Early History

In The Dictionary Wars, Peter Martin recounts the patriotic fervor in the early American republic to produce a definitive national dictionary that would rival Samuel Johnson's 1755 Dictionary of the English Language. But what began as a cultural war of independence from Britain devolved into a battle among lexicographers, authors, scholars, and publishers, all vying for dictionary supremacy and shattering forever the dream of a unified American language.

The settlement of North America was the beginning of a new era in human history. The oppressive laws, habits, and customs of the Old World no longer held such power over those who had made the treacherous journey across the Atlantic. No reigning monarch or dictatorial power ever stepped onto the ground of North America. Yet, despite this, the men and women of the 13 colonies of North America were still not free until they threw off the shackles of England's government and asserted their own rights.

The American Revolution conjures a series of iconographic images of defiant Patriots fighting against British Redcoats for freedom and democracy, while a unified citizenry rallies behind them and the American cause. But the lived experience of the Revolution was a more complex matter, filled with uncertainty, fear, and discord. In The American Revolution Reborn, editors Patrick Spero and Michael Zuckerman compile essays from a new generation of multidisciplinary scholars that render the American Revolution as a time of intense ambiguity and frightening contingency.

In the spring of 1621, Plymouth Colony sent Stephen Hopkins to make the first visit to Wampanoag sachem Massasoit to present a red horsemans coat as a gift and sign of friendship. For most ordinary Englishmen, venturing off into the depths of unexplored America would have been a once in a lifetime adventure - but not for Stephen.

On November 26, 1791, George Washington convened his department secretaries - Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Knox, and Edmund Randolph - for the first cabinet meeting. Why did he wait two and a half years into his presidency to call his cabinet? Because the US Constitution did not create or provide for such a body. Washington was on his own.

Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison, "Father of the Constitution," were two of the most important Founders of the United States as well as the closest of political allies. Yet historians have often seen a tension between the idealistic rhetoric of the Declaration and the more pedestrian language of the Constitution. Moreover, to some, the adoption of the Constitution represented a repudiation of the democratic values of the Revolution.

There have been few times in modern music history that an instant shift in how we listen to - and view - music has occurred. However, the launch of MTV on August 1, 1981, was certainly one such occurrence. Instantly, music fans were now “listening with their eyes” rather than relying solely on their ears.

The Cro-Magnon were Homo sapiens, and the most defining characteristics of the species are the cultural traits that begin to show in the archaeological record. Tools were beginning to be made from multiple materials, and these people would often travel long distances or trade to acquire specific materials for tools. Symbolic material became increasingly common among them, as cave paintings, figurines, shell beads, pendants, and even early burials were more common with modern humans than Neanderthals.

Did you know that Christianity has gone through many changes since its origin? Over two thousand years ago, a Jewish man was born into a society in turmoil. It is impossible to tell the story of Christianity without understanding the man behind it. What were the lives of Jesus and his followers like? How were their words so impactful that they changed history and affected the lives of billions of people over the course of two thousand years?

Smugglers, Pirates, and Patriots delineates the differences between the British and Portuguese empires as they struggled with revolutionary tumult. It reveals how those differences led to turbulent transnational exchanges between the United States and Brazil as merchants, smugglers, rogue officials, slave traders, and pirates sought to trade outside legal confines.

Two manuscripts in one audiobook: The Viking Age for Kids: A Captivating Guide to the Vikings, Their Raids, and Everyday Life and Anglo-Saxons for Kids: A Captivating Guide to the People of Early Medieval England and Their Battles Against the Vikings.

Grab your investigative tools, and get ready to meet the Inca people. They were the biggest civilization in the Americas during their time, so how did they fall so quickly to the Spanish conquistadors? Dive into this audiobook to learn more about the Inca Empire in a fun, up-to-date journey through its history.

This study explores the phenomenon of the cults of Raphael and Michelangelo in relation to their death, burial, and posthumous fame—or second life—from their own times through the nineteenth century. These two artists inspired fervent followings like no other artists before them. The affective response of those touched by the potency of the physical presence of their art—works, personal effects, and remains—or even touched by the power of their creative legacy—opened up new avenues for artistic fame, divination, and commemoration.

Over 1,100 years before William the Conqueror became the King of England after the Battle of Hastings, Julius Caesar came, saw, and conquered part of “Britannia”, setting up a Roman province with a puppet king in 54 BCE. In the new province, the Romans eventually constructed a military outpost overlooking a bridge across the River Thames. The new outpost was named Londinium, and it covered just over two dozen acres. By the second century CE, Londinium was a large Roman city, with tens of thousands of inhabitants using villas, palaces, a forum, temples, and baths.

The bubonic plague was the worst affliction ever visited upon Europe and the Mediterranean world. Within a few short years, a quarter of the population was taken after a short but torturous illness. Those who escaped faced famine and economic hardship. Crops were left unsown; the harvests spoiled for lack of harvesters; villages, towns, and great cities were depopulated. Markets were destroyed; and trade ground to a halt. It must have seemed like the end of the world to the terrified populace.

Most Americans have heard of the Little Bighorn, the 1876 battle in which a band of Lakota Sioux and their allies wiped out most of the 7th US Cavalry under the command of George Armstrong Custer. The movie images are of fierce warriors in long eagle feather headdresses flowing behind them as they gallop across the plains on nimble Indian ponies.

In A Constitutional Culture, Adrian Chastain Weimer uncovers the story of how more than a hundred years before the American Revolution, colonists pledged their lives and livelihoods to the defense of local political institutions against arbitrary rule.

How did Muslims across time and place define the line between themselves and their neighbors? Youshaa Patel explores why the Prophet Muhammad first advised his followers to emulate Christians and Jews, but then allegedly reversed course, urging them to "be different!" He details how subsequent generations of Muslim scholars canonized the Prophet's admonition into an influential doctrine against imitation that enjoined ordinary believers to embody and display their religious difference in public life.

A rip roaring, hair raising, edge-of-your-chair saga of the first-century believers. From the day of Pentecost, on through the first seventeen years, every historical figure of that age is there: alive, vivid, believable.

The Berlin blockade brought former allies to the brink of war. Britain, France, the United States and the Soviet Union defeated and began their occupation of Germany in 1945, and within a few years, the Soviets and their Western partners were jockeying for control of their former foe. Attempting to thwart the Allied powers' plans to create a unified West German government, the Soviets blocked rail and road access to the western sectors of Berlin in June 1948.