Early English History

When Donald Johanson found a partial skeleton, approximately 3.5 million years old, in a remote region of Ethiopia in 1974, a headline-making controversy was launched that continues today. Bursting with all the suspense and intrigue of a fast-paced adventure novel, here is Johanson’s lively account of the extraordinary discovery of “Lucy.” By expounding the controversial change Lucy makes in our view of human origins, Johanson provides a vivid, behind-the-scenes account of the history of paleoanthropology and the colorful, eccentric characters who were, and are, a part of it.

What was the starting point of Christianity? Was it in a little town in Bethlehem, just as the lyrics of our favorite Christmas songs contend? In truth, in the earliest days of Christianity, when Peter and Paul first set out to preach the gospel, the belief systems of early Christians were viewed as merely a new sect of Judaism.

Many years ago, in a lecture on the creation of the Mishnah, the Orthodox Jewish historian, Rabbi Berel Wein discussed the rise of early Christianity as a historical and theological backdrop. He mentioned that this era is of particular importance to Jews because of the complicated and tragic relationship between Jews and Christians over the centuries. He referred to Joseph Klausner, the famed Jewish professor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who in the earlier part of the 20th century, had authored several works on early Christianity from a Jewish standpoint.

From classics such as the Odyssey and the Aeneid to fifth-century Christian apocrypha, narratives that described guided tours of the afterlife played a major role in shaping ancient notions of morality and ethics. In this new account, acclaimed author Bart Ehrman contextualizes early Christian narratives of heaven and hell within the broader intellectual and cultural worlds from which they emerged.

Although it was originally published in 1892, Early Greek Philosophy by John Burnet remains unquestionably one of the most respected and admired surveys of the pre-Socratics. It is an illuminating springboard into classical Greek philosophy.

One of the classic volumes of autobiography, My Early Life is a lively and colourful account of a young man's quest for action, adventure and danger. Churchill's schooldays are undistinguished, but he is admitted to Sandhurst and embarks on a career as a soldier and a war correspondent, seeing action in Cuba, in India, in the Sudan - where he took part in the battle of Omdurman, of which he gives us a stirring account - and finally in South Africa.

Cultural Christians in the Early Church, which aims to be both historical and practical, argues that cultural Christians were the rule, rather than the exception, in the early church. Using different categories of sins as its organizing principle, the book considers the challenge of culture to the earliest converts to Christianity, as they struggled to live on mission in the Greco-Roman cultural milieu of the Roman Empire.

This talk by Sam Shoemaker begins with a brief history of AA told by Sam. It contains some things which only Rev. Sam Shoemaker could tell correctly. Sam was the preeminent Oxford Group leader in the US at the time Bill Wilson and Ebby T. were affiliated with it. The mission that Ebby was livening and working at during his pivotal meetings with Bill around the time Bill sobered for life was a branch of Sam's church.

What if mankind's "missing link", the apelike Homo erectus, had survived to dominate a North American continent where woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers still prowled while the more advanced Homo sapiens built their civilizations elsewhere? Now imagine that the Europeans arriving in the New World had chanced on these primitive creatures and seized the opportunity to establish a hierarchy in which the sapiens were masters and the "sims" were their slaves.

The powers-that-be in auto racing in the 1920s, namely the American Automobile Association's Contest Board, prohibited everyone who wasn't a White male from the sport. Dewey Gaston, a Black man who went by the name Rajo Jack, broke into the epicenter of racing in California, refusing to let the pervasive racism of his day stop him from competing against entire fields of White drivers. In The Brown Bullet, Bill Poehler uncovers the life of a long-forgotten trailblazer and the great lengths he took to even get on the track.

An Independent Empire shows how foreign policy and diplomacy constitute a truly national story, necessary for understanding the history of the United States. In this lively and well-written book, episodes in American history - such as the writing and ratification of the Constitution, Henry Clay's advocacy of an American System, Pinckney's Treaty with Spain, and the visionary but absurd Congress of Panama - are recast as elemental aspects of United States foreign and security policy.

When it comes to the Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton are generally considered the great minds of early America. George Washington, instead, is toasted with accolades regarding his solid common sense and strength in battle. Indeed, John Adams once snobbishly dismissed him as "too illiterate, unlearned, unread for his station and reputation." Yet Adams, as well as the majority of the men who knew Washington in his life, were unaware of his singular devotion to self-improvement.

David Fisher pushes paper for the EPA in a world that's a lot like ours...only different. In this California - and throughout the alternate United States - all gods are real, science doesn't exist, and magic rules everything, running imp-driven computers and creating anxiety-inducing bumper-to-bumper flying-carpet rush hours. Unfortunately, unchecked magic use can leave dangerous residues, creating hours of mind-numbing deskwork for David and his fellow bureaucrats at the Environmental Perfection Agency.

Glory to God for the men of old who endured the persecutions of this world with joy and faith. Much can be learned from those who have looked death in the face and yet remained true to the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

While many histories of Christian worship exist, this project undertakes a task both more focused and more urgent. Rather than survey the whole history of the Christian church, it focuses on the formative period between the first and fifth centuries CE, when so many of the understandings and patterns of Christian worship came to be. And rather than include such developments as the monastic hours of prayer and the history of ordination, the authors deal primarily with those aspects of worship that recur on a weekly or regular basis: preaching, Eucharist, and baptism.

This book welcomes listeners to appreciate the origins of Christianity within the Roman world in which early Christianity got its first foothold. It does that by immersing listeners in the life and culture of two thriving first-century towns—Pompeii and Herculaneum. Those towns (destroyed in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE) act as showpieces of the world into which the early Christian movement was spreading.

In a tragic tale of heroism and perservereance, follow the Sager orphans as they take the Oregon Trail in the hopes of finding a new life. When the seven children's parents perish on the journey, how will they survive? This account remains one of the most authentic firsthand accounts of the journeys and hardships of the pioneers in the early West.

The Hospitallers started out as caretakers of the Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem, but they soon emerged from their hospices and adopted a new military role that shaped the history of medieval Europe forever. This audiobook seeks to explore the curious rise of the Hospitallers from their humble origins to one of the most powerful institutions in medieval Europe.

In the early 1920s, members of the Osage Nation and others began to turn up dead, and in many cases, the proceeds of oil revenue owned by these people passed to white “Guardians” appointed by the federal government. By 1925, at least 24 Osage had died in unexplained circumstances, and some accounts suggest that the actual number may have been over 100. Local law enforcement seemed unable (or perhaps unwilling) to investigate effectively, and it was left to a small bureau in Washington to undertake their first homicide investigation.

The Settlers' Empire traces the first federal endeavor to build states wholesale out of the Northwest Territory, a process that relied on overlapping colonial rule over Euro-American settlers and the multiple Indian nations in the territory. In the Northwest Territory, diverse populations of newcomers and natives struggled over the region's geographical and cultural definition in areas such as religion, marriage, family, gender roles, and economy.