Book picks similar to
The Death Of Classical Paganism by John Holland Smith


history
ancient-greece-rome-byzantium
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Through Apache Eyes: Verbal History of Apache Struggle (Annotated and Illustrated)


Geronimo Chiricahua - 2011
    Yet, the one constant in the history of the Apache People is their constant struggle to survive in a world where they are surrounded by various enemies, including other Indian tribes, the Mexicans and finally their brutal nemesis the United States Army. Attacked, tricked, lied to and double crossed by all of those who surround and outnumber them, the Apache people continued their struggle until they were for all intent and purposes almost totally wiped out. One Apache’s name stands out in their brave yet woeful history and it is Geronimo, who at age 30 witnessed the massacre of his mother, wife and two young children.I’ve taken his recollections or accounts of the struggle of the Apache people and intertwined them with some archeological facts about this extraordinary tribe. In addition, I have searched and included some of the best photos of Apaches from that era, which I collected from Library of Congress Archives. What impressed me most about Geronimo was his brevity of words, yet his ability to take a knife to the heart of anyone who reads his verbal history. Like most Apaches, Geronimo said little, but what he did say was profound and truthful. But most powerful is what Geronimo didn’t say in his recollections. It is between this silence one can feel the pain, sorrow, pride and bravery of the Apache People. Chet DembeckPublisher of One

Crushed: An Amazing True Story of Determination and Survival


Kathryn Mann - 2013
    Crushed and left with broken ribs, a punctured lung, and compression fractures in his chest, spine, and pelvis, Bob pushed his arms forward, dug his fingers into the freezing mud and dragged his mostly paralyzed body forward. Saturated to the skin in freezing rain, far from help, and with the night fast approaching, Bob refused to give up.This includes photographs, documentation, and inspirational verses.This amazing true story was featured on the It's a Miracle series hosted by Richard Thomas. It aired on PAX Television as Chain Reaction in 1999.

The Empire of Russia From the Remotest Periods to the Present Time


John S.C. Abbott - 2011
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Nelson's Wake: Under Admiralty Orders - The Oliver Quintrell Series - Book 6


M.C. Muir - 2020
    

Nothing of Importance: A Record of Eight Months at the Front with a Welsh Battalion, October 1915 to June 1916


John Bernard Pye Adams - 1916
     Nothing could have prepared him for the reality he ended up facing. Placing his focus on the day to day existence of the soldiers in the trenches, Adams presents a grim picture of mud-coated billets, relentless artillery barrages, working parties, training and the art of military sniping. Just as it would have been for the soldiers’ lives, Adams heightens his work with an emotive account of his first night patrol, the detonation of mines, battlefield duels and being wounded whilst out wiring in No Man’s Land. Understated and striving for truth over melodrama, Nothing of Importance is the original memoir of the First World War — the only record published while the conflict was still being fought — and the definitive account of trench warfare. Bernard Adams (1890-1917) was a British Army officer, joining 1 Royal Welsh Fusiliers as a Lieutenant in November 1914. He was the first of a triumvirate of authors who, for a time, served simultaneously in the same battalion: the second was Siegfried Sassoon, the third Robert Graves. Written whilst convalescing in 1916, he did not live to see it published.

The Unfinished Revolution: How the Modernisers Saved the Labour Party


Philip Gould - 1998
    Blair's majority was the culmination of a long struggle to modernize the party, and the politics of his country. Philip Gould is a political strategist and polling adviser who has worked with the Labour leadership since the 1980s. In this book he describes its rise and explains how the transformation was achieved, at the same time exploring the changed political climate in Britain.

Churchill and the Avoidable War: Could World War II Have Been Prevented?


