. . . Almost every page could make you say, I didn’t know that!"Tampa Tribune"Gannon’s love for Florida comes through in a marvelous narrative style [that] doesn’t bog down in dates and reams of facts that historians find interesting, but others don’t."--Miami Herald"First rate . . . desperately needed . . . entertaining . . . fun!"--Orlando Sentinel"Gannon is a lifelong student of the history of his state, an acclaimed teacher, a masterful and tireless raconteur, and a superb stylist. Florida: A Short History showcases each of these strengths and talents and contains the latest archaeological and historical scholarship."--Florida Historical QuarterlyAs if Ponce de León, who happened on the peninsula in 1513, returned today to demand a quick reckoning (“Tell me what happened after I was there, but leave out the boring parts!”), Michael Gannon recounts the longest recorded history of any state in the nation in twenty-seven brisk, fully illustrated chapters.From indigenous tribes who lived along spring-fed streams to environmentalists who labor to "Save Our Rivers," from the first conquistadors whose broad black ships astonished the natives to the 123,000 refugees whose unexpected immigration stunned South Floridians in 1980, the story of the state is as rich and distinctive as the story of America.And it’s older than most people think. As Gannon writes, “By the time the Pilgrims came ashore at Plymouth, St. Augustine was up for urban renewal. It was a town with fort, church, seminary, six-bed hospital, fish market, and about 120 shops and houses. Because La Florida stretched north from the Keys to Newfoundland and west to Texas, St. Augustine could claim to be the capital of much of what is now the United States.”Gannon tells his fast-marching saga in chronological fashion. Starting with the wilderness of the ancient earth, he fills the landscape with Indians, colonists, pioneers, entrepreneurs, politicians, and the panorama of Florida today--“the broad superhighways that wind past horse farms, retirement communities, international airports, launch pads, futuristic attractions, and come to rest, finally, amidst the gleaming towers of Oz?like cities.” This revised edition concludes with a look into the twenty-first century, including “in-migration,” restoration of the Everglades, education, the work force, and the infamous 2000 presidential election.Michael Gannon is distinguished service professor emeritus of history at the University of Florida. Among other honors, he has received the first Arthur W. Thompson Prize from the Florida Historical Society and the decoration Knight Commander of the Order of Isabel la Católica from King Juan Carlos I of Spain. He is the author of the best-selling Operation Drumbeat and editor of The New History of Florida.

    His natural gift for entertaining and his penchant for hobnobbing with the very rich earned him entry to the powerful circle of the New York and Newport social elite, where Harry clowned his way to a position of prominence. One of his admirers and patrons, Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, introduced him to a young widow, Elizabeth Wharton Drexel. Elizabeth was smitten with young Harry, his elegant dress, and outrageous behavior. They were soon married. But King Lehr had a secret-he was not what he seemed. (He was very gay). On their wedding night he dictated to his new bride the rules of their "special" alliance. For twenty-three years, Mrs. Lehr protected his secret and remained in a sexless marriage. But Harry gave her a lot of fun. After Harry's death, Elizabeth remarried, to the Baron Decies. Lady Decies wrote down her secret story in 1938, incorporating Harry's most intimate diaries, and told all in this scandalous tale of power, desire, and deception.

    Free for members. You can download all 6 episodes to your Library now.©2020 Audible, Ltd. (P)2020 Audible, Ltd.

    Includes the work of many of Japan's most brilliant artists, including Hiroshige, Hokusai, and Yoshitoshi.

    George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt usually lead the list, But choosing the nation's worst presidents requires more thought. In Star-Spangled Men, respected presidential biographer Nathan Miller puts on display those leaders who were abject failures as chief executive. With pointed humor and a deft hand, he presents a rogues' gallery of the men who dropped the presidential ball, and sometimes their pants as well. Miller includes Richard M. Nixon, who was forced to resign to escape impeachment; Jimmy Carter, who proved that the White House is not the place for on-the-job training; and Warren G. Harding, who gave "being in the closet" new meaning as he carried on extramarital interludes in one near the Oval Office. This current edition also includes a new assessment of Bill Clinton -- who has admitted lying to his family, his aides, his cabinet, and the American people.

