Caribbean History English

Pedro Martinez. Sammy Sosa. Manny Ramirez By 2000, Dominican baseball players were in every Major League clubhouse, and regularly winning every baseball award. In 2002, Omar Minaya became the first Dominican general manager of a Major League team. But how did this codependent relationship between MLB and Dominican talent arise and thrive?

In this compelling new book, relying on original reporting from the most dangerous corners of Rio to the halls of power in Washington, DC, Dave Zirin examines how sports and politics are colliding in remarkable fashion in Brazil, opening up an international conversation on the culture, economics, and politics of sports.

In late April 1902, Mount Pelee, a volcano on the Caribbean island Martinique, began to wake up. It emitted clouds of ash and smoke for two weeks until violently erupting on May 8. Over 30,000 residents of St. Pierre were killed; they burned to death under rivers of hot lava and suffocated under pounds of hot ash. Only three people managed to survive: a prisoner trapped in a dungeon-like jail cell, a man on the outskirts of town, and a young girl found floating unconscious in a boat days later.

In 1845 London, an engineer, philosopher, philanthropist, and bold-faced charlatan John Adolphus Etzler has invented machines that he thinks will transform the division of labor and free all men. He forms a collective called the Tropical Emigration Society (TES) and recruits a variety of London citizens to take his machines and his misguided ideas to form a protosocialist, utopian community in the British colony of Trinidad. Among his recruits is a teenage boy (and the audiobook's narrator) named Willy Tucker, who falls head-over-heels for the enthralling and wise Marguerite Whitechurch. Coming from the gentry, Marguerite is a world away from Willy's laboring class. As the voyage continues, and their love for one another strengthens, Willy and Marguerite prove themselves to be the true socialists aboard ship, their actions and adventures standing in stark contrast to Etzler's disconnected theories.” Robert Antoni's tragic historical novel, accented with West Indian cadences and captivating humor, provides an unforgettable glimpse into nineteenth-century Trinidad & Tobago.

Join this bloodthirsty crew of pirates on ships, including their dying declarations of the most brutal and vicious deeds ever set upon innocent civilians and merchant-ship crews. The Demon Rum is cited as the chief cause by one pirate for his awful and murderous acts. Their day of reckoning came when they faced their final day of judgement when captured in Spain.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the images of two men came to dominate the iconography of left-wing movements: Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. The story of the revolution these two men led in Cuba became a fable that drove and encouraged other revolutionary movements around the world. The Cuban Revolution is certainly astonishing. Beginning with fewer than 100 armed men, the Fidelistas took on a government that had a well-equipped army, air force, and navy. On paper, the handful of rebels stood no chance.

In the town of San Pedro in the Dominican Republic, baseball is not just a way of life. It's the way of life. By the year 2008, 79 boys and men from San Pedro had gone on to play in the Major Leagues - that means one in six Dominican Republicans who have played in the Majors have come from one tiny, impoverished region. Manny Alexander, Sammy Sosa, Tony Fernandez, and legions of other San Pedro players who came up in the sugar mill teams flocked to the United States.

In its formative years, America, birthplace of a revolution, wrestled with a volatile dilemma. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and many other founding fathers clashed. What was to be the new republic's strategy toward a revolution roiling just off its shores? From 1790 to 1810, the disagreement reverberated far beyond Caribbean waters and American coastal ports. War between France and Britain, the great powers of the time, raged on the seas and in Europe.

FNH Audio presents an unabridged reading of Arthur Conan Doyle's nonfiction book A Visit to Three Fronts. Written in 1916 during the peak of the First World War this book follows Mr Doyle as he visits first the British, Italian, and finally the French sectors of the front. He meets with everyone from the highest national generals to the lowliest of frontline troopers. Although a work that can be classified as mid-war propaganda, it does offer some very interesting insights into the British mind-set at this time of the war.

