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Books > Humanities > History > American history

Never Caught - The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge (Paperback): Erica Armstrong Dunbar Never Caught - The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge (Paperback)
Erica Armstrong Dunbar
R227 Discovery Miles 2 270 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

A startling and eye-opening look into America's First Family, Never Caught is the powerful story about a daring woman of "extraordinary grit" (The Philadelphia Inquirer). When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation's capital. In setting up his household he brought along nine slaves, including Ona Judge. As the President grew accustomed to Northern ways, there was one change he couldn't abide: Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. Rather than comply, Washington decided to circumvent the law. Every six months he sent the slaves back down south just as the clock was about to expire. Though Ona Judge lived a life of relative comfort, she was denied freedom. So, when the opportunity presented itself one clear and pleasant spring day in Philadelphia, Judge left everything she knew to escape to New England. Yet freedom would not come without its costs. At just twenty-two-years-old, Ona became the subject of an intense manhunt led by George Washington, who used his political and personal contacts to recapture his property. "A crisp and compulsively readable feat of research and storytelling" (USA TODAY), historian and National Book Award finalist Erica Armstrong Dunbar weaves a powerful tale and offers fascinating new scholarship on how one young woman risked everything to gain freedom from the famous founding father and most powerful man in the United States at the time.

The Virginia Blue Ridge Railroad (Paperback): Mary E Lyons The Virginia Blue Ridge Railroad (Paperback)
Mary E Lyons
R586 R489 Discovery Miles 4 890 Save R97 (17%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days
Sugarhead - Tales of Moonshine and a Vanished Mountain Culture (Paperback): Clark Church Sugarhead - Tales of Moonshine and a Vanished Mountain Culture (Paperback)
Clark Church
R469 Discovery Miles 4 690 Ships in 10 - 15 working days
The Great Dissenter - The Story of John Marshall Harlan, America's Judicial Hero (Paperback): Peter S. Canellos The Great Dissenter - The Story of John Marshall Harlan, America's Judicial Hero (Paperback)
Peter S. Canellos
R610 R515 Discovery Miles 5 150 Save R95 (16%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days

The "superb" (The Guardian) biography of an American who stood against all the forces of Gilded Age America to fight for civil rights and economic freedom: Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan. They say that history is written by the victors. But not in the case of the most famous dissenter on the Supreme Court. Almost a century after his death, John Marshall Harlan's words helped end segregation and gave us our civil rights and our modern economic freedom. But his legacy would not have been possible without the courage of Robert Harlan, a slave who John's father raised like a son in the same household. After the Civil War, Robert emerges as a political leader. With Black people holding power in the Republican Party, it is Robert who helps John land his appointment to the Supreme Court. At first, John is awed by his fellow justices, but the country is changing. Northern whites are prepared to take away black rights to appease the South. Giant trusts are monopolizing entire industries. Against this onslaught, the Supreme Court seemed all too willing to strip away civil rights and invalidate labor protections. So as case after case comes before the court, challenging his core values, John makes a fateful decision: He breaks with his colleagues in fundamental ways, becoming the nation's prime defender of the rights of Black people, immigrant laborers, and people in distant lands occupied by the US. Harlan's dissents, particularly in Plessy v. Ferguson, were widely read and a source of hope for decades. Thurgood Marshall called Harlan's Plessy dissent his "Bible"--and his legal roadmap to overturning segregation. In the end, Harlan's words built the foundations for the legal revolutions of the New Deal and Civil Rights eras. Spanning from the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement and beyond, The Great Dissenter is a "magnificent" (Douglas Brinkley) and "thoroughly researched" (The New York Times) rendering of the American legal system's most significant failures and most inspiring successes.

