History Geography

Thomas B. Allen’s expertise in military history and strategy is combined with Roger MacBride Allen’s knowledge of technology to reveal a lesser-known yet fascinating side of the 16th president of the United States. Their authoritative narrative reveals Lincoln as our nation’s first hands-on commander in chief, whose appreciation for the power of technology plays a critical role in the North’s Civil War victory over the less-developed South.

There are so many amazing, daring, and exciting missions to outer space that have succeeded. But for every success, there are mistakes, surprises, and flat-out failures that happen along the way. In this collection, best-selling author and award-winning journalist Jeffrey Kluger recounts 12 such disasters, telling the stories of the astronauts and the cosmonauts, the trials and the errors, the missions and the misses.

Fifteen thousand years before Europeans stepped foot in the Americas, people had already spread from tip to tip and coast to coast. Like all humans, these Native Americans sought to understand their place in the universe, the nature of their relationship with the divine, and the origin of the world into which their ancestors had emerged. The answers lay in their sacred stories. This collection of those stories - from nations and cultures across two continents, what the Aztecs called the Sea-Ringed World, from the edge of Argentina all the way up to Alaska - is a treasure.

Quince mil años antes de que los Europeos pisarán las Américas, la gente ya se había propagado de punta a punta y de costa a costa. Como todos los humanos, estos Nativos Americanos buscaban comprender su lugar en el universo, la naturaleza de su relación con lo divino, y el origen del mundo en el que habían emergido sus antepasados.Las respuestas se encuentran en sus historias sagradas.

Imperial San Francisco is the epic saga of how all great cities parasitize their hinterlands for the sake of those elites who own and run them by using the mass media at their command to shape the thought of those who unwittingly serve their interests. Using San Francisco as an example of how cities employ remote control technology to exploit water, energy, natural resources, and labor from an expansive imperium, it takes the listener from ancient Rome to the University of California’s role in the creation of nuclear weaponry and its first use.

This as-it-happened review of the causes, consequences, and repercussions of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis is more than a history lesson – it’s a look into the future.

They say that one is subjected to a sobering sample of what can only be described as an existential crisis when traversing the golden and seemingly infinite terrain of the Sahara Desert. If one climbed any of the countless sand dunes and twirled around in a place, particularly under the starlit sky, they would scarcely be able to tell east from west without a compass, for there would be nothing but dizzying carpets of indistinguishable sand hills unfurling into the distant horizon.

In Unguessed Kinships, Steven Frye illuminates all these dimensions of McCarthy's work. In his novels and plays, McCarthy engages both explicitly and obliquely with the project of manifest destiny, in the western drama Blood Meridian, the Tennessee Valley Authority-era Tennessee novels, and the atomic frontier of Alamogordo in Cities of the Plain.

What is a country? While certain basic tenets - such as the clear demarcation of a country's borders, and the acknowledgment of its sovereignty by other countries and by international governing bodies like the United Nations - seem applicable, journalist Joshua Keating's book explores exceptions to these rules. Through stories about these countries' efforts at self-determination, as well as their respective challenges, Keating reveals that there is no universal legal authority determining what we consider a country.

Here, political scientist Jakub J. Grygiel brings to light the importance of incorporating geography into grand strategy. He argues that states can increase and maintain their position of power by pursuing a geostrategy that focuses on control of resources and lines of communication.

Why is it so much easier for the Democratic Party to win the national popular vote than to build and maintain a majority in Congress? Why can Democrats sweep statewide offices in places like Pennsylvania and Michigan yet fail to take control of the same states' legislatures? Many place exclusive blame on partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression. But as political scientist Jonathan A. Rodden demonstrates in Why Cities Lose, the left's electoral challenges have deeper roots in economic and political geography.

Based on the true story of the French villagers in WWII who saved thousands of Jews, this novel tells how a group of young teenagers stood up for what is right. Among them is a young Jewish boy who learns to forge documents to save his mother and later goes on to save hundreds of lives with his skills. There is also a girl who overcomes her fear to carry messages for the Resistance. And a boy who smuggles people into Switzerland. But there is always the threat that they will be caught. As the knot tightens, the young people must race against time to bring their friends to safety.

Thirteen-year-old Nandu lives in the newly established Royal Elephant Breeding Center on the edge of the jungle. Here, the King's elephants are to be raised under the protective watch of the stable. Nandu - along with his adoptive father Subba-sahib, his mentors, friends, and the rest of the elephant drivers - is tested by man and nature as earthquakes, drought, wild herds, and rumors of poachers threaten the center.

Born in a cabin deep in the backwoods of Kentucky and growing up in a family considered the poorest of the poor, Abraham Lincoln rose to become the 16th president of the United States. As president, he guided the United States through the Civil War, helped end slavery in America, and strengthened the federal government. This third installment in the Making of America series continues the story of the first 100 years of America's constitutional history, a story that began with Alexander Hamilton and Andrew Jackson.

After rising to national fame as the general who defeated the British in the Battle of New Orleans, Jackson ran for president as a political outsider, championing the interest of common farmers and frontiersmen. Determined to take down the wealthy, well-educated East Coast elites, he pledged to destroy the national bank, which he believed was an engine of corruption serving the interest of bankers and industrialists. A staunch nationalist, he sought to secure and expand the nation's borders.

This lyrical biography explores the life and art of Yoko Ono, from her childhood haiku to her avant-garde visual art and experimental music. An outcast throughout most of her life, and misunderstood by every group she was supposed to belong to, Yoko always followed her own unique vision to create art that was ahead of its time and would later be celebrated. Her focus remained on being an artist, even when the rest of world saw her only as the wife of John Lennon. Yoko Ono's moving story will inspire any young adult who has ever felt like an outsider.

Mit verblüffendem Einfallsreichtum und originellen Methoden nehmen Archäologen die Spuren der Vergangenheit auf...

In How to Lose the Hounds, Celeste Winston explores marronage—the practice of flight from and placemaking beyond slavery—as a guide to police abolition. She examines historically Black maroon communities in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, that have been subjected to violent excesses of police power from slavery until the present day.

In the works for more than twenty years, Interstate 69 has been both eagerly anticipated as an economic godsend and the center of a firestorm of protests by local environmentalists, farmers, ranchers, anarchists, and others who question both the wisdom of building more highways and the merits of globalization. Part history, part travelogue, Interstate 69 chronicles the last great highway project in America, introducing the people who have worked tirelessly to build it or stop it from being built, and the many places it would change forever.

Netting the Sun offers a carefully crafted diversity of natural and human stories from a landscape seemingly empty and forlorn to passing casual travelers. This surprising interpretation of south central Oregon's botany, geology, wildlife, ethnography, and history reveals what a truly special place the high desert is.