Rum is undergoing a global renaissance. In bars and distilleries across the world, rum is being defined as a dynamic, complex, and versatile drink. New to the scene of connoisseurship, rum is a spirit of possibilities, inviting imaginative bartenders and mixologists to leave their marks on this burgeoning movement. In The New Rum, award-winning drinks author Bryce T. Bauer charts the historical and cultural journey of the spirit of the Americas from its origins in the Caribbean, to its long-held status as a cheap vacation drink, to today’s inspiring craft revival.

Coinciding with the 230 year anniversary of the establishing of the first Baptist church in Jamaica by the Ethiopian Baptist society and their brutal demise almost 150 years ago, Slavery's Heroes documents its pioneers; the men and women who, led by George Liele, advocated for a nation from enslavement to emancipation and beyond. This work offers insight into a people, a faith and a movement which demonstrated boldness, bravery and self-sacrifice.

During his life and even after his death, Captain William Kidd’s name was known around England and the American colonies. He was infamous for the very crime for which he was hanged, piracy. This book by Rebecca Simon dives into the details of the two-year manhunt for Captain Kidd and the events that ensued afterward. Captain Kidd was hanged in 1701, and from that sprung a massive hunt for all pirates led by the British during a period known as the Golden Age of Piracy. Ironically, public executions only led to pirates’ growth in popularity and interest.

Oscar Wilde was always willing to express his opinions on a wide variety of subjects, including his own writings. The following selection of letters was prepared and edited by his executor Robert Ross, who is best known for expurgating and publishing Wilde's last major work, De Profundis.

Six Gaelic tales of wonder and adventure, read in an authentic brogue by actor Des Keogh, transport wee listeners to a magic world of leprechauns and giants.

In the early 16th century, Spanish adventurers swarmed over the islands of the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America, and South America. Portuguese explorers and merchants pushed into the Indian Ocean and beyond to the Spice Islands of the South Pacific. The names of the leaders of these overseas conquests are well known: Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro, Hernando de Soto, Afonso de Albuquerque, and Ferdinand Magellan. This audiobook explores the details of their incredible lives in service of their monarchs and personal wealth.

When you hear about one of the biggest scandals in modern home office history, it piques your interest. The Windrush Scandal is an example of the mentality of a bygone era in operation at the top levels of the UK government. Citizens of the British Commonwealth were invited to stay in the UK indefinitely between the end of the 1940s and the start of the 1970s in an attempt to bolster the UK labor market. Many people took up the invitation, upending their lives in an attempt to create a better life in their mother country.

The intriguing story of three famous pirates in history - Scarlet Jack, Red Martin, and Blackbeard - as they terrorized a ship, and took the captain and a young family prisoner. How their lives intertwined throughout this story of swashbuckling buccaneers with romance, savagery, and the heroics of a slave makes this story originally told in the 1800s one of the best historical fiction accounts ever written.

Pirates plundered other ships on the high seas while on the brig Crawford a cunning act of piracy was perpetrated by a veteran pirate leader. He slit his own throat to escape justice while three Spaniards he recruited stood trial with the esteemed Chief Justice John Marshall presiding over the federal court in Richmond, Virginia, in 1827, a rare trial. Follow the action in a blow-by blow description of the murder and mayhem right into the courtroom.

The landscape of Anguilla has been graced with the military strides of this noble gentleman Gregory 'Jaggy' Benjamin. With every step and landing of the shoe, there was that stamp of approval of an island branded ‘tranquility wrapped in blue.’ Jaggy was truly a spectacular figure in every way depicting a beacon. You could not miss him, for he stood out, a tall black man. His hallmark action was his favorite twist and lash with his hand against his thigh.

The 16th and 17th centuries saw the emergence of a new threat to government and organized society. Privateers and pirates raided along the coast of powerful countries and were, at times, at war with England, France, and Spain. They developed their own system of rules, a code of morality, and a very rough form of government. Pirates were eventually able to organize behind a captain who eventually would become like a governor with judicial power over all the pirates and control over settlements taken by the pirates in raids.