Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Americas

In this masterful narrative, Winston Groom brings his signature storytelling panache to the tale of our nation's most fascinating founding fathers - Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams - painting a vivid picture of the improbable events, bold ideas, and extraordinary characters who created the United States of America.

Nationalist history by textbook authors and the descendants or biographers of the famous and infamous have given history students a very skewed vision of our true history - indeed, the true history of mankind. This course is designed to enlighten and encourage you to consider the factual basis of many of our most-cherished yet glossed-over stories and the real-life characters who populate them.

Covering the pivotal years 1861-1864, General Ulysses S. Grant leads us in his own words from Fort Sumter to his appointment as commander of all the armies of the North. Grant remembers his experiences with the key players of the day, takes us onto the battlefields, and recounts the twists and turns of fate. Grant was a failed peacetime soldier, failed farmer, failed woodcutter, failed bill collector, and 38-year-old clerk in a harness store in the spring of 1861. By 1864, he was directing all the Union forces.

In this splendid account of the world’s oldest and richest auction house, Lacey brings to life the personalities, ambition and shrewd business dealings behind the glamour and the glitz. From its beginning in 18th century London as a modest book dealer, Sotheby’s owes its rise to a succession of clever and colourful entrepreneurs who knew how to read the winds of economic change and sniff out buyers and sellers of the moment.

Ulysses S. Grant, 18th President of the United States and commander of the Union forces in the Civil War, tells the story of his life in his own words. In this opening volume, Grant covers his early years, including his time at the U.S. military academy at West Point and his service during the Mexican War under Zachary Taylor. Grant wrote his memoirs in order to rescue his family from debt and they were published as he lay dying of throat cancer. Today, they are an American classic.

Why does race seem to color almost every feature of our moral and political universe? Why does a perpetual cycle of slavery - in all its political, intellectual, and cultural forms - continue to define the Black experience? And why is anti-Black violence such a predominant feature not only in the United States but around the world? These are just some of the compelling questions that animate Afropessimism, Frank B. Wilderson III’s seminal work on the philosophy of Blackness.

From her start playing paddle tennis on the streets of Harlem as a young teenager to her eleven Grand Slam tennis wins to her professional golf career, Althea Gibson became the most famous Black sportswoman of the mid-twentieth century. In her unprecedented athletic career, she was the first African American to win titles at the French Open, Wimbledon, and the U.S. Open. In this first full-scale biography, Ashley Brown narrates the public career and private struggles of Althea Gibson (1927–2003).

Following on the heels of his magnificent history of the 19th-century Texas Rangers, Mike Cox now traces the Rangers from 1900 to the present. From horseback to helicopter, from rough-and-tumble cattle ranches to boom-and-bust oil fields, and from Prohibition to World War II, Cox brilliantly guides listeners through the modern history of these legendary Texas lawmen.

At 7:30 a.m. on June 16, 1944, George Junius Stinney, Jr., was escorted by four guards to the death chamber. Wearing socks but no shoes, the 14-year-old Black boy walked with his Bible tucked under his arm. The guards strapped his slight, five-foot-one-inch frame into the electric chair. His small size made it difficult to affix the electrode to his right leg and the face mask, which was clearly too large, fell to the floor when the executioner flipped the switch. That day, George Stinney became the youngest person executed in the United States during the 20th century.

From blue bells to armadillos, and the San Antonio River Walk to Cadillac Ranch, here's the inside story about the very things that give the state its character. Did you know that Texas has more bird species than any other state? That Texas is the largest producer of oil and gas in the United States and the nation's leader in pickup sales? That Texas has museums and larger-than-life statues that honor native sons and daughters such as Lyndon B. Johnson, Barbara Jordan, Buddy Holly, and J. Frank Dobie?

The author of the classic best seller Lincoln on Leadership answers the question: How would President Lincoln handle the pressing crises of our modern world? Abraham Lincoln is recognized as one of history's finest leaders, a great president when the United States was under tremendous strain. But suppose he were alive today. How would Lincoln deal with today's high-pressure issues, from politics to business?

As a child, Joseph Beck heard the stories - when other lawyers came up with excuses, his father courageously defended a Black man charged with raping a White woman. Now a lawyer himself, Beck reconstructs his father's role in State of Alabama vs. Charles White, Alias, a trial that was much publicized when Harper Lee was 12 years old.

Ranging from the shattered gentility of Edith Wharton's heroines to racial confrontation in the songs of Nina Simone, American Rhapsody presents a kaleidoscopic story of the creation of a culture. Here is a series of deeply involving portraits of American artists and innovators who have helped to shape the country in the modern age. Claudia Roth Pierpont expertly mixes biography and criticism, history and reportage, to bring these portraits to life and to link them in surprising ways.

From one of our most accomplished and widely admired historians, a revelatory portrait of Benjamin Franklin' s youngest sister and a history of history itself. Like her brother, Jane Franklin was a passionate reader, a gifted writer, and an astonishingly shrewd political commentator.

This is the story of the American Revolution, the men who made it and who then secured it. It is the story of an improbable victory by a provincial collection of loosely knit colonies over the dominant military and political power in the world. It is also the story of the creation of a nation founded on principles that no one at the time regarded as viable, and that over time have come to be regarded as the most successful recipe for political success in the modern world.

Twelve Years a Slave (Originally published in 1853 with the sub-title: "Narrative of Solomon Northup, a citizen of New-York, kidnapped in Washington city in 1841, and rescued in 1853, from a cotton plantation near the Red River in Louisiana") is the written work of Solomon Northup; a man who was born free, but was bound into slavery later in life. Northup's account describes the daily life of slaves in Bayou Beof, their diet, the relationship between the master and slave, the means that slave catchers used to recapture them and the ugly realities that slaves suffered.

When Mark Twain was growing up, all he wanted to be was a steamboat man. And so Twain ran away in pursuit of his dream. Life on the mighty river for Twain consisted of paddleboats and history, poker games and gamblers, larger-than-life characters and outlandish festivals like Mardi Gras. Twain recorded it all with his keen eye for detail and biting wit.

Civil War Commando is the incredible tale of two giants on a historic collision course: Will Cushing, the United States Navy's first naval commando, and the unsinkable Confederate ironclad Albemarle, Terror of the Roanoke, an innovative war machine that seized control of the Roanoke River Valley and threatened to cost the Union the war.

The story of the Boston Massacre - when on a late winter evening in 1770, British soldiers shot five local men to death - is familiar to generations. But from the very beginning, many accounts have obscured a fascinating truth: the Massacre arose from conflicts that were as personal as they were political.

Lies Across America is a reality check for anyone who has ever sought to learn about America through the nation's public sites and markers. Entertaining and enlightening, it is destined to change the way American listeners see their country.