Richard M. Langworth - 2015
    Churchill, 1948: World War II was the defining event of our age—the climactic clash between liberty and tyranny. It led to revolutions, the demise of empires, a protracted Cold War, and religious strife still not ended. Yet Churchill maintained that it was all avoidable. Here is a transformative view of Churchill’s theories, prescriptions, actions, and the degree to which he pursued them in the decade before the war. It shows that he was both right and wrong: right that Hitler could have been stopped; wrong that he did all he could to stop him. It is based on what really happened—evidence that has been “hiding in public” for many years, thoroughly referenced in Churchill’s words and those of his contemporaries. Richard M. Langworth began his Churchill work in 1968 when he organized the Churchill Study Unit, which later became the Churchill Centre. He served as its president and board chairman and was editor of its journal Finest Hour from 1982 to 2014. In November 2014, he was appointed senior fellow for Hillsdale College’s Churchill Project. Mr. Langworth published the first American edition of Churchill’s India, is the author of A Connoisseur’s Guide to the Books of Sir Winston Churchill, and is the editor of Churchill by Himself, The Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill, The Patriot’s Churchill, All Will Be Well: Good Advice from Winston Churchill, and Churchill in His Own Words. His next book is Winston Churchill, Urban Myths and Reality. In 1998, Richard Langworth was appointed a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by HM The Queen “for services to Anglo-American understanding and the memory of Sir Winston Churchill.”

The Orphan Train Movement: The History of the Program that Relocated Homeless Children Across America


Charles River Editors - 2016
    They were not the best answer, but they were the first attempts at finding a practical system. Many children that would have died, lived to have children and grandchildren. It has been calculated that over two million descendants have come from these children. The trains gave the children a fighting chance to grow up." – D. Bruce Ayler By the middle of the 19th century, New York City’s population surpassed the unfathomable number of 1 million people, despite its obvious lack of space. This was mostly due to the fact that so many immigrants heading to America naturally landed in New York Harbor, well before the federal government set up an official immigration system on Ellis Island. At first, the city itself set up its own immigration registration center in Castle Garden near the site of the original Fort Amsterdam, and naturally, many of these immigrants, who were arriving with little more than the clothes on their back, didn’t travel far and thus remained in New York. Of course, the addition of so many immigrants and others with less money put strains on the quality of life. Between 1862 and 1872, the number of tenements had risen from 12,000 to 20,000; the number of tenement residents grew from 380,000 to 600,000. One notorious tenement on the East River, Gotham Court, housed 700 people on a 20-by-200-foot lot. Another on the West Side was home, incredibly, to 3,000 residents, who made use of hundreds of privies dug into a fifteen-foot-wide inner court. Squalid, dark, crowded, and dangerous, tenement living created dreadful health and social conditions. It would take the efforts of reformers such as Jacob Riis, who documented the hellishness of tenements with shocking photographs in How the Other Half Lives, to change the way such buildings were constructed. While the Melting Pot nature of America is one of its most unique and celebrated aspects, the conditions also created a humanitarian crisis of sorts. In the 19th century, child labor was still the norm, especially for poor families, and no social welfare systems were in place to provide security for people. As a result, if a child was abandoned or orphaned, they were at the mercy of an ad hoc system of barely tolerable orphanages with little to no centralization. Minorities and immigrants were also discriminated against on the basis of ethnicity and religion. Into this issue stepped the Children’s Aid Society, led by Charles Loring Brace, who determined he could improve abandoned kids’ futures by helping relocate them further to the West, which would also help Americans settle the frontier. By coordinating with train companies, Brace was able to transport dozens of children at a time to places in the heartland of America or further out west, where they would end up in new homes, decades before the existence of foster care. Genealogist Roberta Lowrey, a descendant of one of these orphans, noted that the situations for many of those on the Orphan Trains were vastly different, but in all, the system worked: “Many were used as strictly slave farm labor, but there are stories, wonderful stories of children ending up in fine families that loved them, cherished them, [and] educated them. They were so much better off than if they had been left on the streets of New York. ... They were just not going to survive, or if they had, their fate would surely have been awful.

Henry VIII's Health in a Nutshell


Kyra Cornelius Kramer - 2015
    Tudor histories are rife with "facts" about Henry VIII's life and health, but as a medical anthropologist, Kyra Kramer, author of Blood Will Tell, has learned one should never take those "facts" at face value. In Henry VIII's Health in a Nutshell, Kramer highlights the various health issues that Henry suffered throughout his life and proposes a few new theories for their causes, based on modern medical findings. Known for her readability and excellent grasp of the intricacies of modern medical diagnostics, Kyra Kramer gives the reader a new understanding of Henry VIII's health difficulties, and provides new insights into their possible causes.

