Other books that might interest you

• 

  Theodore Roosevelt: An American...

  Jeff Webb

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  From acclaimed American historian and biographer Jeff Webb, essential listening for history buffs. Leading presidential historians and public opinion agree—Theodore Roosevelt was one of America’s greatest presidents. Through this unique audio course, Professor Webb explores the reasons Roosevelt enjoys such widespread and enduring approval.As you listen to this engrossing 15-lecture audio series from Prof. Webb, you’ll understand why Roosevelt’s colorful personality and audacious leadership style so enthralled Americans in the early twentieth century and continue to fascinate us today.Roosevelt’s years in office were marked by executive actions and policy measures that moved the institution along a new path and cemented its influence on the world stage. By stretching the boundaries of executive authority, Roosevelt inaugurated new practices that came to define the modern American presidency.In this compelling series, you’ll examine Roosevelt’s early life and political career before he unexpectedly found himself president, at age 42, following William McKinley’s assassination in 1901. Then, you’ll explore Roosevelt’s presidency, noting instances where he blazed new trails for future presidents. A leader with inexhaustible energy and legendary charisma, Roosevelt’s celebrity status represented a powerful shift in US political tradition.Join Prof. Webb to learn how Roosevelt shaped our collective idea of what a US president should be.This course is part of the Learn25 Collection.

  Show book

• 

  My Century in History - Memoirs

  Thomas D. Clark

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The imminent American historian and author of A History of Kentucky shares his life story, spanning the twentieth century. 
   
  When Thomas D. Clark was hired to teach history at the University of Kentucky in 1931, he began a career that would span nearly three-quarters of a century and would profoundly change not only the history department and the university but the entire Commonwealth. His still-definitive AHistory of Kentucky (1937) was one of more than thirty books he would write or edit that dealt with Kentucky, the South, and the American frontier. 
   
  In addition to his wide scholarly contributions, Clark devoted his life to the preservation of Kentucky’s historical records. He began this crusade by collecting vast stores of Kentucky's military records from the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Civil War. His efforts resulted in the Commonwealth’s first archival system and the subsequent creation of the Kentucky Library and Archives, the University of Kentucky Special Collections and Archives, the Kentucky Oral History Commission, the Kentucky History Center (recently named for him), and the University Press of Kentucky. 
   
  Born in 1903 on a cotton farm in Louisville, Mississippi, Thomas Dionysius Clark would follow a long and winding path to find his life’s passion in the study of history. He dropped out of school after seventh grade to work first at a sawmill and then on a canal dredge boat before resuming his formal education. Clark’s earliest memories—hearing about local lynch-mob violence and witnessing the destruction of virgin forest—are an invaluable window into the national issues of racial injustice and environmental depredation. In many ways, the story of Dr. Clark’s life is the story of America in the twentieth century. In My Century in History, Clark offers vivid memories of his journey, both personal and academic, a journey that took him from Mississippi to Kentucky and North Carolina, to leadership of the nation’s major historical organizations, and to visiting professorships in Austria, England, Greece, and India, as well as in universities throughout the United States. 
   
  An enormously popular public lecturer and teacher, he touched thousands of lives in Kentucky and around the world. With his characteristic wit and insight, Clark now offers his many admirers one final volume of history—his own.

  Show book

• 

  The Suffragette Bombers -...

  Simon Webbe

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  In the years leading up to the First World War, the United Kingdom was subjected to a ferocious campaign of bombing and arson. Those conducting this terrorist offensive were members of the Women's Social and Political Union; better known as the suffragettes. The targets for their attacks ranged from St Paul's Cathedral and the Bank of England in London to theatres and churches in Ireland. The violence, which included several attempted assassinations, culminated in June 1914 with an explosion in Westminster Abbey.Simon Webb explores the way in which the suffragette bombers have been airbrushed from history, leaving us with a distorted view of the struggle for female suffrage. Not only were the suffragettes far more aggressive than is generally known, but there exists the very real and surprising possibility that their militant activities actually delayed, rather than hastened, the granting of the parliamentary vote to British women.

  Show book

• 

  The Tale Of Tommy Fox

  Arthur Scott Bailey

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Bailey's writing has been described thusly by the Newark Evening News: "Mr. Bailey centered all his plots in the animal, bird and insect worlds, weaving natural history into the stories in a way that won educator's approval without arousing the suspicions of his young readers. He made it a habit to never 'write down' to children and frequently used words beyond the average juvenile vocabulary, believing that youngsters respond to the stimulus of the unfamiliar. (Wikipedia)

  Show book

• 

  George and Robert Stephenson

  Samuel Smiles

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  George Stephenson did not invent the steam engine, that was due to Newcomen and later to James Watt. He did not invent the steam locomotive, that was due to a number of people including Cugnot, Trevithick and others. He did not invent the Railway. Railways or tramways had been in use for two hundred years before Stephenson. 
   
  The reason why Stephenson was known as ‘The father of the steam locomotive’ was that he took a primitive, unreliable and wholly uneconomic device and turning it into an efficient machine not very different to those which ran until fifty or so years ago, married it with the iron rail and alone, and against considerable opposition,began, via the Stockton and Darlington Railway, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway and then the London and Birmingham Railway, the development of steam railways in England and the world. 
   
  George Stephenson began life in 1781 in the worst and poorest of all circumstances, he did not learn to read until he was twenty years old, but he, together with his son Robert, became the foremost engineers in the railway world. 
   
  If, in the middle years of the nineteenth century you wanted to build a railway, then, if you wanted it big bold and imaginative you might go to Mr. Brunel. If you wanted it to pay however, you would go to the Sephensons. (Summary by AJM)

  Show book

• 

  Out of the Shadow of a Giant -...

  John Gribbin, Mary Gribbin

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The authors of Ice Age “present a well-documented argument that [Newton] owed more to the ideas of others than he admitted” (Kirkus Reviews).   Robert Hooke and Edmond Halley, whose place in history has been overshadowed by the giant figure of Newton, were pioneering scientists within their own right, and instrumental in establishing the Royal Society.   Although Newton is widely regarded as one of the greatest scientists of all time and the father of the English scientific revolution, John and Mary Gribbin uncover the fascinating story of Robert Hooke and Edmond Halley, whose scientific achievements neatly embrace the hundred years or so during which science as we know it became established. They argue persuasively that, even without Newton, science would have made a great leap forward in the second half of the seventeenth century, headed by two extraordinary figures, Hooke and Halley.   “Science readers will thank the Gribbins for restoring Hooke and Halley to the prominence that they deserve.”—Publishers Weekly   “Engaging . . . They offer proof that Hooke was an important scientist in his own right, and often had physical insights that were borrowed (usually without acknowledgement) by Newton.”—Choice

  Show book