A Great Improvisation - Franklin, France, and the Birth of America (Paperback, 1st Owl Books ed): Stacy Schiff A Great Improvisation - Franklin, France, and the Birth of America (Paperback, 1st Owl Books ed)
Stacy Schiff
R638 R545 Discovery Miles 5 450 Save R93 (15%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days

In this dazzling work of history, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author follows Benjamin Franklin to France for the crowning achievement of his career
In December of 1776 a small boat delivered an old man to France." So begins an enthralling narrative account of how Benjamin Franklin-seventy years old, without any diplomatic training, and possessed of the most rudimentary French-convinced France, an absolute monarchy, to underwrite America's experiment in democracy.
When Franklin stepped onto French soil, he well understood he was embarking on the greatest gamble of his career. By virtue of fame, charisma, and ingenuity, Franklin outmaneuvered British spies, French informers, and hostile colleagues; engineered the Franco-American alliance of l778; and helped to negotiate the peace of l783. The eight-year French mission stands not only as Franklin's most vital service to his country but as the most revealing of the man.
In "A Great Improvisation," Stacy Schiff draws from new and little-known sources to illuminate the least-explored part of Franklin's life. Here is an unfamiliar, unforgettable chapter of the Revolution, a rousing tale of American infighting, and the treacherous backroom dealings at Versailles that would propel George Washington from near decimation at Valley Forge to victory at Yorktown. From these pages emerge a particularly human and yet fiercely determined Founding Father, as well as a profound sense of how fragile, improvisational, and international was our country's bid for independence.

Policing the Seas - Anglo-American Relations and the Equatorial Atlantic, 1819-1865 (Paperback): Mark C. Hunter Policing the Seas - Anglo-American Relations and the Equatorial Atlantic, 1819-1865 (Paperback)
Mark C. Hunter
R900 Discovery Miles 9 000 Ships in 12 - 17 working days
Curiosities of the Confederate Capital - Untold Richmond Stories of the Spectacular, Tragic and Bizarre (Paperback): Brian Burns Curiosities of the Confederate Capital - Untold Richmond Stories of the Spectacular, Tragic and Bizarre (Paperback)
Brian Burns
R563 R463 Discovery Miles 4 630 Save R100 (18%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days

In the early days of the Civil War, Richmond was declared the capital of the Confederacy, and until now, countless stories from its tenure as the Southern headquarters have remained buried. Mary E. Walker, a Union doctor and feminist, was once held captive in the city for refusing to wear proper women's clothing. A coffee substitute factory exploded under intriguing circumstances. Many Confederate soldiers, when in the trenches of battle, thumbed through the pages of Hugo's "Les Miserables." Author Brian Burns reveals these and many more curious tales of Civil War Richmond.

Texas Boomtowns: - A History of Blood and Oil (Paperback): Bartee Haile Texas Boomtowns: - A History of Blood and Oil (Paperback)
Bartee Haile
R577 R478 Discovery Miles 4 780 Save R99 (17%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days
Thaddeus Stevens - Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice (Paperback): bruce levine Thaddeus Stevens - Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice (Paperback)
bruce levine
R521 R432 Discovery Miles 4 320 Save R89 (17%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days

A "powerful" (The Wall Street Journal) biography of one of the 19th century's greatest statesmen, encompassing his decades-long fight against slavery and his postwar struggle to bring racial justice to America.Thaddeus Stevens was among the first to see the Civil War as an opportunity for a second American revolution--a chance to remake the country as a genuine multiracial democracy. As one of the foremost abolitionists in Congress in the years leading up to the war, he was a leader of the young Republican Party's radical wing, fighting for anti-slavery and anti-racist policies long before party colleagues like Abraham Lincoln endorsed them. These policies--including welcoming black men into the Union's armies--would prove crucial to the Union war effort. During the Reconstruction era that followed, Stevens demanded equal civil and political rights for Black Americans--rights eventually embodied in the 14th and 15th amendments. But while Stevens in many ways pushed his party--and America--towards equality, he also championed ideas too radical for his fellow Congressmen ever to support, such as confiscating large slaveholders' estates and dividing the land among those who had been enslaved. In Thaddeus Stevens, acclaimed historian Bruce Levine has written a "vital" (The Guardian), "compelling" (James McPherson) biography of one of the most visionary statesmen of the 19th century and a forgotten champion for racial justice in America.

