Early History

Between 1800 and 1920, an extraordinary cast of bold innovators and entrepreneurs - individuals such as Cyrus McCormick, Brigham Young, Henry Wells and James Fargo, Fred Harvey, Levi Strauss, Adolph Coors, J. P. Morgan, and Buffalo Bill Cody - helped lay the groundwork for what we now call the American West. They were people of imagination and courage, adept at maneuvering the rapids of change, alert to opportunity, persistent in their missions.

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.

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 essays gathered in The Early Imperial Republic move beyond the question of whether the new republic was an empire, investigating instead where, how, and why it was one. They use the category of empire to situate the early United States in the global context its contemporaries understood, drawing important connections between territorial conquests on the continent and American incursions.

Step into the tumultuous world of early England, where tribal kingdoms battled for supremacy, and a new culture was born from the ashes of Roman rule. The Anglo-Saxons offer a captivating journey through centuries of history, from the dawn of the Early Middle Ages to the defining Battle of Hastings. This audiobook is your gateway to understanding the intricate events, people, and legacies that shaped England as we know it today.

Throughout the Roman Empire cities held public speeches and lectures, had libraries, and teachers and professors in the sciences and the humanities, some subsidized by the state. There even existed something equivalent to universities, and medical and engineering schools. What were they like? What did they teach? Who got to attend them? In the first treatment of this subject ever published, Dr. Richard Carrier answers all these questions and more.

From ambitious scientists rising above the clouds to analyse the air to war generals floating across enemy lines, Richard Holmes takes to the air in this heart-lifting history of pioneer balloonists. Falling Upwards asks why they risked their lives and how their flights revealed the secrets of our planet. The stories range from early ballooning rivals to the long-distance voyages of American entrepreneurs; from the legendary balloon escape from the Prussian siege of Paris to dauntless James Glaisher, who, in the 1860s, flew seven miles above the earth - without oxygen.

John Jacob Astor was the best-known and most important American businessman for more than a half-century. His career encompassed the country's formative economic years from the precarious days following the American Revolution to the emergence of an urban-centered manufacturing economy in the late 1840s.

First published in 1903, this groundbreaking work is a cornerstone of African American literary history and a foundational text in the field of sociology. In these fourteen essays, W. E. B. Du Bois introduces and explores the concept of “double-consciousness”—a term he uses to describe the experience of living as an African American and having a “sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others.” Though an examination of Black life in post-Civil War America, The Souls of Black Folk has had a lasting impact on civil rights and the discussion of race in the United States.

Historical accounts of democracy's rise tend to focus on ancient Greece and pre-Renaissance Europe. The Decline and Rise of Democracy draws from global evidence to show that the story is much richer - democratic practices were present in many places at many other times. David Stasavage makes the case that understanding how and where these democracies flourished - and when and why they declined - can provide crucial information not just about the history of governance, but about the ways modern democracies work and where they could manifest in the future.

One of the first longtime sober members of AA talks about the people, events, and development of ideas and practices that created AA, including Ebby, Bill Wilson, and the Oxford Group; Hank Parkhurst, Ruth Hock, and the writing of the Big Book; how AA got the name Alcoholics Anonymous; Jack Alexander and the Saturday Evening Post article; The 12 Traditions; and more.

Red is a brilliantly told, captivating history of red hair throughout the ages. An audiobook that breaks new ground, dispels myths, and reinforces the special nature of being a redhead, with a look at multiple disciplines, including science, religion, politics, feminism and sexuality, literature, and art. With an obsessive fascination that is as contagious as it is compelling, author Jacky Colliss Harvey (herself a redhead) begins her exploration of red hair in prehistory and traces the redhead gene as it made its way out of Africa with the early human diaspora.

In life and in death, slaves were commodities, their monetary value assigned based on their age, gender, health, and the demands of the market. The Price for Their Pound of Flesh is the first book to explore the economic value of enslaved people through every phase of their lives—including preconception, infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, the senior years, and death—in the early American domestic slave trade.

History of the Early Settlement and Indian Wars of Western Virginia is an account of the various expeditions that took place in the region up to 1795. It also includes biographical sketches of Col. Ebenezer Zane, Major Samuel M'Collach, and other pioneers.

Technically speaking, slavery was not legal in the English-speaking world before the mid-17th century. But long before race-based slavery was entrenched in law and practice, English men and women were well aware of the various forms of human bondage practiced in other nations and, in less systematic ways, their own country. In wide-ranging detail, Slaves and Englishmen demonstrates how slavery shaped the ways the English interacted with people and places throughout the Atlantic world. As this revealing history shows, the implications of slavery were closely connected to the question of what it meant to be English.

On the eve of a major treaty conference between Iroquois leaders and European colonists in the distant summer of 1722, two White fur traders attacked an Indigenous hunter and left him for dead near Conestoga, Pennsylvania. This act of brutality set into motion a remarkable series of criminal investigations and cross-cultural negotiations that challenged the definition of justice in early America. Leading historian Nicole Eustace reconstructs the crime and its aftermath, bringing us into the overlapping worlds of white colonists and Indigenous peoples in this formative period.

If you want to discover the captivating history of the Scientific Revolution, then pay attention...Two captivating manuscripts in one audiobook: The Scientific Revolution: A Captivating Guide to the Emergence of Modern Science During the Early Modern Period, Including Stories of Thinkers Such as Isaac Newton and René Descartes and Galileo Galilei: A Captivating Guide to an Italian Astronomer, Physicist, and Engineer and His Impact on the History of Science. So if you want to learn more about the Scientific Revolution and Galileo Galilei listen to this audiobook now!

The half millennium between the creation of the English nation in around 550 and the Norman Conquest in 1066 was a formative one. This groundbreaking series rediscovers the Anglo-Saxons through vivid portraits of 30 incredible men and women, as told by their contemporary admirers.

We are divided over the history of the United States, and one of the central dividing lines is the frontier. Was it a site of heroism? Or was it where the full force of an all-powerful empire was brought to bear on Native peoples? In this startlingly original work, historian Robert Parkinson presents a new account of ever-shifting encounters between white colonists and Native Americans.

The area that became known as the Old Northwest caught the eye of European settlers as far back as the 17th century, when the French explorers Marquette and Jolliet found that waterways in the area connected the Mississippi River to the Great Lakes. The area was perfect for fur trade outposts before it was settled by whites. Throughout the 19th century, American settlers pushing across the Western frontier came into contact with diverse American tribes, producing a series of conflicts ranging from the Great Plains to the Southwest, and from the Trail of Tears to the Pacific Northwest.