Showing results by narrator "Todd Curless" in All Categories

Successful sea rovers were careful practitioners of a complex profession that sought wealth by stratagem and force of arms. Drawn from the European tradition, yet of various races and nationalities, they raided both ship and town throughout much of the world from roughly 1630 until 1730. Using a variety of innovative tactics and often armed with little more than musket and grenade, many of these self-described "soldiers and privateers" successfully assaulted fortifications, attacked shipping from small craft, and even circumnavigated the globe.

This one-volume narrative history of American Indians in the United States traces the experiences of indigenous peoples from early colonial times to the present day. It demonstrates how Indian existence has varied and changed throughout our nation's history. Although popular opinion and standard histories often depict tribal peoples as victims of US aggression, that is only a part of their story. In this book Roger L. Nichols focuses on the ideas, beliefs, and actions of American Indian individuals and tribes.

Perhaps no conflict in American history is more important yet more overlooked and misunderstood than the War of 1812. At the climax of the war, inspired by the defeat of Napoleon in early 1814 and the perceived illegality of the Louisiana Purchase, the British devised a plan to launch a three-pronged attack against the Northern, Eastern, and Southern US borders.

The 1852 overland migration was the largest on record, with numbers swelled by Oregon-bound settlers as well as hordes of gold-seekers destined for California. It also was a year in which cholera took a terrible toll in lives. Presented here are firsthand accounts of this fateful year, including the words and thoughts of a young married couple, Mary Ann and Willis Boatman.

In this intimate portrait of one of the Middle Ages' most consequential men, Brian Patrick McGuire delves into the life of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux to offer a refreshing interpretation that finds within this grand historical figure a deeply spiritual human being who longed for the reflective quietude of the monastery even as he helped shape the destiny of a church and a continent. Heresy and crusade, politics and papacies, theology and disputation shaped this astonishing man's life, and McGuire presents it all in a deeply informed and clear-eyed biography.

This book is a definitive biography of Martha Canary, the woman popularly known as Calamity Jane. Written by one of today’s foremost authorities on this notorious character, it is a meticulously researched account of how an alcoholic prostitute was transformed into a Wild West heroine. Always on the move across the northern plains, Martha was more camp follower than the scout of legend. A mother of two, she often found employment as waitress, laundress, or dance hall girl and was more likely to be wearing a dress than buckskin.

On November 10, 1975, SS Edmund Fitzgerald, a giant freighter, sank with its entire crew of 29 aboard, in one of the most violent storms ever witnessed on Lake Superior. In 29 Missing, Kantar tells the Fitz's story from the christening in 1958 as the largest ship on the Great Lakes to the expedition in 1995 to recover the ship's bell in what proved to be a moving memorial to the lost crew.

The Fantasy Economy challenges the basic assumptions of the education reform movement of the last few decades. Kraus insists that education cannot control the labor market and unreliable corporate narratives fuel this misinformation. Moreover, misguided public policies, such as accountability and school choice, along with an emphasis on workforce development and STEM over broad-based liberal arts education, have only produced greater inequality.

This is the harrowing story of one of the worst shipwrecks in Great Lakes history. In the early morning hours of November 29, 1966, the SS Daniel J. Morrell was caught in a deadly storm on Lake Huron. Waves higher than the ship crested over it, and winds exceeding 60 miles per hour whipped at its hull, splitting the 603-foot freighter into two giant pieces. Twenty-eight men drowned in the icy waters of Lake Huron, but one sailor - 26-year-old Dennis Hale - miraculously survived the treacherous storm....

On November 18, 1958, when the limestone carrier Carl D. Bradley broke up during a raging storm on Lake Michigan, it became the largest ship in Great Lakes' history to vanish beneath storm-tossed waves. Along with the Bradley, 33 crew members perished. Most of the casualties hailed from the little harbor town of Rogers City, Michigan, a community that was stung with grief when, in an instant, 23 women became widows and 53 children were left fatherless. Nevertheless, this is also a story of survival....

Over twenty-five years ago, David Stuart began writing award-winning newspaper articles on regional archaeology that appealed to general readers. These columns shared interesting, and usually little-known, facts and stories about the ancient people and places of the Southwest. Stuart's unusual perspective focuses on both the past and the present.

When John Wilkes Booth fired his Derringer point-blank into President Abraham Lincoln's head, he set in motion a series of dramatic consequences that would upend the lives of ordinary Washingtonians and Americans alike. In a split second, the story of a nation was changed. During the hours that followed, America's future would hinge on what happened in a cramped back bedroom at Petersen's Boardinghouse, directly across the street from Ford's Theatre.

Biographers, journalists, and satirists have long used the subject of sex to define the masculine character and political authority of America's Founding Fathers. Tracing these commentaries on the Revolutionary Era's major political figures in Sex and the Founding Fathers, Thomas Foster shows how continual attempts to reveal the true character of these men instead exposes much more about Americans and American culture than about the Founders themselves.

When a young woman is found murdered in a seedy massage parlor near his neighborhood, the police recruit Randall Lee - an American acupuncturist and Tai Chi master - as a translator and expert in Chinese culture, to assist in the investigation. Lee discovers that the murderer is an expert in a forbidden Chinese martial art - the dark mirror to his own healing practices - and joins in the hunt for the killer to escape his own inner demons and save the woman he loves.

Tojo Smith has a serious problem. He is the number one heel for a small wrestling promotion in Texas. He is also an earthbound demon and his mission is to inspire hatred in people. This is his service to the greater evil. But suddenly, the wrestling fans start to cheer for Tojo. He goes from the most hated villain of his promotion to the most cheered antihero. And no matter how loathsome his actions in the ring become, his popularity soars.

The dimensions are in chaos, magic is illegal, and water is a rare commodity. Kyrin is running from the law. As a magic user, she's marked for death, and as a run-away from the Shadowmere, she's hunted as a weapon. Shifting between dimensions is all that's kept her alive. On the brink of being caught by the Shadowmere, Kyrin stumbles into a dimension devoid of the drought and seemingly untouched by the wrath of the Consortiums.

We live in a world where rock superstars, athletes, celebrities, and successful businesspeople are paraded across the big screen and featured on the news as though beauty and fame and money and power made them modern-day heroes. We seem to have lost sight of who a real hero is. Yet, America needs true heroes now, more than ever before. Not Supermen with superhero powers, but real men and women of character who will stand up and with conviction and make right, and often hard, choices in every circumstance.

The working cowhand of old was a dusty laborer, but today's rodeo performers can hone their skills before small-town crowds and be stars in urban coliseums.Historian Kristine Fredriksson follows the evolution of rodeo from the range to Buffalo Bill's Wild West to the extravaganzas in modern times.

In March to Independence: The American Revolution in the Southern Colonies, 1775-1776, historian Michael Cecere, consulting primary source documents, examines how Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia ended up supporting the colonies to the north, while East Florida remained within the British sphere.

Prehistoric World Cultures provides a broad overview of world prehistory while highlighting significant events, developments, and cultures through time. Organized chronologically and geographically, it gives students a clear understanding of changes through time from the evolution of our species to the development of complex civilizations.