Abyss - The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 (Paperback): Max Hastings Abyss - The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 (Paperback)
Max Hastings
R430 R344 Discovery Miles 3 440 Save R86 (20%) Ships in 5 - 10 working days

The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was the most perilous event in history, when mankind faced a looming nuclear collision between the United States and Soviet Union. During those weeks, the world gazed into the abyss of potential annihilation.

Max Hastings’s graphic new history tells the story from the viewpoints of national leaders, Russian officers, Cuban peasants, American pilots and British disarmers. Max Hastings deploys his accustomed blend of eye-witness interviews, archive documents and diaries, White House tape recordings, top-down analysis, first to paint word-portraits of the Cold War experiences of Fidel Castro’s Cuba, Nikita Khrushchev’s Russia and Kennedy’s America; then to describe the nail-biting Thirteen Days in which Armageddon beckoned.

Hastings began researching this book believing that he was exploring a past event from twentieth century history. He is as shocked as are millions of us around the world, to discover that the rape of Ukraine gives this narrative a hitherto unimaginable twenty-first century immediacy. We may be witnessing the onset of a new Cold War between nuclear-armed superpowers.

To contend with today’s threat, which Hastings fears will prove enduring, it is critical to understand how, sixty years ago, the world survived its last glimpse into the abyss. Only by fearing the worst, he argues, can our leaders hope to secure the survival of the planet.

Bainbridge Island (Paperback): Donald R Tjossem, Bainbridge Island Historical Museum Bainbridge Island (Paperback)
Donald R Tjossem, Bainbridge Island Historical Museum
R641 R528 Discovery Miles 5 280 Save R113 (18%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Bainbridge Island sits in the middle of Puget Sound in Washington State. Its unique history starts with the Native Americans and includes logging, farming, fishing, and shipbuilding from the late 1800s through the present. Early explorers included George Vancouver in 1792 and the Wilkes expedition of 1841. Ferry service and other means of water transport were the only ways onto the island until 1950, when a bridge was completed. Bainbridge Island is only a 30-minute ferry ride from Seattle, and its only bridge approaches the island from the west. The City of Bainbridge Island, which includes the entire 65-square-mile island, incorporated on February 28, 1991. Its 23,000 residents today share the rich history that is told in images and captions within the pages of this book.

Bald Knobbers: - Chronicles of Vigilante Justice (Paperback): Vincent S. Anderson Bald Knobbers: - Chronicles of Vigilante Justice (Paperback)
Vincent S. Anderson
R572 R473 Discovery Miles 4 730 Save R99 (17%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days

At the close of the nineteenth century in the Ozark Plateau, lawlessness ruled. Lawmakers, in bed with moonshiners and bootleggers, fueled local crime and turned a blind eye to egregious wrongdoing. In response, a vigilante force emerged from the Ozark hills: the Bald Knobbers. They formed their own laws and alliances; local ministers donned the Knobber mask and brought "justice" to the hills, lynching suspected bootleggers. As community support and interest grew, reporters wrote curious articles about Knobber exploits. Join Vincent S. Anderson as he uncovers these peculiar reports including trials, lovers' spats ending in coldblooded murder and Ozark vigilante history that inspired a folk legend.

Warriors in Mr. Lincoln's Army (Hardcover): Quita V Shier Warriors in Mr. Lincoln's Army (Hardcover)
Quita V Shier
R1,243 R1,045 Discovery Miles 10 450 Save R198 (16%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days
The Fall of the FBI - How a Once Great Agency Became a Threat to Democracy (Hardcover): Thomas J. Baker The Fall of the FBI - How a Once Great Agency Became a Threat to Democracy (Hardcover)
Thomas J. Baker
R808 R674 Discovery Miles 6 740 Save R134 (17%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days
Detroit's Delectable Past: - Two Centuries of Frog Legs, Pigeon Pie and Drugstore Whiskey (Paperback, New): Bill Loomis Detroit's Delectable Past: - Two Centuries of Frog Legs, Pigeon Pie and Drugstore Whiskey (Paperback, New)
Bill Loomis
R572 R473 Discovery Miles 4 730 Save R99 (17%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Join local food aficionado Bill Loomis on a look back at the appetites, tastes, kitchens, parties, holidays and everyday meals that defined eating in Detroit, from the earliest days as a French village to the start of the twentieth century. Whether it's at a frontier farmers' market, a Victorian twelve-course children's birthday party replete with tongue sandwiches or a five-cent-lunch diner, food is a main ingredient in a community's identity and history. While showcasing favorite fare of the day, this book also explores historic foodways--how locals fished the Detroit River, banished flies from kitchens without screens and harvested frog legs with miniscule shotguns. Wedding feasts, pioneer grub, cooking classes and the thriftless '20s are all on the menu, too.