When We Are Called to Part: Hope and Heartbreak in the Vanishing World of the Kalaupapa Leprosy Settlement


Brooke Jarvis - 2013
    Once it had been a forbidding place of exile, inhabited by thousands of the disease’s victims who had been removed from their families and confined against their will, far away from a society that feared and misunderstood their condition. When Brooke Jarvis came across a posting for a job in Kalaupapa, tending to the needs of the handful of remaining patients, it seemed like an impossibly exotic opportunity for a college student. But what she found there was both more remarkable and more familiar than what she had imagined. When We Are Called to Part is the absorbing, affecting, and often funny story of life in the last years of a rapidly vanishing community. “Even a prison,” she would learn, “eventually becomes a home, becomes something you mourn.”

Spirals of Fate


Tim Holden - 2019
    This riveting story effortlessly captures both the hardships of daily life and the political realities of Tudor England. 1549 - A COUNTRY DIVIDED Two years after the death of King Henry VIII, England is a turbulent realm. His son, Edward, the child monarch is too young to rule, and the government is factious. The nobility jostle for personal power and prestige. The treasury is empty and the elite of wealthy landowners are bent on exploiting the poor. AN UNLIKELY LEADER When a yeoman farmer from Norfolk, Robert Kett, finds himself at the centre of a local dispute, his impulsive actions plunge him into a precarious alliance with the dissenting commoners. THE AFFRAY To prevail, Kett must bring order to the chaos, impose his own justice, overcome the deception and betrayal that surrounds him and stay true to his cause. As events spiral and disobedience sparks rebellion, can his leadership withstand the dangers and opportunities of a country struggling to leave its past and discover its future? BASED ON REAL EVENTS

Endurance: Shackleton's Extraordinary Voyage


Daniel Bryce - 2015
    Sir Ernest Shackleton had carefully picked crew and a stout, well-outfitted ship, the Endurance. But he had no radio, the world was at war, and at the edge of the Antarctic continent, the ship froze in the sea ice. After months of immobility, it was crushed. Then began an impossible journey. With three tiny boats, the crew worked their way across frozen the Antarctic Sea. This vivid book recounts the story of Shackleton's heroic voyage from South Georgia Island to Antarctica then back to South Georgia. It is a tribute to Shackleton and his crew's ability to fight for survival and one of the most harrowing adventures in history.

The Wright Brothers: by David McCullough | Summary & Analysis


aBookaDay - 2015
    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....

Mosquito Point Road: Monroe County Murder & Mayhem


Michael Benson - 2020
    There’s Killer of the Cloth, The Baby in the Convent, Mosquito Point Road, Death of a First Baseman, The Blue Gardenia, and Pure/Evil. Three of the killers are female.

Winston Churchill: An Informal Study of Greatness


Robert Lewis Taylor - 2016
    Before moments of British crisis, he has been so uniformly right that his incandescent prescience has itself become a burden to his colleagues and to his countrymen at large.” Former British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, led one of the most astonishing lives that public service has ever witnessed. In An Informal Study of Greatness, Taylor presents the early life of this mythologised and prodigiously talented man. Focusing on the school years of a young Winston Churchill and the early experiences that shaped his ambition, this fascinating biography delves into the private life of Churchill as a student, a journalist and a soldier. This a delightful and revealing study of a man who, as Taylor puts it, was one of ‘multiple genius’ and ‘one of the most exasperating figures of history.’ Praise for Winston Churchill: An Informal Study of Greatness ‘Tremendously entertaining reading’ - Kirkus Reviews Praise for Robert Lewis Taylor “Fields makes all the modern beats look like little Lord Fauntleroys He was a supreme artist and a supreme individual and Taylor does him full justice.” - Harry Golden “Robert Lewis Taylor has written a hilarious history of the fabulous comedian, written it with understanding, sympathy and a gay respect for the scandalous facts involved.” - The New York Times “It brings its subject vividly, unforgettably back to life.” - The Washington Post ‘A prolific and witty writer’ – New York Times Robert Lewis Taylor (1912-1998) was born in southern Illinois and educated at Southern Illinois University and the University of Illinois. Upon graduation, he lived in Europe and in Polynesia; then, after a brief interlude as editor of a weekly newspaper, became a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In 1940 he joined The New Yorker magazine as a writer of profiles and other long pieces, and remained a member of the staff. Mr. Taylor is author of the-Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Travels of Jamie McPheeters. Taylor also wrote the biography W. C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes.