Geronimo: My Life


Geronimo - 1906
    Completely and utterly authentic, its captivating narrator is the most famous member of the Apache tribe: Geronimo.The spiritual and intellectual leader of the American Indians who defended their land from both Mexico and the United States for many years, Geronimo surrendered in 1886. Two decades later, while under arrest, he told his story through a native interpreter to S. M. Barrett, an Oklahoma school superintendent. Barrett explains in his introduction, "I wrote to President Roosevelt that here was an old Indian who had been held a prisoner of war for twenty years and had never been given a chance to tell his side of the story, and asked that Geronimo be granted permission to tell for publication, in his own way, the story of his life."This remarkable testament is the result. It begins with Geronimo's retelling of an Apache creation myth and his descriptions of his youth and family. He explains his military tactics as well as traditional practices, including hunting and religious rituals, and reflects upon his hope for the survival of his people and their culture.

No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship


Linda K. Kerber - 1998
    Looking closely at thirty telling cases from the pages of American legal history, Kerber's analysis reaches from the Revolution, when married women did not have the same obligation as their husbands to be "patriots," up to the present, when men and women, regardless of their marital status, still have different obligations to serve in the Armed Forces.An original and compelling consideration of American law and culture, No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies emphasizes the dangers of excluding women from other civic responsibilities as well, such as loyalty oaths and jury duty. Exploring the lives of the plaintiffs, the strategies of the lawyers, and the decisions of the courts, Kerber offers readers a convincing argument for equal treatment under the law.

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 Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West


Megan Kate Nelson - 2020
    Exploring the connections among the Civil War, the Indian wars, and western expansion, Nelson reframes the era as one of national conflict—involving not just the North and South, but also the West. Against the backdrop of this larger series of battles, Nelson introduces nine individuals: John R. Baylor, a Texas legislator who established the Confederate Territory of Arizona; Louisa Hawkins Canby, a Union Army wife who nursed Confederate soldiers back to health in Santa Fe; James Carleton, a professional soldier who engineered campaigns against Navajos and Apaches; Kit Carson, a famous frontiersman who led a regiment of volunteers against the Texans, Navajos, Kiowas, and Comanches; Juanita, a Navajo weaver who resisted Union campaigns against her people; Bill Davidson, a soldier who fought in all of the Confederacy’s major battles in New Mexico; Alonzo Ickis, an Iowa-born gold miner who fought on the side of the Union; John Clark, a friend of Abraham Lincoln’s who embraced the Republican vision for the West as New Mexico’s surveyor-general; and Mangas Coloradas, a revered Chiricahua Apache chief who worked to expand Apache territory in Arizona. As we learn how these nine charismatic individuals fought for self-determination and control of the region, we also see the importance of individual actions in the midst of a larger military conflict. The Three-Cornered War is a captivating history—based on letters and diaries, military records and oral histories, and photographs and maps from the time—that sheds light on a forgotten chapter of American history.

Virgin: The Untouched History


Hanne Blank - 2007
    She tackles the reality of what we do and don't know about virginity and provides a sweeping tour of virgins in history--from virgin martyrs to Queen Elizabeth to billboards in downtown Baltimore telling young women it's not a "dirty word." Virgin proves, as well, how utterly contemporary the topic is--the butt of innumerable jokes, center of spiritual mysteries, locus of teenage angst, popular genre for pornography and nucleus around which the world's most powerful government has created an unprecedented abstinence policy. In this fascinating work, Hanne Blank shows for the first time why this is, and why everything we think we know about virginity is wrong.

The End of American Childhood: A History of Parenting from Life on the Frontier to the Managed Child


Paula S. Fass - 2016
    Renowned historian Paula Fass shows how, since the beginning of the American republic, independence, self-definition, and individual success have informed Americans' attitudes toward children. But as parents today hover over every detail of their children's lives, are the qualities that once made American childhood special still desired or possible? Placing the experiences of children and parents against the backdrop of social, political, and cultural shifts, Fass challenges Americans to reconnect with the beliefs that set the American understanding of childhood apart from the rest of the world.Fass examines how freer relationships between American children and parents transformed the national culture, altered generational relationships among immigrants, helped create a new science of child development, and promoted a revolution in modern schooling. She looks at the childhoods of icons including Margaret Mead and Ulysses S. Grant--who, as an eleven-year-old, was in charge of his father's fields and explored his rural Ohio countryside. Fass also features less well-known children like ten-year-old Rose Cohen, who worked in the drudgery of nineteenth-century factories. Bringing readers into the present, Fass argues that current American conditions and policies have made adolescence socially irrelevant and altered children's road to maturity, while parental oversight threatens children's competence and initiative.Showing how American parenting has been firmly linked to historical changes, The End of American Childhood considers what implications this might hold for the nation's future.

A History of the Wife


Marilyn Yalom - 2001
    The work is engaging, filled with interesting anecdotes and stories, and is an incredibly lively read on a thoroughly interesting subject much in need of a closer look. In breadth, the book ranges from biblical times to the present, and in sheer scale it attempts to present a unified series of images of the Western wife over the course of some 2,000 years. In doing so, Professor Yalom has presented us an interesting grid, well conceived and wonderfully written, with which we can begin to examine this cultural phenomenon.One of the main strengths of the work is its method: Yalom draws heavily on diaries, newspapers, journals, and personal letters, and she interweaves these with citations from the laws, general customs of the times, religious rites, and civic procedure. By moving in a very fluid way from the abstract to the particular, what we see emerging, in each era, is a lively picture of how the general affected the individual. The book makes it real, makes us wonder, and helps to recover for us so many of the lost voices of women over the centuries, silenced by the overshadowing "great men" approach to history. These are not so much the stories of "great women" as they are the telling of everyday life. In reading them we get a fuller sense of what the time and place may have been like for the women whose voices we are listening to. It is the dignity of these everyday voices that holds us, intrigues us, and invites us to read further. A History of the Wife links the ancient, the medieval, the Victorian, and the modern, and makes a strong historical and narrative case for its subject.Along the way, we are treated to many interesting insights, observations, and historical facts: Nero was officially married five times -- three times to women, twice to boys; until the Middle Ages, marriages in Catholic Europe often did not involve any ceremony at all, and "church weddings" do not appear on the scene until well into the evolution of Christian Europe. The role of women changes slowly in the West, and the role of religion, from the biblical period through early Christianity to the changes brought by the Reformation and the voyages to the New World, are mapped for us in a sweeping overview.A particularly strong section of the book is the documentation of the last 50 years of the cultural institution of marriage, and the vast changes brought by World War II and the cultural ferment of the '60s. This is made more impressive because of the compelling histories that the work recounts for us in the 2,000 years before our own era.An old adage maintained that "everyone needs a wife"; this lively book tells us who followed that adage, why and how they did so, and how we got to where we are now.

Woodcraft (Illustrated): by Nessmuk


George Washington Sears - 2008
    The other seems to have only about 70 pages, and the graphics look quite odd. - see for yourself - do a "Look Inside" and compare for yourself. I believe this one to be far superior to the others. This edition has been meticulously transposed for Kindle from the 1920 edition, with many illustrations. This version also has an Active Table of Contents, and List of Illustrations. A fabulous read and an education in itself, George Washington Sears, aka, Nessmuk, takes the reader through all stages of camping, e.g., preparation, building a good fire, cooking, fishing, tent building, safety, etc. etc. All kinds of personal stories are woven into the fabric, to make reading a real pleasure. Many of these skills have been lost to modern man because of "advances" in technology. Among these pages you will find the nuggets of knowledge that will serve you long after your batteries have run out:)

Verdicts of History (The Thomas Fleming Library)


Thomas Fleming - 2016
    From unexpected verdicts, like the acquittal won by John Adams when he defended British soldiers charged with the Boston Massacre in 1770 to stirred passions when abolitionist John Brown was convicted of murder - a precedent to the Civil War - to the breakthrough in racial relations when Clarence Darrow won a stunning "not guilty" verdict for black physician Ossian Sweet - at a time when black Americans could hardly expect a fair trial. Fleming also includes the trials of Aaron Burr for treason and a well-known congressman for murder. In courtrooms throughout the nation's history, vivid emotion and heated rhetoric have established consequential precedents and enlarged average men and women to historical dimensions.

Stuff Every American Should Know


Denise Kiernan - 2012
      Who played the first game of baseball? What’s a bicameral congress? Where did Mount Rushmore come from? Who is Geronimo and who do we yell his name when we jump?   Stuff Every American Should Know answers these questions plus great information on the Declaration of Independence, fireworks, the first Thanksgiving, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” assassination attempts on U.S. presidents, buffalo nickels, the Statue of Liberty, how to bake the perfect apple pie, and much, much more.

Thirty-six Years in the White House (1902)


Thomas Franses Pendel - 2016
    Pendel's attention. It is very interesting and throws many sidelights on the life of the White House. Pendel writes: "In 1861, or 1862, the Metropolitan Police was established by Congress at the Capital, and I made application for and received an appointment on the force. I made the first arrest, with the assistance of "Buck" Essex. The case was that of a fellow named Grady, one of the English Hill toughs. A roundsman said to us, "Boys, you take a walk down Seventh Street, and if you see anything going on, take a hand in it." Just as we got opposite the Patent Office, this Grady had assaulted, or rather was assaulting, a young fellow with a whip. I went up and grabbed him and put him under arrest, then took him to Squire Dunn's court and preferred charges against him. The Squire was busy writing for some time. When he got through he handed me the paper he was writing, and I was so green at the business I did not know what it was, so said: "What is this, Squire?" He replied, "Why, that is the paper of commitment for this fellow. Take him to jail." "On November 3, 1864, Sergeant John Cronin, Alfonso Dunn, Andrew Smith, and myself were ordered to report at the First Precinct, in the old City Hall, at one o'clock in the afternoon. We supposed we were to be detailed for detective work in New York City on account of the great riot then on there, especially as we were ordered to report in citizens' clothes, to conceal our revolvers, and to be sure to have them all clean and in good order. We arrived at the City Hall, and then were told where we were to go, which was to the President's Mansion, there to report to Marshal Lanham, at that time United States Marshal of the District of Columbia, and a bosom friend of Abraham Lincoln. "These were days that tried men's hearts, and women's, too. Men were falling at the front by hundreds, both in the Union and in the Confederate armies. There was weeping and mourning all over the land. Our nation was trembling with anxiety; we were all hoping that the great strife was over or soon to be. "Marshal Lanham took us upstairs and into the President's office, where we were introduced to him and to his two secretaries, Mr. Nicolay and Mr. Hay, the latter now being Secretary of State. We were then instructed to keep a sharp lookout in the different parts of the house, more particularly in the East Room and at the door of the President's office. " CONTENTS I — Under President Lincoln II — Under President Johnson III — Under President Grant IV — Under President Hayes V — Under President Garfield VI — Under President Arthur VII — Under President Cleveland VIII — Under President Harrison IX — Cleveland's Second Administration X— Under President McKinley XI — Furniture in Executive Mansion Originally published in 1902; reformatted for the Kindle; may contain an occasional imperfections; original spellings have been kept in place.

Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood


Mick LaSalle - 2000
    Then two stars came along: Greta Garbo, who turned the femme fatale into a woman whose capacity for love and sacrifice made all other human emotions seem pale; and Norma Shearer, who succeeded in taking the ingenue to a place she'd never been: the bedroom. In their wake came a deluge of other complicated women-Marlene Dietrich, Jean Harlow, and Mae West, to name a few. Then, in July 1934, the draconian Production Code became the law in Hollywood and these modern women of the screen were banished, not to be seen again until the code was repealed three decades later.A thorough survey and a tribute to these films, Complicated Women reveals how this was the true Golden Age of women's films.

Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating


Moira Weigel - 2016
    A mate, on the other hand, is becoming harder and harder to find. The age-old quest for true love requires more effort than ever before. Let’s face it: Dating is work.Which, as it happens, is exactly where it began, in the nineteenth century—as prostitution. In Labor of Love, Moira Weigel dives into the secret history of dating while holding up a mirror to the contemporary dating landscape, revealing why we date the way we do and explaining why it feels so much like work. This isn’t a guide to “getting the guy”; there are no ridiculous “rules” to follow in Labor of Love. This is a brilliant, fresh, and utterly original approach to help us understand how dating was invented and, hopefully, to lead us closer to the happy ending that it promises.

Sexual Revolution in Early America


Richard Godbeer - 2002
    Charles Woodmason, an Anglican minister in South Carolina in 1766, described the region as a "stage of debauchery" in which polygamy was "very common," "concubinage general," and "bastardy no disrepute." These depictions of colonial North America's sexual culture sharply contradict the stereotype of Puritanical abstinence that persists in the popular imagination.In Sexual Revolution in Early America, Richard Godbeer boldly overturns conventional wisdom about the sexual values and customs of colonial Americans. His eye-opening historical account spans two centuries and most of British North America, from New England to the Caribbean, exploring the social, political, and legal dynamics that shaped a diverse sexual culture. Drawing on exhaustive research into diaries, letters, and other private papers, as well as legal records and official documents, Godbeer's absorbing narrative uncovers a persistent struggle between the moral authorities and the widespread expression of popular customs and individual urges.Godbeer begins with a discussion of the complex attitude that the Puritans had toward sexuality. For example, although believing that sex could be morally corrupting, they also considered it to be such an essential element of a healthy marriage that they excommunicated those who denied "conjugal fellowship" to their spouses. He next examines the ways in which race and class affected the debate about sexual mores, from anxieties about Anglo-Indian sexual relations to the sense of sexual entitlement that planters held over their African slaves. He concludes by detailing the fundamental shift in sexual culture during the eighteenth century towards the acceptance of a more individualistic concept of sexual desire and fulfillment. Today's moral critics, in their attempts to convince Americans of the social and spiritual consequences of unregulated sexual behavior, often harken back to a more innocent age; as this groundbreaking work makes clear, America's sexual culture has always been rich, vibrant, and contentious.

The American Civil War Trivia Book: Interesting American Civil War Stories You Didn't Know (Trivia War Books Book 3)


Bill O'Neill - 2018
    Maybe your teacher took the controversial stand that the Civil War was all about states’ rights… or maybe you learned all about the horrors slavery, but never quite figured out why things didn’t get better after the war ended. If you didn’t go to school in the United States, things are even more confusing. When the media is full of references to the Confederate flag, the legacy of slavery, and poverty in the American South, you might have a vague sense that things are bad because of the Civil War… but why? Why does a war that happened over a hundred and fifty years ago still cast a shadow over the United States? This book will tell you why. It will lead you, step-by-step, through the causes of the Civil War, and the effects. But unlike your high school history teacher, it won’t put you to sleep with long-winded biographies and lists of dates. The names you’ll learn are the big players, the ones with big personalities, who made big differences. In just a few minutes a day, you can read bite-sized stories from the Civil War – quick, easy explanations to guide you through the main points, with just enough scary, surprising, or just plain strange facts to keep you coming back for more. Each chapter ends with a bonus helping of trivia and some quick questions to test your knowledge. By the time you’re finished, you’ll know all the facts your history teacher never taught you – from who said slavery was a “positive good” (and why they thought that), to who dressed up in women’s clothing to escape from Union soldiers.