The Governor's Pawns - Hostages and Hostage-Taking in Civil War West Virginia (Hardcover): Randall S Gooden The Governor's Pawns - Hostages and Hostage-Taking in Civil War West Virginia (Hardcover)
Randall S Gooden
R1,367 Discovery Miles 13 670 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

An in-depth look at the unique actions of the newly formed state of West Virginia during the Civil War While the taking of hostages by both the Union and the Confederacy was common during the Civil War, it was unique for an individual state government to engage in this practice. The Governor's Pawns examines the history that led to the taking of political prisoners in western Virginia, the implementation of a hostage law by Virginia's pro-Union government in 1863, and the adoption of that law by the newly recognized state of West Virginia. The roots of state hostage-taking took hold prior to the Civil War. Sectional politics between eastern and western Virginia and their local communities, as well as long-standing family rivalries, resulted in the extreme actions of secession and war. Randall Gooden uses genealogical sources to tell the fascinating stories of individuals swept up in the turmoil, including hostages and their captors, freedmen, and government and military officials. Gooden emphasizes the personal nature of civilian arrests and hostage-taking and describes the impact on communities and the families left scarred by this practice. The Governor's Pawns takes readers into the city streets, state and national capitol buildings, army camps, jails and military prisons, hospitals, and graveyards that accompanied the tit-for-tat style of pointedly personal warfare.

Montana Baseball History (Paperback): Skylar Browning, Jeremy Watterson Montana Baseball History (Paperback)
Skylar Browning, Jeremy Watterson
R586 R489 Discovery Miles 4 890 Save R97 (17%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days
The Accidental Guerrilla - Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (Paperback): David Kilcullen The Accidental Guerrilla - Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (Paperback)
David Kilcullen
R485 Discovery Miles 4 850 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

War in the post-9/11 world is far different from what we expected it be. Counterinsurgency and protracted guerrilla warfare, not shock and awe, are the order of the day. David Kilcullen is the world's foremost expert on this way of war, and in The Accidental Guerrilla, the Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor to General David Petraeus in Iraq surveys war as it is actually fought in the contemporary world. Colouring his account with gripping battlefield experiences that range from the jungles and highlands of South and Southeast Asia to the mountains of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to the dusty towns of the Middle East and the horn of Africa, The Accidental Guerrilla will, quite simply, change the way we think about war. While conventional warfare has obvious limits, Kilcullen also stresses that neither counterterrorism nor traditional counterinsurgency is the appropriate framework to fight the enemy we now face. Certainly, traditional counterinsurgency is more effective than counterterrorism when it comes to entities like Al Qaeda, but as Kilcullen contends, our current focus is far too narrow, for it tends to emphasize one geographical region and one state. The current war presents a much different situation: stateless insurgents and terrorists operating across large number of countries and only loosely affiliated with each other.

Abyss - The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 (Hardcover): Max Hastings Abyss - The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 (Hardcover)
Max Hastings
R798 R697 Discovery Miles 6 970 Save R101 (13%) Ships in 12 - 17 working days

