Book picks similar to
The Voice of the City: Vaudeville and Popular Culture in New York by Robert W. Snyder
history
historical
drama
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The Making of Henry VIII (Uncovering the Tudors)
Marie Louise Bruce - 2021
To what extent did King Henry VIII’s upbringing shape him into the tyrannical figure we know today? This concise, well-researched analysis sheds light on a little-known period of the infamous monarch’s life.
TWA 800: The Crash, the Cover-Up, and the Conspiracy
Jack Cashill - 2016
Although initial reports suggested a terrorist attack, FBI and NTSB investigators blamed a fuel tank explosion. But skeptics have long questioned the official story, and new evidence has surfaced that suggests a widespread conspiracy... In TWA 800, historian Jack Cashill introduces new documents and testimonies that reveal the shocking true chain of events: from the disastrous crash to the high-level decision to create a cover story and the attempts to silence anyone who dared speak the truth.
Dust Bowl Diary
Ann Marie Low - 1984
Her diary vividly captures that “gritty nightmare” as it was lived by one rural family—and by millions of other Americans. The books opens in 1927—“the last of the good years”—when Ann Marie is a teenager living with her parents, brother, and sister on a stock farm in southeastern North Dakota. We follow her family and friends, descendants of homesteaders, through the next ten years—a time of searing summer heat and desiccated fields, dying livestock, dust to the tops of fence posts and prices at rock bottom—a time when whole communities lost their homes and livelihoods to mortgages and, hardest of all, to government recovery programs. We also see the coming to maturity of the author in the face of economic hardship, frustrating family circumstances, and the stifling restrictions that society then placed on young women. Ann Marie Low’s diary, supplemented with reminiscences, offers a rich, circumstantial view of rural life a half century ago: planting and threshing before the prevalence of gasoline-powered engines, washing with rain water and ironing with sadirons, hauling coal on sleds over snow-clogged roads, going to end-of-school picnics and country dances, and hoarding the egg and cream money for college. Here, too, is an iconoclastic on-the-scene account of how a federal work project, the construction of a wildlife refuge, actually operated. Many readers will recognize parts of their own past in Ann Marie Low’s story; for others it will serve as a compelling record of the Dust Bowl experience.
Outrageous: The Victoria Woodhull Saga, Volume One: Rise to Riches
Neal Katz - 2015
What compels a woman and her youngest sister to overcome abject poverty and violent abuse to grow up to defy convention and obliterate every barrier to become the first women to own and operate a Wall Street brokerage firm and publish their own newspaper? How did Victoria Claflin Woodhull (1838 - 1927) become the first woman invited to speak to the United State Congress, and then the first female to run for president. What made Tennessee Celeste Claflin (1845 - 1923) so beguiling that the richest man in America, Cornelius Vanderbilt, fell completely in love with her? What caused the sisters to live out their long lives as royalty and peerage in Europe. Victoria living as landed gentry outside of London, and Tennessee in a huge castle like a queen? Why aren't these empowered and independent women iconic in our culture? Volume One of The Victoria Woodhull Saga tells the poignant, lascivious, and compelling inside story of how the sisters worked closely with Cornelius Vanderbilt, who at age 74 fell in love with the beguiling 24-year old Tennessee. Victoria provided the titan of industry "Inside Her Information" gathered through the soiled sisterhood, the ladies of the evening working at the top seven brothels servicing the rich and famous of New York City. This relationship resulted in the great lion of industry having his last public roar as together they manipulated the financial markets and created the impending collapse of the U.S. economy in the gold scandal of 1869. To avert the crash, President Ulysses S. Grant provides the richest man in America insider information on the gold market and telegrams Vanderbilt that his railroad company is "Too Big To Fail!" Vanderbilt was proclaimed "The Savior of the American Economy" for intervening in a crisis he helped create. View Victorian America through the eyes and thoughts of one of its leading heroines., Victoria Woodhull. Watch as the infighting and elitism of the earliest suffrage women denigrating, castigating, and denouncing other passionate suffrage rights women delayed woman suffrage and equal legal standing for five decades. Learn wonderful anecdotes of the origins of products and phrases used today. Learn the story of Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, the most popular man in America, who transformed Christianity from his father's "fire and brimstone" theology to one of a compassionate and loving Jesus, who will redeem all who turn to salvation with complete confession of their sins. The reverend's personal life did not imitate his lofty and popular theology of his weekly sermons at Plymouth Church. He was a notorious womanizer, often bedding, and sometimes impregnating the wives, sisters, and daughters of his most ardent trackers and deacons of the church. Written in the first person from Victoria's viewpoint, N. H. Katz weaves a compelling page-turning story that cleverly unfolds history while providing a wonderfully entertaining ride. Katz has pledged one half of book sale proceeds to charities dedicating to the empowerment and sustainable economic improvement of women, especially single mothers.
Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties
Marion Meade - 2004
These literary heroines did what they wanted and said what they thought, living wholly in the moment. They kicked open the door for twentieth-century women writers and set a new model for every woman trying to juggle the serious issues of economic independence, political power, and sexual freedom. Here are the social and literary triumphs and inevitably the penances paid: crumbled love affairs, abortions, depression, lost beauty, nervous breakdowns, and finally, overdoses and even madness. A vibrant mixture of literary scholarship, social history, and scandal, Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin is a rich evocation of a period that will forever intrigue and captivate us.
The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues
John Strausbaugh - 2013
From the Dutch settlers and Washington Square patricians, to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire and Prohibition-era speakeasies; from Abstract Expressionism and beatniks, to Stonewall and AIDS, the connecting narratives of The Village tell the story of America itself. Illustrated with historic black-and-white photographs, The Village features lively, well-researched profiles of many of the people who made Greenwich Village famous, including Thomas Paine, Walt Whitman, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Mark Twain, Margaret Sanger, Eugene O’Neill, Marcel Duchamp, Upton Sinclair, Willa Cather, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Jackson Pollock, Anais Nin, Edward Albee, Charlie Parker, W. H. Auden, Woody Guthrie, James Baldwin, Maurice Sendak, E. E. Cummings, and Bob Dylan.
Reminiscences of the Civil War
John B. Gordon - 1903
Gordon, by the end of the Civil War, had become one of Robert E. Lee’s most trusted generals.
At the outbreak of the war, in 1861, he enlisted as a private soldier, and was elected captain of his company. His career was perhaps as brilliant as that of any officer in the Confederate army. In rapid succession he filled every grade — that of Major, Lieutenant-Colonel, Colonel, Brigadier-General, Major-General, and, near the end, was assigned to duty as Lieutenant-General (by authority of the Secretary of War), and while he never received the commission in regular form, he commanded, at the surrender at Appomattox, one half of the Army of Northern Virginia, under Robert E. Lee. He had the extraordinary talent of getting in front of his troops and, in a few magnetic appeals, inspiring them almost to madness, and being able to lead them into the jaws of death. Brown distinguished himself in many of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War, including at Seven Pines, Antietam, Gettysburg, and Spotsylvania Court House. John B. Gordon’s remarkable activities are all recorded in vivid detail in his Reminiscences of the Civil War which allows the reader to fully understand the thoughts and actions of this fascinating man. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in how one man rose from relative obscurity to become one of the most formidable leaders of the American Civil War. “The mass of intelligent readers … will find it one of the best obtainable pictures of life in the Confederate army.” The American Historical Review John B. Gordon was an attorney, a planter, general in the Confederate States Army, and politician in the postwar years. After the war, Gordon strongly opposed Reconstruction during the late 1860s. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected by the state legislature to serve as a U.S. Senator, from 1875 to 1881, and again from 1891 to 1897. He also was elected as the 53rd Governor of Georgia, serving from 1886 to 1890. Reminiscences of the Civil War was first published in 1903 and he passed away in 1904.
Children of the City
David Nasaw - 1985
In Children of the City, David Nasaw re-creates this period in our social history from the vantage point of the children who grew up then. Drawing on hundreds of memoirs, autobiographies, oral histories and unpublished--and until now unexamined--primary source materials from cities across the country, he provides us with a warm and eloquent portrait of these children, their families, their daily lives, their fears, and their dreams. Illustrated with 68 photographs from the period, many never before published, Children of the City offers a vibrant protrait of a time when our cities and our grandparents were young
The Murder of Napoleon
Ben Weider - 1961
Napoleon himself, expiring at 51 after a lifetime of robust health, suspected otherwise and ordered a thorough autopsy. His suspicions were well founded. So clever was the crime, however, that until recent developments in forensic science, it was impossible to prove a case of murder, let alone name the killer. Now, the authors of The Murder of Napoleon assert, it has been done-by a brilliant man whose 20-year inquest, a feat of detection, has produced one of history's greatest surprises. "Sensational...as gripping as a detective novel yet scrupulously observant of historical fact" (Publishers Weekly) Author Biography: David Hapgood was an editor and writer for The New York Times. He is author or co-author of The Murder of Napoleon, The Screwing of the Average Man, Monte Cassino, and Africa from Independence to Tomorrow. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College and lives in New York City.
Triple Sticks: Tales of a Few Young Men in the 1960s
Bernie Fipp - 2010
The author assures us it is not!Three years before they came together, four young American men left their fraternities and college campuses for an adventure exceeding their imaginations. Wanting something more than the draft and unknown to each other, they chose Naval Aviation as the next step in their lives. Generally, they were better than their navy peers, all qualifying for high performance aircraft to be flown from steel decks over foreign seas. They would become the pointy end of the stick in aerial battles over North Vietnam, the most heavily defended patch of real estate in the history of aerial warfare. They were to do this in 1967, the year in which Naval Aviation experienced its greatest losses.These four young men, now Lieutenants Junior Grade, United States Navy, were ordered to Attack Squadron 34 to fly A4 Skyhawks into combat. They were assigned Junior Officer's stateroom 0111 aboard USS Intrepid, a venerable aircraft carrier with a distinguished history. This "bunkroom" better known to them as Triple Sticks was the repository for a log (in navy terms) or journal written by these four young aviators. Forty years later this log was the genesis of this memoir.In the lethal environment over the northern reaches of North Vietnam or ashore in the Officer's clubs and bars of Asia, the writing brings to life wonderful humor, bizarre behavior, vivid aerial battles, uncommon loyalty, anger, frustration and respect. One survived or did not according to his skill and luck.
Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends
Allen Barra - 1998
This revelatory volume tells for the first time Earp’s entire astonishing story.
Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics
Kim Phillips-Fein - 2016
Bankers and politicians alike seized upon the situation as evidence that social liberalism, which New York famously exemplified, was doomed to failure--and promised apocalyptic scenarios if the city didn't fire thousands of workers, freeze wages, and slash social services.In this vivid, gripping account, historian Kim Phillips-Fein tells the remarkable story of the crisis that engulfed the city, forever transforming the largest metropolis in the United States and reshaping ideas about government throughout the country. In doing so, she brings to life a radically different New York, the legendarily decrepit city of the 1970s. Drawing on never-before-used archival sources as well as interviews with key players in the crisis, Phillips-Fein guides us through the hairpin turns and sudden reversals that brought New York City to the edge of bankruptcy--and kept it from going over. At once a sweeping history of some of the most tumultuous times in the city's past, a colorful portrait of the unwieldy mechanics of municipal government, and an origin story of the politics of austerity, Fear City is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the resurgent fiscal conservatism of today.
Life On The Old Plantation In Ante-Bellum Days
Irving E. Lowery - 2009
Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
The Triangle Fire: A Brief History with Documents
Jo Ann E. Argersinger - 2009
The tragedy brought national attention to the unsafe working conditions, long hours, and low pay that had prompted a national garment workers’ strike a year before. Jo Ann Argersinger’s volume examines the context, trajectory, and impact of this Progressive Era event. An introduction explores the demands industrialization placed upon urban working women, their fight to unionize, and the Triangle fire’s significance in the greater scope of labor reform. Documents from newspaper reports to the personal stories of labor agitators and fire survivors continue the story, giving voice to the "girl strikers," their enemies and upper-class allies in the effort to reform the garment industry, and the public outrage that followed the fire. Document headnotes, a chronology, questions for consideration, a selected bibliography, and an index enrich students’ understanding of this historical moment.
The King's Best Highway: The Lost History of the Boston Post Road, the Route That Made America
Eric Jaffe - 2010
Eric Jaffe captures the progress of people and culture along the road through four centuries, from its earliest days as the king of England’s “best highway” to the current era. Centuries before the telephone, radio, or Internet, the Boston Post Road was the primary conduit of America’s prosperity and growth. News, rumor, political intrigue, financial transactions, and personal missives traveled with increasing rapidity, as did people from every walk of life.From post riders bearing the alarms of revolution, to coaches carrying George Washington on his first presidential tour, to railroads transporting soldiers to the Civil War, the Boston Post Road has been essential to the political, economic, and social development of the United States. Continuously raised, improved, rerouted, and widened for faster and heavier traffic, the road played a key role in the advent of newspapers, stagecoach travel, textiles, mass-produced bicycles and guns, commuter railroads, automobiles—even Manhattan’s modern grid. Many famous Americans traveled the highway, and it drew the keen attention of such diverse personages as Benjamin Franklin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, P. T. Barnum, J. P. Morgan, and Robert Moses. Eric Jaffe weaves this entertaining narrative with a historian’s eye for detail and a journalist’s flair for storytelling. A cast of historical figures, celebrated and unknown alike, tells the lost tale of this road.Revolutionary printer William Goddard created a postal network that united the colonies against the throne. General Washington struggled to hold the highway during the battle for Manhattan. Levi Pease convinced Americans to travel by stagecoach until, half a century later, Nathan Hale convinced them to go by train. Abe Lincoln, still a dark-horse candidate in early 1860, embarked on a railroad speaking tour along the route that clinched the presidency. Bomb builder Lester Barlow, inspired by the Post Road’s notorious traffic, nearly sold Congress on a national system of expressways twenty-five years before the Interstate Highway Act of 1956. Based on extensive travels of the highway, interviews with people living up and down the road, and primary sources unearthed from the great libraries between New York City and Boston—including letters, maps, contemporaneous newspapers, and long-forgotten government documents—The King’s Best Highway is a delightful read for American history buffs and lovers of narrative everywhere.
