Showing results by narrator "Scott Clem" in All Categories

Between the 18th and early 19th centuries, Britain experienced massive leaps in technological, scientific, and economical advancement. This powerful period has since been immortalized as the great Industrial Revolution, during which Britain became a formidable force that boasted unmatched economical growth, drastic changes in living conditions, and even the emergence of a neglected social class. Vast portions of rural lands were transformed into interconnected, complex, and multitasking cities.

Catherine the Great ushered in the Russian Enlightenment. She had an unmatched passion for the arts, and she began a private art collection that would eventually evolve into galleries upon galleries of historical treasures shipped in from all over the world. This fabled museum was none other than the Hermitage, located in the heart of Saint Petersburg, a city founded by the imperial empire's very own Peter the Great.

Most books and documentaries about the First World War focus on the carnage of the Western Front, where Germany faced off against France, the British Empire, and their allies in a grueling slugfest that wasted millions of lives. The shattered landscape of the trenches has become symbolic of the war as a whole, and it is this experience that everyone associates with World War I, but that front was not the only experience.

In 1968, the Republican Convention was a display of congeniality and unity, despite the various factions each supporting a separate candidate. Choosing Spiro Agnew as his running mate, Richard Nixon won the nomination on the first ballot, with Ronald Reagan moving to make it unanimous. Conservatives such as Barry Goldwater and Strom Thurmond immediately joined in the support.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries in America had no shortage of political graft and powerful politicians, but few were as influential or conspicuous as the Kingfish, Huey P. Long. A populist Democrat who hoped to elevate the lower classes in Louisiana, Long accrued massive amounts of power during his governorship, in the process revolutionizing political campaigning.

How to live your dream: Recognize that you carry power on the inside. Define exactly what you want to achieve. Focus on it with your deepest concentration. Block every form of distraction and negative energy. Unleash the power that you carry to the world. Start taking massive positive actions right now. Match it with a singleness of purpose and enthusiasm. Celebrate every single step with gratitude. Live your dream, the power is in you. This audiobook will ignite the potential within you to experience the amazing life that awaits you.

During the mid-1960s, the people of America became accustomed to opening their newspapers to two types of headlines. The first would be positive and often have something to do with the space program, perhaps which mission was in the works or which one had just been completed. Then there would be an article of a more negative nature, often concerning the United States' increasing involvement in the Vietnam War. Toward the end of 1968, however, a new and more sinister headline began to pop up.

"It's very simple. We want sharia. Sharia in economy, in politics, in judiciary, in our borders and our foreign relations." Mohammed Abdel-Rahman, the son of Omar Abdel-Rahman, Time. October 8, 2012.

Beginning in 2010, much of the Middle East, including Egypt, was swept up by a series of revolutions later referred to as the Arab Spring. The wave of riots and demonstrations — some violent, some not, but all impactful and sizeable — began in Tunisia.

In Charles River Editors' Legends of the West series, listeners can get caught up to speed on the lives of America's most famous frontier figures in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known. Legends of the West: The Life and Legacy of Butch Cassidy chronicles the outlaw's life, while also analyzing his legacy and the mythology that has enveloped his story, attempting to separate fact from fiction to determine what the notorious robber was really like.

When one is looking quickly over the lives of the Presidents of the United States, it is easy to overlook William Henry Harrison. After all, he only served as the Chief Executive for 30 days, and he spent the majority of those in bed, fighting for his life and eventually losing. However, to ignore Harrison because he served such a short time in the White House is just as foolish as ignoring Patrick Henry or Alexander Hamilton because they were never elected to the nation's highest office.

Despite the attempt to settle America's slavery issue with the Missouri Compromise in 1820, the young nation kept pushing further westward, and with that more territory was acquired. After the Mexican-American War ended in 1848, the sectional crisis was brewing like never before, with California and the newly-acquired Mexican territory now ready to be organized into states.

When President Thomas Jefferson went ahead with the Louisiana Purchase, he wasn't entirely sure what was on the land he was buying, or whether the purchase was even constitutional. Ultimately, the Louisiana Purchase encompassed all or part of 15 current US states and two Canadian provinces. The purchase, which immediately doubled the size of the United States at the time, still comprises around 23% of current American territory. With so much new territory to carve into states, the balance of Congressional power became a hot topic.

A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors' American Legends series, listeners can get caught up to speed on the lives of America's most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known.

That Jesus of Nazareth (ca. 4 BC-30 CE) was crucified is the closest to a historical fact anyone can say about him. Biblical scholars have spent centuries debating the details of what Jesus did and said, but this crude fact - that Jesus suffered capital punishment at the hands of the Roman authority by crucifixion - is accepted by the overwhelming majority of scholars. That there once was a cross where Jesus suffered and died is, therefore, the sequential logical affirmation.

America has always preferred heroes who weren't clean cut, an informal ode to the rugged individualism and pioneering spirit that defined the nation in previous centuries. The early 19th century saw the glorification of frontier folk heroes like Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. After the Civil War, the outlaws of the West were more popular than the marshals, with Jesse James and Billy the Kid finding their way into dime novels.

The history of war is replete with examples of men who distinguished themselves in battle only to disgrace themselves after being promoted to commands above their capabilities. During the American Civil War, that man was John Bell Hood. Hood was one of the most tenacious generals in the Confederacy, for better and worse.

The ancient world was full of many fantastic cities and places, and like today's major cities, the great ancient cities were hubs of trade, religion, and science. Among the many cities of the ancient world, Rome and Athens may come to mind first, but the city of Babylon in the land of Mesopotamia was already an ancient, venerated city when the others were still inconsequential settlements

In the early 20th century, one of the most famous women in America was Emma Goldman. Born in Russia in the late 19th century, Goldman had come to the United States and quickly grew attracted to anarchy and socialism. While many simply grumbled about the Gilded Age in private, Goldman was a woman of action, from being involved in the attempted assassination of tycoon Henry Clay Frick to publishing anarchist journals and passing around information about contraception.

Nathaniel Hawthorne needs no formal introduction for any American who took a literature course in high school. It's impossible to avoid reading one of Hawthorne's classics, particularly The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables. Hawthorne could trace his family roots back to the Puritans of the 17th-century colonies, and he was clearly qualified to produce some of America's greatest historical fiction.

Ares, the god of war and personification of all that is reactionary and violent, is remembered today as the hated, unshakeable, and infallible embodiment of the violence prevalent in war and society at large, but surviving evidence suggests that this may not have always been the case. To understand that, it's necessary to remember that Greek mythology has been filtered and tempered by centuries of editors and zealots and fickle word of mouth.