A Times History Book of the Year 2022 From the #1 bestselling historian Max Hastings 'the heart-stopping story of the missile crisis' Daily Telegraph The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was the most perilous event in history, when mankind faced a looming nuclear collision between the United States and Soviet Union. During those weeks, the world gazed into the abyss of potential annihilation. Max Hastings's graphic new history tells the story from the viewpoints of national leaders, Russian officers, Cuban peasants, American pilots and British disarmers. Max Hastings deploys his accustomed blend of eye-witness interviews, archive documents and diaries, White House tape recordings, top-down analysis, first to paint word-portraits of the Cold War experiences of Fidel Castro's Cuba, Nikita Khrushchev's Russia and Kennedy's America; then to describe the nail-biting Thirteen Days in which Armageddon beckoned. Hastings began researching this book believing that he was exploring a past event from twentieth century history. He is as shocked as are millions of us around the world, to discover that the rape of Ukraine gives this narrative a hitherto unimaginable twenty-first century immediacy. We may be witnessing the onset of a new Cold War between nuclear-armed superpowers. To contend with today's threat, which Hastings fears will prove enduring, it is critical to understand how, sixty years ago, the world survived its last glimpse into the abyss. Only by fearing the worst, he argues, can our leaders hope to secure the survival of the planet.

Blood and Treasure - Daniel Boone and the Fight for America's First Frontier (Paperback): Bob Drury, Tom Clavin Blood and Treasure - Daniel Boone and the Fight for America's First Frontier (Paperback)
Bob Drury, Tom Clavin
R514 R396 Discovery Miles 3 960 Save R118 (23%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days
The Juke Joint King of the Mississippi Hills - The Raucous Reign of Tillman Branch (Paperback): Janice Branch Tracy The Juke Joint King of the Mississippi Hills - The Raucous Reign of Tillman Branch (Paperback)
Janice Branch Tracy
R563 R463 Discovery Miles 4 630 Save R100 (18%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days

In the swamps and juke joints of Holmes County, Mississippi, Edward Tillman Branch built his empire. Tillman's clubs were legendary. Moonshine flowed as patrons enjoyed craps games and well-know blues acts. Across from his Goodman establishment, prostitutes in a trysting trailer entertained men, including the married Tillman himself. A threat to law enforcement and anyone who crossed his path, Branch rose from modest beginnings to become the ruler of a treacherous kingdom in the hills that became his own end. Author Janice Branch Tracy reveals the man behind the story and the path that led him to become what Honeyboy Edwards referred to in his autobiography as the "baddest white man in Mississippi."

Grand Teton National Park (Paperback): Kendra Leah Fuller, Shannon Sullivan, Jackson Hole Historical Society Grand Teton National Park (Paperback)
Kendra Leah Fuller, Shannon Sullivan, Jackson Hole Historical Society
R641 R528 Discovery Miles 5 280 Save R113 (18%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days

The majestic beauty of Grand Teton National Park has moved people throughout time. Native Americans believed in the spiritual power of the towering mountain peaks and journeyed there to gain special powers. Early fur traders, who had just crossed less ominous mountain ranges, viewed with trepidation the massive obstacle that loomed before them on their passage to the Pacific Northwest. In others, the Tetons ignited vision and passion--a vision to preserve for all generations to come and a passion to protect the independent way of life known by the first settlers of this western frontier. The formation of Grand Teton National Park spanned the course of nearly 70 years. Although there were many people who shared the struggle before them, it was not until Stephen Mather and Horace M. Albright took up the fight in 1915 that steps towards success were taken. Albright's tenacity and ability to convey his vision to philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. set in motion a very long journey that culminated with Pres. Harry S. Truman signing today's Grand Teton National Park into existence on September 13, 1950.

Righteous Troublemakers - Untold Stories of the Social Justice Movement in America (Paperback, First Time Trade ed.): Al... Righteous Troublemakers - Untold Stories of the Social Justice Movement in America (Paperback, First Time Trade ed.)
Al Sharpton
R486 R400 Discovery Miles 4 000 Save R86 (18%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days
Self Made - Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker (Paperback, Media Tie-In ed.): A'Lelia Bundles Self Made - Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker (Paperback, Media Tie-In ed.)
A'Lelia Bundles
R527 R445 Discovery Miles 4 450 Save R82 (16%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days
This I Believe: - Philadelphia (Paperback): Dan Gediman, Mary Jo Gediman This I Believe: - Philadelphia (Paperback)
Dan Gediman, Mary Jo Gediman
R604 R494 Discovery Miles 4 940 Save R110 (18%) Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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