     In 1942, following their lightning strikes on Pearl Harbor and Hong Kong, the Japanese invaded Burma. British forces were rapidly driven out, following a swift and total defeat. The British and Indian forces retaliated with limited offences and with mixed results. The Japanese advance continued, driving victoriously for the domination of Asia. Then came the Japanese attack of Imphal and Kohima, starting one of the most ferocious campaign of the war. Burma Victory portrays the “forgotten war” and the Allied fight to push the Japanese out of Burma. David Rooney – who saw war service in India and West Africa – tells the story of the campaigns of the new Fourteenth Army, under the command of the remarkable General Slim. Rooney captures the ebb and flow of battle and the roles of Wingate, Stilwell and the Chindits. In doing so, he offers a new analysis of the role of airpower and highlights the influence of British, American, Japanese and Chinese thinking at the highest level. Burma Victory is essential reading for anyone interested in General Slim, the Second World War and how defeat can be turned into victory. Recommended reading for fans of Max Hastings, Antony Beevor and Andrew Roberts.

    Masterly.' Neil MacGregorIt is told through the eyes of people who greeted this change not with the confidence and grasping ambition of Japan's modernizers and nationalists, but with resistance, conflict, distress.We encounter writers of dramas, ghost stories and crime novels where modernity itself is the tragedy, the ghoul and the bad guy; surrealist and avant-garde artists sketching their escape; rebel kamikaze pilots and the put-upon urban poor; hypnotists and gangsters; men in desperate search of the eternal feminine and feminists in search of something more than state-sanctioned subservience; Buddhists without morals; Marxist terror groups; couches full to bursting with the psychological fall-out of breakneck modernization. These people all sprang from the soil of modern Japan, but their personalities and projects failed to fit. They were 'dark blossoms': both East-West hybrids and home-grown varieties that wreathed, probed and sometimes penetrated the new structures of mainstream Japan.

     Amazingly, America’s first personal ad appeared in the Boston Evening Post as early as 1759. A “person who flatters himself that he shall not be thought disagreeable” was in search of a “young lady, between the age of eighteen and twenty-three, of a middling stature, brown hair, of good Morals…” As family-arranged marriages fell out of fashion, "Husband Wanted" or "Seeking Wife" ads were soon to be found in every state in the nation. From the woman in a Wisconsin newspaper who wanted “no brainless dandy or foppish fool” to the man with a glass eye who placed an ad in the New York Times hoping to meet a woman with a glass eye, the many hundreds of personal ads that author Francesca Beauman has uncovered offer an extraordinary glimpse into the history of our hearts’ desires, as well as a unique insight into American life as the frontier was settled and the cities grew. Personal ads played a surprisingly vital role in the West: couple by couple, shy smile by shy smile, letter by letter from a dusty, exhausted miner in California to a bored, frustrated seamstress in Ohio. Get ready for a new perspective on the making of modern America, a hundred words of typesetter’s blurry black ink at a time. “So anxious are our settlers for wives that they never ask a single lady her age. All they require is teeth,” declared the Dubuque Iowa News in 1838 in a state where men outnumbered women three to one. While the dating pools of 21st century New York, Chicago or San Francisco might not be quite so dentally-fixated, Matrimony Inc. will put idly swiping right on Tinder into fascinating and vividly fresh historical context. What do women look for in a man? What do men look for in a woman? And how has this changed over the past 250 years?

    Following the narratives of six individuals, the book traces the shape of a disaster and the heroics it prompted, including that of David Chumreonlert, a Texan with Thai roots, trapped in his school's gymnasium with hundreds of students and teachers as it begins to flood, and Taro Watanabe, who thought nothing of returning to the Fukushima plant to fight the nuclear disaster, despite the effects that he knew would stay with him for the rest of his life. This is a beautifully written and moving account of how the Japanese experienced one of the worst earthquakes in history and endured its horrific consequences.

    While their extended talk took place at a particular location at a particular moment in history, much of the content is timeless and universal. After popular acclaim in Japan, the transcript now makes its first appearance in English.Topics from the Contents: The Meaning of Commitment Words or Images? Making Stories Answering Logically versus Answering Compassionately Self-Healing and Novels Marriage and 'Well-digging' Curing and Living Stories and the Body The Relationship between a Work and its Author Individuality and Universality Violence and Expression Where are We Headed?

