation of what it means to be alive.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    It also shines a light on topics such as the origins of scalping, the famous Lincoln County War, the grim medical reality of Western gunfights, cowboy jargon, and the first rodeo.

    . . the greatest war of all time told as it is best told - by the people who lived it." - The Washington Post All first-person accounts of great events have their own fascination, but the editors of American Heritage have discovered that people writing about World War II seem to tell their own story with particular passion and eloquence. That is one reason American Heritage has published so many of them - and why noted military historian Stephen W. Sears has selected the most compelling. The result of his search is a uniquely moving and valuable anthology - a series of personal histories that, marshaled together, become an intimate history of the Second World War. Here is Edward Beach, the highly decorated submarine skipper and author of Run Silent, Run Deep, recalling what it was like to be sent into hostile waters with torpedoes that didn't work; Charles Cawthon recounts the landing at Normandy Beach in a restrained and poetic narrative whose quiet humor does nothing to blunt the savagery of the experience; General James Gavin tells of the jump into Sicily and of a battle fought that never should have been fought; Hughes Rudd watched the war from overhead in a flimsy spotter plane, his "Maytag Messerschmitt; and William Manchester remembers a particularly audacious and hilarious scam that a reckless Marine buddy played on the entire army. Some of the stories are heartbreaking, some amusing, some horrifying, but every one of them - whether told by the women who hammered fighter planes together or the men who flew them - glows with hard-won experience.

    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.

    By the eighteenth century, only Great Britain and France remained as rivals for the heart of the continent. Three times, beginning in 1690, warfare arose between New France and New England. Settlements were destroyed, and armies clashed, yet nothing was settled. Each country regarded the Ohio Valley as its own. A small skirmish in 1754 touched off a war that spread to Europe, then to Africa, Asia, and even to islands in the Atlantic and Pacific. The fate of North America hung in the balance. This conflict, the Great War for the Empire, may well be called the first of the world wars. Here, award-winning historian Francis Russell brings to life the vast panorama that formed the background for this struggle in which the English redcoats fought side by side with American colonists against French soldiers and their Indian allies.

    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

    Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Goths, Byzantines, Muslims, Normans, Hohenstaufens, Spaniards, Bourbons, the Savoy Kingdom of Italy and the modern era have all held sway, and left lasting influences on the island’s culture and architecture. And yet no contemporary book tells the story of Sicily in a single volume for the general reader. Tourists, armchair travelers, and historians will all delight in this fluid narrative that can be read straight through, dipped into over time, or used as a reference guide to each period in Sicily’s fascinating tale.It is a general history, an account of welfare and warfare. Emigration of people from Sicily often overshadows the importance of the people who immigrated to the island through the centuries. Immigrants have included several who became Sicily’s rulers, along with Jews, Ligurians, and Albanians. All are ancestors of modern Sicilians. Sicily’s character has also been determined by what passed it by: events that affected Europe generally, namely the Crusades and Columbus’s discovery of the Americas, had remarkably little influence on Italy’s most famous island. Maps, biographical notes, suggestions for further reading, a glossary, pronunciation keys, and much more make this book as essential as it is enjoyable.

    On May Day 1960, Soviet forces downed a CIA spy plane flown deep into Soviet territory by Francis Gary Powers two weeks before a crucial summit. This forced President Dwight Eisenhower to decide whether, in an effort to save the meeting, to admit to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev—and the world—that he had secretly ordered Powers’s flight, or to claim that the CIA could take such a significant step without his approval.   In rich and fascinating detail, Mayday explores the years of U-2 flights, which Eisenhower deemed “an act of war,” the US government’s misconceived attempt to cover up the true purpose of the flight, Khrushchev’s dramatic revelation that Powers was alive and in Soviet custody, and the show trial that sentenced the pilot to prison and hard labor. From a U-2’s cramped cockpit to tense meetings in the Oval Office, the Kremlin, Camp David, CIA headquarters, the Élysée Palace, and Number Ten Downing Street, historian Michael Beschloss draws on previously unavailable CIA documents, diaries, and letters, as well as the recollections of Eisenhower’s aides, to reveal the full high-stakes drama and bring to life its key figures, which also include Richard Nixon, Allen Dulles, and Charles de Gaulle.   An impressive work of scholarship with the dramatic pacing a spy thriller, Mayday “may be one of the best stories yet written about just how those grand men of diplomacy and intrigue conducted our business” (Time).

    Edgings are essential adornments to the most popular knit and crochet pieces blankets, scarves, and afghans. But borders can do so much more; they give handmade goods a delightful finishing touch, serve as focal points, tidy uneven edges, and add handcrafted flair to store-bought apparel. Borders often require turning a corner shaping the edgings around a 90-degree angle without breaking the pattern. This is rarely simple; add too few stitches at a corner and the work rounds inward; too many stitches, and the piece begins to ruffle awkwardly.  Unfortunately, most published edging patterns fail to include specific instructions for turning the corner, leaving crafters to fend for themselves. Edie Eckman comes to the rescue in Around the Corner Crochet Borders, a collection of 150 colorful crochet frames, each with detailed instructions for working around a corner. Instructions are offered both as text and as charts for working in-the-round; back-and-forth charts are also included for when that method is more appropriate. Photographs of finished borders, each turning a 90-degree corner, allow readers to see the details up close. Borders range from the delicate to the flamboyant and are sure to appeal to a new generation of trend-setting crafters. Offering practical solutions to one of needlecrafts most vexing challenges, Around the Corner Crochet Borders is an essential addition to every crocheters reference library. With this book, marvelous crochet borders are just around the corner.