Normans History

On a small farm in Iowa, from the age of seven Norman would rise before dawn and work the fields. He and his two younger sisters would raise cattle, pigs, and chickens; he would fish and hunt and tend to the corn and oat fields. It was grueling labor, and he hated it. In 1933, Norman left the farm and headed for Minneapolis with $61 in his pocket. He was a determined student and majored in agriculture-forestry at the University of Minnesota. First in Mexico, and then in India, Norman would travel the globe offering his unique knowledge.

Nikola Tesla was one of history's greatest scientists, and though he is best known for his pioneering work with electricity, the fact that he is mostly remembered solely for that actually does a disservice to his legacy. Born a Serb in the Austrian Empire, Tesla came to the United States and worked in a laboratory for none other than the Wizard of Menlo Park, Thomas Edison.

Philip Norman’s biography of the Beatles is the definitive work on the world's most influential band—a beautifully written account of their lives, their music, and their times. Now brought completely up to date, this epic tale charts the rise of four scruffy Liverpool lads from their wild, often comical early days to the astonishing heights of Beatlemania, from the chaos of Apple and the collapse of hippy idealism to the band's acrimonious split.

The Mound Builder Myth is the first book to chronicle the attempt to recast the Native American burial mounds as the work of a lost white race of “true” native Americans. Thomas Jefferson’s pioneering archaeology concluded that the earthen mounds were the work of Native Americans. In the 1894 report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Cyrus Thomas concurred, drawing on two decades of research. But in the century in between, the lie took hold, with presidents Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, and Abraham Lincoln adding their approval.

Since its publication in 1932, Black Elk Speaks has moved countless readers to appreciate the American Indian world that it described. John Neihardt’s popular narrative addressed the youth and early adulthood of Black Elk, an Oglala Sioux religious elder. Michael F. Steltenkamp now provides the first full interpretive biography of Black Elk, distilling in one volume what is known of this American Indian wisdom keeper whose life has helped guide others. Nicholas Black Elk: Medicine Man, Missionary, Mystic shows that the holy-man was not the dispirited traditionalist commonly depicted in literature....

The period following the Civil War was one of the most controversial eras in American history. This comprehensive account of the period captures the drama of those turbulent years that played such an important role in shaping modern America.

When famous political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville toured the new United States of America, he was impressed by the representative government set up by the Founders. At the same time, he ominously predicted, "If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil. That is to say, it will not be the equality of social conditions but rather their inequality which may give rise thereto."

Between them, the three men in the fearsome Pierrepoint dynasty executed over 800 people during a career spanning more than half a century. Henry, his brother Thomas, and his son Albert, dispatched some of the most infamous criminals of the 20th century, and in the process earned a public notoriety that followed them throughout their eventful lives.

By the early 19th century, several European nations had banned slavery, but while the United States had banned the international slave trade, slavery was still legal in the country itself. As a result, there was still a strong financial motive for merchants and slave traders to attempt to bring slaves to the Western hemisphere, and a lot of profits to be gained from successfully sneaking slaves into the American South and the Caribbean by way of locations like Havana, Cuba.

Henry Tudor was born in a country ravaged by conspiracies, coups, and ruthless violence. He belonged to the Plantagenet Royal Family, House of Lancaster. They were engaged in a bloody battle with the House of York, in a conflict that had been going on for years for control of the throne of England: the War of the Roses. Through ruse and guile, Henry Tudor made sure he emerged as the only claimant to the Crown. When he ascended the throne, he managed to unite the two warring houses by his marriage with Elizabeth of York, effectively ending the civil war while founding the Tudor dynasty; but to many, he remained an usurper and a false king. His story is rich with treachery, intrigue, and ruthlessness, while he was a capable monarch.

Jacob Fugger lived in Germany at the turn of the 16th century, the grandson of a peasant. By the time he died, his fortune amounted to nearly 2 percent of European GDP. Not even John D. Rockefeller had that kind of wealth. Most people become rich by spotting opportunities, pioneering new technologies, or besting opponents in negotiations. Fugger did all that, but he had an extra quality that allowed him to rise even higher: nerve.

How did Iran get to where it is today, at the forefront of global affairs? The history of Iran and the theme of Persian conflict with the West stretches back thousands of years, and it is a unique history of empire, culture, art, pride, and religious nationalism. The History of Iran from Ancient Persia to the Ayatollahs comprehensively and descriptively covers this history, progressing through a timeline dating back to antiquity and examining all of the different religious, political, foreign, and military issues that affect Iran and are affected by Iran today.

The year 1066 CE is one of the largest turning points in British history, with most people today having heard of the Battle of Hastings. The year had begun with the death of Edward the Confessor, a man who would be one of the last Anglo-Saxon kings. In the end, the course of the kingdom's history would shift as William the Bastard became William the Conqueror.

Judenjagd, hunt for the Jews, was the German term for the organized searches for Jews who, having survived ghetto liquidations and deportations to death camps in Poland in 1942, attempted to hide "on the Aryan side." Jan Grabowski's penetrating microhistory tells the story of the Judenjagd in Dabrowa Tarnowska, a rural county in southeastern Poland, where the majority of the Jews in hiding perished as a consequence of betrayal by their Polish neighbors.

New York City. The Big Apple. The city of dreams. The city so nice they named it twice. These are just some of the monikers given to not only the most highly populated city in North America, but perhaps the most culturally diverse region in all the world. Modern age New York is stamped on the map for its breathtaking skylines and iconic financial centers, as well as being the quintessential melting pot, where people go to "make it big" and take a chance on long-awaited dreams.

Timothy Snyder opens a new path in the understanding of modern nationalism and 20th-century socialism by presenting the often overlooked life of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz, an important Polish thinker at the beginning of the 20th century. During his brief life in Poland, Paris, and Vienna, Kelles-Krauz influenced or infuriated most of the leaders of the various socialist movements of Central Europe and France. His central ideas ultimately were not accepted by the socialist mainstream at the time of his death.

There have been countless attempts to solve the brutal murders committed by Jack the Ripper more than 100 years ago. It seems that almost everyone has their own theory and their own suspect, ranging from the reasonably likely to the entirely preposterous. What this most famous of British criminal cases has always required is a professional eye to analyse it with all the benefits of modern investigate techniques. Now that has been provided in the shape of the man most qualified to solve the case: former British murder-squad detective Trevor Marriott.

In this succinct portrait of Alexander the Great, distinguished scholar and historian Norman Cantor draws on the major writings of Alexander's contemporaries, as well as the most recent psychological and cultural studies to illuminate this most legendary of men - a great figure in the ancient world whose puzzling personality greatly fueled his military accomplishments.

This volume contains 17 autobiographies of Korean War combat veterans, as well as a report about war prisoners' experiences told by a US Army doctor who spent three years as a POW. It also contains reports about how the US divided Korea after World War II and Theodore Roosevelt’s secret diplomacy, in 1905, which led to World War II in the Pacific, the Korean War, and continuing turmoil in the Pacific.

The massacre at Mountain Meadows on September 11, 1857, was the single most violent attack on a wagon train in the 30-year history of the Oregon and California trails. Yet it has been all but forgotten. Will Bagley's Blood of the Prophets is an award-winning, riveting account of the attack on the Baker-Fancher wagon train by Mormons in the local militia and a few Paiute Indians.