Showing results by publisher "Dreamscape Media, LLC" in History

After 72 arduous years, the fate of the suffrage movement and its masterwork, the 19th amendment, rested not only on one state, Tennessee, but on the shoulders of a single man: 24-year-old legislator Harry Burn. Burn had previously voted with the anti-suffrage forces. If he did so again, the vote would be tied and the amendment would fall one state short of the 36 necessary for ratification. At the last minute, though, Harry Burn’s mother convinced him to vote in favor of the suffragist, and American history was forever changed.

The Great Depression was a time of desperation in America - parents struggled to feed their children and unemployment was at a record high. Adding to the lawlessness of the decade, thugs with guns and corrupt law-enforcement officers ran rampant. But amidst this panic, there was one surefire way to make money, one used by criminals and resourceful civilians alike: kidnapping. The Kidnap Years is a thoughtfully reported pause-resister that chronicles the sweep of abductions that afflicted all corners of the country as desperate people were pushed to do the unthinkable.

A searing chronicle of wartime experiences, Even the Women Must Fight probes the cultural legacy of North Vietnam's American War. Unflinching in its portrayal of hardship, valor, and personal sacrifice, this wrenching account is nothing short of a revelation, banishing in one bold stroke the familiar image of Vietnamese women as passive onlookers, war brides, prostitutes, or helpless refugees.

It's the 1790s, and the circus has arrived in Durham, Maine. Before weaver Will Rees is able to take in its spectacle, he spots Magistrate Hanson - the man he blames for his family's having to flee Dugard two years earlier. On his journey home he encounters Shaker brothers searching for a girl from their Zion community. Despite women not being allowed inside the circus, Leah had snuck out to visit it. They quickly come across her lifeless body beaten and thrown into a farmer's field on the road leading to the circus.

Called the brandy of the gods by Victor Hugo, Cognac is a universal symbol of refinement and quality. In the first comprehensive history of this celebrated drink, Kyle Jarrard charts Cognac's birth in the 1500s and its transformation into the world's most coveted brandy. Along the way, he reveals how Cognac distillers weathered vineyard die-offs, the German occupation, and other challenges over the years - and offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at Hennessy, Remy-Martin, Courvoisier, Martell, and other legendary brands.

In 1973, when Wenguang Huang was eight, his grandmother became obsessed with her own death. Fearing cremation, she appealed to her family to promise to bury her after she'd died. This was in Xi'an, a city in central China, at a time when a national ban on all traditional Chinese practices, including burials, was strictly enforced. But his grandmother was persistent, and two years later, Huang's father built her a coffin. Over the next 15 years, the whole family was consumed with planning Grandma's burial.

Just Like Us tells the story of four high school students whose parents entered this country illegally from Mexico. All four of the girls have grown up in the United States, and all four want to live the American dream, but only two have documents. As the girls attempt to make it into college, they discover that only the legal pair see a clear path forward. A coming-of-age story about girlhood and friendship, as well as the resilience required to transcend poverty, Just Like Us is also a book about identity.

Steve Gillon follows Lee Harvey Oswald for the 48 hours after the Kennedy assassination in search of answers to the question that has been troubling America for the past five decades: Why did he shoot JFK? The Warren Commission speculated that Oswald was simply a deranged sociopath. But recently declassified materials raise new troubling questions.