    In search of the most unusual and wildest festivities, the author was pelted with beans, amazed by giant snow cows, stampeded in a temple full of men wearing nothing but "nappies," befriended by alien abductees, and much more while attending a Hogmanay in Scotland, a Tomato Festival in Ripley, Tennesee, a Bean Throwing Festival in Tokyo, and a Vodou Festival in Haiti. The side-splitting stories will inspire readers to attend—or create—peculiar festivals of their own, and on a more serious note, explore and appreciate other cultures.

    The Balkans in World Historyre-defines this space in positive terms, taking as a starting point the cultural, historical, and social threads that allow us to see this region as a coherent if complex whole. Eminent historian Andrew Wachtel here depicts the Balkans as that borderland geographical space in which four of theworld's greatest civilizations have overlapped in a sustained and meaningful way to produce a complex, dynamic, sometimes combustible, multi-layered local civilization. It is the space in which the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, of Byzantium, of Ottoman Turkey, and of Roman Catholic Europemet, clashed and sometimes combined. The history of the Balkans is thus a history of creative borrowing by local people of the various civilizations that have nominally conquered the region. Encompassing Bulgaria, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Greece, andEuropean Turkey, the Balkans have absorbed many voices and traditions, resulting in one of the most complex and interesting regions on earth.

    We are also taking on the study of the “lore of the folk,” and this faces us with the question of exactly which folk we are talking about. Japan, of course, is a single nation, but its origins are so old and often so fragmented that unified mythology and folklore can be difficult to point to. Still, in all, there are some key texts, tales, and characters we can focus on which will give us a pretty good sense of Japanese mythology. In this book, you'll discover stories of mystery, horror, and romance while simultaneously learning about the Japanese culture. Within this book, you'll find the following Japanese myths and topics covered The Creation Stories The Myths of Origins The Journey to the Underworld The Wanderings of Susano-o The Birth of Amaterasu, Trukuyumi, Susawono, and the Leech-Child The Story of the Comb and the Curse Amaterasu and Susanowo The Contract of Amaterasu and Susawono Stories of the Three Most Evil Yokai of Japan Stories of Helpful Yokai My Lord Bag of Rice The Story of Urashima Taro The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter and Kaguya hime The Legend of Yamato Takeru Contemporary Versions of Japanese Mythology And more! Download the book now and learn more about Japanese mythology

    Their parents taught them to embrace both their Japanese heritage and the ways of their American homeland. They faced bigotry, yet they believed in their bright futures as American citizens. But within days of Pearl Harbor, the FBI was ransacking their houses and locking up their fathers. And within months many would themselves be living behind barbed wire.Facing the Mountain is an unforgettable chronicle of war-time America and the battlefields of Europe. Based on Daniel James Brown's extensive interviews with the families of the protagonists as well as deep archival research, it portrays the kaleidoscopic journey of four Japanese-American families and their sons, who volunteered for 442nd Regimental Combat Team and were deployed to France, Germany, and Italy, where they were asked to do the near impossible.But this is more than a war story. Brown also tells the story of these soldiers' parents, immigrants who were forced to shutter the businesses, surrender their homes, and submit to life in concentration camps on U.S. soil. Woven throughout is the chronicle of a brave young man, one of a cadre of patriotic resisters who stood up against their government in defense of their own rights. Whether fighting on battlefields or in courtrooms, these were Americans under unprecedented strain, doing what Americans do best--striving, resisting, pushing back, rising up, standing on principle, laying down their lives, and enduring.

    The book brings value to both students and teachers/lecturers. It explores the basics of comprehension and memorization and shows effective applications of memory in learning. Some of the topics covered are: How to master the art of effective note taking; how to become avidly interested in any subject matter; how to get a mental second wind; and how to get physically conditioned for effective study. Written by Indiana University Professor of Psychology Harry D. Kitson in 1921 (Second Edition), "How to Use Your Mind" is today still as contemporary as it was then.