Showing results by author "Charles Rivers" in All Categories

In popular media and culture, the Paleolithic era is often depicted as a time when humans were completely savage, spoke with little more than grunts, hit women over their heads with clubs and kidnapped them, and of course, everyone lived in caves. The reality is that the Paleolithic era was a time of great change when humans coalesced into groups and developed different technologies that helped them survive and ultimately thrive in harsh environments.

The United Nations is one of the most famous bodies in the world, and its predecessor, the League of Nations, might be equally notorious. In fact, President Woodrow Wilson's pet project was controversial from nearly the minute it was conceived. At the end of World War I, Wilson's pleas at the Paris Peace Conference relied on his 14 Points, which included the establishment of a League of Nations.

When William Randolph Hearst was in his late 50s and at the height of his power, journalist Robert Duffuss observed, “His career is unique in American history, or, for that matter, all history. Compared with him the Bennetts and even the Pulitzers are small...his acquaintances...credit him with personal charm, but do not deny his ruthlessness in business operations. Shopkeepers and his nearest rivals are simply not in his class. Here is success on a dizzying and truly American scale. Here is journalism as large as the Rocky Mountains or the Painted Desert.”

This book tells the story of the 99 men who were serving on the USS Scorpion on May 22, 1968, the fateful day the submarine is believed to have sank. It appears that the crew members died quickly, but however it happened, the grief experienced by their family members dragged on for decades, exacerbated both by the Navy's lack of information about the submarine's final moments and the government's unwillingness to share what little knowledge it had.

It is a misconception that indigenous Australians meekly accepted the invasion of their country by the British, for they did not. They certainly resisted, but as far as colonial wars during that era went, the frontier conflicts of Australia did not warrant a great deal of attention. Indigenous Australians were hardly a warlike people, and without central organization or political cohesion beyond scattered family groups, they succumbed to the orchestrated advance of white settlement with passionate but futile resistance.

Machu Picchu es uno de los mejores puntos turísticos de América del Sur, y las ruinas han sido incluso votadas como una de las Siete Nuevas Maravillas del Mundo. Pero a pesar de que Machu Picchu es ahora la más conocida de todas las ruinas incas, su función en la civilización inca aún no está clara. Machu Picchu: La historia y el misterio de la ciudad inca cubre de manera integral la historia de la ciudad, así como la especulación sobre el propósito de Machu Picchu y el debate sobre los edificios.

Violent extremist Sunni and Shiite Muslims are at odds about most things. One of the few points that they can agree upon in the midst of their war of mutual annihilation is that the Apocalypse is coming and that they are the soldiers of its harbinger and redeemer: the Mahdi. Across the Islamic world, the figure of the Mahdi has appeared with increasing prevalence in the last few decades.

The pyramids of Egypt are such recognizable symbols of antiquity that for millennia, people have made assumptions about what they are and why they exist without full consideration of the various meanings these ancient symbolic structures have had over the centuries. Generations have viewed them as symbols of a lost past, which in turn is often portrayed as a world full of romance and mystery.

History's Greatest Artists: The Life and Legacy of Jackson Pollock looks at the personal background that led Pollock to become an artist and the cultural climate in which he rose to fame. Pollock's formal technique and artistic legacy are also analyzed, including his working methods and education. You will learn about Pollock like never before, in no time at all.

People love mysteries, which is a good thing since history is so replete with them. This is especially true among seafaring people, and of all the mysteries of the deep, few rise to the level of the Mary Celeste. In many ways, it is a story more suited for an episode of The X-Files than it is for any history book. There is the unlucky ship that began her sailing career under a cloud of bad fortune and accident.

Shirley Temple remains the most famous child star of all time, but even this designation fails to reflect the magnitude of her popularity during the era in which she worked. While it is true that she was not the first child actor to reach Hollywood fame, she was the first - and to this day, perhaps the only - star who rose to the very pinnacle of the Hollywood elite before she even turned 10 years of age. For this reason, it is no exaggeration to view Shirley as the progenitor for all of the child actors that succeeded her.

As one of the most influential and recognizable religious figures in history, Martin Luther (1483-1546) continues to impact the world over 550 years after his death. Luther was a German priest and theologian whose writings and teachings sparked the Protestant Reformation in the early 16th century, creating one of the greatest schisms in the history of the Catholic Church and touching off religious turmoil and bloodshed that would engulf Europe for the next two centuries.

The Lombards originated in Scandinavia before migrating slowly through central Europe, and as the Western Roman Empire collapsed and the Byzantine successor state in Constantinople attempted to reestablish order, the Lombards took advantage of the chaos and planted themselves firmly on Italian soil.

Given their stellar legacy, it is little surprise that ANZAC soldiers were used by the British Empire for the several decades, most notably in World War II, ensuring that even after the British Empire declined, the Australian and New Zealand troops’ contributions to the Commonwealth remain a source of pride.

On April 27, 1898, six American ships of the line, led by the Olympia with Commodore George Dewey aboard, headed toward Manila Bay. After several days of sailing over the South China Sea, Dewey hoped to sail past the Spanish fort at Corregidor to arrive at Manila without detection, and sailed without lights in order to do so. He made it into the bay, where the naval battle with the Spanish South Pacific Squadron began in the wee hours of May 1, 1898.

A little more than 100 years ago a Mexican peasant named Emiliano Zapata gathered a rural army from the plantations and villages of southern Mexico, seized the lands of the haciendas, and began to distribute them among the peasants of Anenecuilco, his hometown, in the state of Morelos. Outraged and impatient with the ceaseless destitution of the indigenous peoples at the hands of the landowners, he had decided to take justice in his hands.

Over the last 150 years, historians and Americans have endlessly debated over the Civil War, including its causes and the best and worst generals. Nowhere has there been a sharper debate than over the career and legacy of George McClellan, with a majority viewing him as the North's biggest goat and a small but vocal minority insisting that McClellan was a very good general who was made a scapegoat by the Lincoln Administration and its supporters.

Even before the American Revolution, Americans traveled west. From the narrow strip of the 13 colonies, across the Appalachians, ever westward they journeyed, and by the end of the 19th century the United States of America stretched from sea to shining sea.

Meet the Luddites, a 19th-century brotherhood of rebels who vowed to annihilate every last one of the newfangled spinning machines that cost thousands their jobs. The Luddites' riots are indefensible, at least from the standpoint of violence, but they beg the question of whether the protests were nonsensical acts of rage carried out by thugs who sought to exploit imagined fears or desperate measures taken by those who felt neglected by the government. The Luddites chronicles the revolution and the negative reaction to it.

Like most black soldiers, the 54th Massachusetts received discriminatory treatment from the army, despite the fact that the 54th acquitted itself well in a nearly suicidal attack at Fort Wagner. As a result the 54th fought in several battles of lesser note, and they might have faded into obscurity if not for the critically acclaimed movie Glory, which looked at the lives of its commander, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, and its soldiers. Today, the 54th Massachusetts is perhaps the most famous regiment of the entire war.