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....

    

    Here are 2,000 years of crazy kings and potty potentates, including such infamous characters as Caligula and Vlad the Impaler.

    When they married in 1881, everyone expected that she would never concern herself with more than the traditional Prussian princess’s interests of Kirche, Küche, Kinder (church, kitchen, children). Yet within twenty years of his accession as William II, the last German Emperor, she would become in some ways the stronger character and steadying influence her increasingly neurotic and unstable husband required. This is the first biography of an often overlooked personality in modern history.

    Its greatest merit derives from the author's determination always to ask fundamental questions, his care to discriminate between surface phenomena and deeper causes, his skill in finding significant patterns in an apparently chaotic welter of events, his facility for perceptive and penetrating distinctions and generalizations. In short, he tried with considerable success to tell what really happened in history rather than simply what obviously happened."—Canadian Historical Review

    Focusing on offenses to the eyes, ears, noses, taste buds, and skin of inhabitants of England’s pre-Industrial Revolution cities, Hubbub transports us to a world in which residents were scarred by smallpox, refuse rotted in the streets, pigs and dogs roamed free, and food hygiene consisted of little more than spit and polish. Through the stories of a large cast of characters from varied walks of life, the book compares what daily life was like in different cities across England from 1600 to 1770.Using a vast array of sources, from novels to records of urban administration to diaries, Emily Cockayne populates her book with anecdotes from the quirky lives of the famous and the obscure—all of whom confronted urban nuisances and physical ailments. Each chapter addresses an unpleasant aspect of city life (noise, violence, moldy food, smelly streets, poor air quality), and the volume is enhanced with a rich array of illustrations. Awakening both our senses and our imaginations, Cockayne creates a nuanced portrait of early modern English city life, unparalleled in breadth and unforgettable in detail.

    Illustrated by the satires of Gillray and Rowlandson and the paintings of Turner and Constable, and combining the familiar voices of Austen, Wordsworth, Scott, and Byron with others lost in the crowd, In These Times delves into the archives to tell the moving story of how people lived and loved and sang and wrote, struggling through hard times and opening new horizons that would change their country for a century.

    O'Connell, Lawrence Malkin, and John F. Stacks.Included are two essential bonus essays reprinted from the original New York Times bestseller What If?-David McCullough imagines Washington's disastrous defeat at the Battle of Long Island, and James McPherson envisions Lee's successful invasion of the North in 1862.

    Born in 1759 into miserable rustic poverty, by the age of eighteen Burns had acquired a good knowledge of both classical and English literature.In June 1786 his first collection of verse, Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, which included 'To a Mouse' and 'The Cotter's Saturday Night', was greeted with huge acclaim by all classes of society. His later poems and ballads include 'Auld Lang Syne', the beautiful song 'My Love is like a Red Red Rose', 'Highland Mary', 'Scots Wha Hae' and his masterpiece, 'Tam o'Shanter'.

    What will be the outcome of the conflict between smugglers and revenue men? How can the hero, John Trenchard, discover the secret of Colonel John Mohune's treasure? As the book progresses these two interwoven themes resolve themselves into a third and richer one, with the friendship and suffering of both John Trenchard and the craggy, taciturn Elzevir Block. Falkner's feeling for history and for the landscape of his Dorset setting combine with his gift for storytelling to turn Moonfleet into a historical romance of moving intensity.

    This first book-length study of the tie-on pocket combines materiality and gender to provide new insight into the social history of women’s everyday lives—from duchesses and country gentry to prostitutes and washerwomen—and explore their consumption practices, work, sociability, mobility, privacy, and identity. The authors draw on an unprecedented study of surviving pockets in museums and private collections to identify their materials, techniques, and decoration; their use is investigated through sources as diverse as criminal trials, letters, diaries, inventories, novels, and advertisements. Richly illustrated with paintings, satirical prints, and photographs of artifacts in detail, this innovative book reveals the unexpected story of these deeply evocative and personal objects.

    A distillation of more than fifty years' engagement with Japan and its history, it is the crowning work of our leading interpreter of the modern Japanese experience.Since 1600 Japan has undergone three periods of wrenching social and institutional change, following the imposition of hegemonic order on feudal society by the Tokugawa shogun; the opening of Japan's ports by Commodore Perry; and defeat in World War II. The Making of Modern Japan charts these changes: the social engineering begun with the founding of the shogunate in 1600, the emergence of village and castle towns with consumer populations, and the diffusion of samurai values in the culture.Marius Jansen covers the making of the modern state, the adaptation of Western models, growing international trade, the broadening opportunity in Japanese society with industrialization, and the postwar occupation reforms imposed by General MacArthur. Throughout, the book gives voice to the individuals and views that have shaped the actions and beliefs of the Japanese, with writers, artists, and thinkers, as well as political leaders given their due.The story this book tells, though marked by profound changes, is also one of remarkable consistency, in which continuities outweigh upheavals in the development of society, and successive waves of outside influence have only served to strengthen a sense of what is unique and native to Japanese experience. The Making of Modern Japan takes us to the core of this experience as it illuminates one of the contemporary world's most compelling transformations.

     Brimming with tales of London's forgotten past, its strangest traditions and its most eccentric inhabitants, this book celebrates the unique, the unusual and the unknown. Perfect for tourists, day-trippers, commuters and the millions of people who call London home, this alternative guidebook will make you look at the city in a whole new light.

    Part of Eric Hobsbawm's epic four-volume history of the modern world, along with The Age of Capitalism, The Age of Empire, and The Age of Extremes.

    But the combination of the tough discipline of Bligh and the attractions of life in the South Sea Islands drove Fletcher Christian and part of the crew to mutiny, and Bligh along with those loyal to him were set adrift in the ship's launch. Their remarkable 3,600-mile, open-boat voyage to Timor is one of the great feats of navigation, while the story of the mutineers' discovery of the uninhabited island of Pitcairn and their attempt to fashion a community away from the pursuing ships of the Royal Navy is as tense as it is horrific. This drama of mutiny, courage, remarkable voyages, human deceit and treachery, first published in 1972, provides an account of this episode of maritime history.