French American History

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Library and Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade, a charming and cinematic novel following a young woman from Montana who takes a job in the American Library in Paris, where she discovers the power of storytelling and her own dreams. Paris, 1995...

In the 1930s, Chief William Berens shared with anthropologist A. Irving Hallowell a remarkable history of his life, as well as many personal and dream experiences that held special significance for him. Most of this material has never been published. Because the elderly chief wanted his visitor to understand the Ojibwe world, and because Hallowell was deeply interested in his subject matter and was such a good listener, Berens freely related his dreams and other stories about encounters with powerful beings.

This audio program has all the ingredients of a high-flying adventure story. Unbeknownst to the combatants, the War of 1812 has ended. But Andrew Jackson, a brave, charismatic American general, sick with dysentery and commanding a beleaguered garrison, leads a desperate struggle to hold on to New Orleans and to thwart the army that defeated Napoleon.

When Samuel de Champlain founded the colony of Quebec in 1608, he established elaborate gardens where he sowed French seeds he had brought with him and experimented with indigenous plants that he found in nearby fields and forests. In A Not-So-New World, Christopher Parsons observes how it was that French colonists began to learn about Native environments and claimed a mandate to cultivate vegetation that did not differ all that much from that which they had left behind.

The untold history of a top-secret operation in the run-up to D-Day in which American flyers and Allied spies carried out some of the most daring cloak-and-dagger operations of World War II. In 1943, the OSS—precursor to the CIA—came up with a plan to increase its support to the French...

This book takes its title from the phrase for “I work” in Lunaape, the traditional language of Munsee Delaware people, and was inspired by the work of the Munsee Delaware Language and History Group. Written for the descendants and communities of children who attended Mount Elgin and intended as a resource for all Canadians, Nii Ndahlohke tells the story of student life at Mount Elgin Industrial School between 1890 and 1915.

Voilà plus d'un siècle que le football déchaîne les passions à travers l'Europe. Imaginé comme un passe-temps pour ouvriers dans l'Angleterre brumeuse du 19ème siècle, le football a pris une place prépondérante dans nos sociétés occidentales.

The French and Indian War is one of the most significant, yet least acknowledged and understood, periods of American history. Fought chiefly between the two imperial powers of England and France in the mid-18th century, the struggle would also draw in native Indian nations who sought to exert their own strength and sovereignty over the North American continent. From the first shots fired in the Ohio Valley wilderness in 1754 until the Treaty of Paris signed in 1763, the French and Indian War became a conflict that encircled the globe.

Most people have heard about the French and Indian War, but you will find that most history classes have “forgotten” to explore some of the most interesting and important facets of this conflict. Its little-told stories and often underrated importance in world history have begun to be buried over the centuries. Was this epic struggle simply another war among many others in history?

Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais was an 18th-century French inventor, famed playwright, and upstart near-aristocrat in the court of King Louis XVI. In 1776, he conceived an audacious plan to send aid to the American rebels. What's more, he convinced the king to bankroll the project, and singlehandedly carried it out. By war's end, he had supplied Washington's army with most of its weapons and powder, though he was never paid or acknowledged by the United States. To some, he was a dashing hero - a towering intellect who saved the American Revolution. To others, he was pure rogue.

In France, Johnson is like an alien from another planet. Everything is strange to him. His goal is to speak French without going to prison, drive without being squashed like a bug, dance the tango without losing his marriage, and belt out a tune with a world-class jazz combo without being booed off the stage. Repeatedly, the author fearlessly steps into harm's way. He joins a summer acting troop and witnesses the French version of sexual liberation.

A Magnificent Catastrophe tells the story of the most perverse, bizarre, nail-biting, and influential election battle ever in U.S. history: America's first true presidential campaign, and a contest so important to the future of the country that Jefferson referred to it as "the second American Revolution" because the outcome resolved so much unfinished business about just what kind of government we would have. This election in many ways determined just how democratic a country we would be.

Considering the suspicions, jealousies, bigotry, and crass opportunism inherent whenever one power occupies another, Golden Ghetto: How the Americans and French Fell in and out of Love During the Cold War pieces together an improbable tale of how fear and skepticism were crushed by trust and friendship.

History celebrates George Washington as the leader of the American Revolution and the father of his country. But what has gone previously unexamined is Washington's life as a 22-year-old lieutenant colonel who led 400 American militiamen against a bigger, more experienced French army and paid a high price. Not only did Washington lose over a third of his men but the Battle of Great Meadows was also the spark that ignited the French and Indian War.

When the first settlers reached the United States of America and started to chip out a living in the wilderness that seemed so fierce and unfamiliar to their European eyes, they could never have dreamed that someday the land upon which they stood would become one of the most powerful countries in the entire world.

Before America joined World War I, a small group of Americans volunteered for the French Foreign Legion to help defeat the Central Powers. Historian David Hanna profiles seven of these volunteers: a poet, an artist, a boxer, a stunt pilot, a college student, a veteran of the Spanish American War, and an advertising executive. All seven men were united in courage; and some, like poet Alan Seeger, paid the ultimate sacrifice.

L'île de Gorée est un lieu symbolique, un des sites d'embarquement des esclaves lors de la traite négrière. Elle demeure vivante dans la mémoire pendant cette période de célébration du "Mois de l'histoire des Noirs". Ce livre nous promène dans cet univers-là avec envie de bâtir un avenir plein d’espoir pour les communautés noires sur les cendres brûlantes du passé.

At 3 a.m. on February 21, 1865, a band of 65 Confederate horsemen slowly made its way down Greene Street in Cumberland, Maryland. Thinking the riders were disguised Union scouts, the few Union soldiers out that bitterly cold morning paid little attention to them. In the meantime, over 3,500 Yankee soldiers peacefully slept. Within 30 minutes, McNeill’s rangers had kidnapped Union generals George Crook and Benjamin Kelley from their hotels and spirited them out of town.

Robert Rogers, commander of Rogers' Rangers during the French and Indian War, was the war's best-known colonial military hero and, in the ensuing peace, one of the best-known Americans of any description, rivaling Benjamin Franklin in popularity. Rogers is known today for his role in developing the mystique of the modern Ranger, but what explains his meteoric rise and his long, depressing fall? Robert Rogers, Ranger: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon by Martin Klotz is a fresh look at the life of this famous, yet highly flawed man.

If the Wright brothers' 1903 flights in Kitty Hawk marked the birth of aviation, World War I can be called its violent adolescence - a brief but bloody era that completely changed the way planes were designed, fabricated, and flown. The war forged an industry that would redefine transportation and warfare for future generations.