Normans History

In 1871, an entire fleet of whaling ships was caught in an arctic ice storm and destroyed. Though few lives were lost, the damage would forever shape one of America's most distinctive commodities: oil. New Bedford, Massachusetts, was fertile ground for this country's first multimillion-dollar industry. Founded by assiduous Quaker merchants seeking refuge for their austere religion, the town also lent unparalleled access to the high seas.

After the Civil War ended, Edmund McIlhenny, an ambitious and tenacious Louisiana businessman, found himself with few prospects. The South's economy in ruins and his millions of dollars in Confederacy currency worthless, he had no choice but to return with his wife, Mary, to her family home in Avery Island, a former sugar plantation destroyed by Union soldiers. To McIlhenny's surprise, however, the hot peppers he had planted before being forced off the island had flourished.

In many ways, the narrative of the Wild West has endured more as legend than reality, and a perfect example of that can be found in the legend of James Butler Hickok (1837-1876), forever known as "Wild Bill". Indeed, separating fact from fiction when it comes to the life of Wild Bill is nearly impossible, something due in great measure to the fact that the man himself exaggerated his own adventures or fabricated stories altogether.

While Halley’s Comet lit up Earth’s sky in 1835, America’s biggest literature star was born. Though Samuel Langhorne Clemens toiled in obscurity as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi and to this day remains a name oft forgotten, that young man became famous around the globe under his unforgettable pseudonym, Mark Twain. Although Twain spent the first 30 years of his life working odd jobs, his printing background, sharp wit, and humor helped establish him first as a journalist and later an author.

In Charles River Editors' History for Kids series, your children can learn about history's most important people and events in an easy, entertaining, and educational way. The concise but comprehensive book will keep your kid's attention all the way to the end. As one of the most influential men of the 20th century, there is no shortage of adjectives to use when describing Woodrow Wilson's two terms as president of the United States.

Pearl Harbor was unquestionably one of the seminal events in American history, and given the nature of the surprise attack, the entry of the US into the war, and the lingering controversies and conspiracy theories, the attack on Pearl Harbor continues to be a highly charged and heavily debated event. History for Kids: The Attack on Pearl Harbor chronicles the history leading up to the surprise attack, including the negotiations between the Japanese and American governments, and the plotting of the attack itself.

Nothing to Fear brings to life a fulcrum moment in American history - the tense, feverish first 100 days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency, when he and his inner circle completely reinvented the role of the federal government.

Fighting for justice, for freedom of speech, and sometimes even for their own lives, some of history's most significant figures demonstrate the finest resources of language in the service of the most dramatic issues of their day.

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.

Exploration of the early American West, beginning with Lewis and Clark's transcontinental trek at the behest of President Thomas Jefferson, was not accomplished by standing armies, the era's new steam train technology, or by way of land grabs. These came later, but not until pathways known only to a few of the land's indigenous people were discovered, carved out, and charted in an area stretching from the eastern Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, and the present-day borders of Mexico and Canada.

During one of the most turbulent periods in the history of Rome, men like Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, and Octavian participated in two civil wars that would spell the end of the Roman Republic, and determine who would become the Roman emperor. In the middle of it all was history's most famous woman, the Egyptian pharaoh Cleopatra (BC 69-30), who famously seduced both Caesar and Antony, and thereby positioned herself as one of the most influential people in a world of powerful men.

Eddie Bielawski was born in the town of Wegrow in Poland in mid-1938. Not a propitious time and place for a Jewish child to be born. As a young child, he sees the Nazi army marching toward Russia. Day and night they marched - soldiers, trucks, tanks, and more soldiers, in a never-ending line - an invincible force. One night, his father had a dream. In this dream, he saw what he had to do: where to build the bunker, how to build it, and even its dimensions. This would be their Noah's Ark, saving them from the initial deluge.

University of Miami football is more than national championships, 30-game winning streaks, and being a pipeline to the NFL. It’s the Gator Flop, defeating Tulane on a fifth down, and playing three games in eight days. It’s converting third and 44 against Notre Dame, Michael Irvin talking smack with Florida State’s Deion Sanders, and Vinny Testaverde being sacked by hamburgers.

Listeners can discover all the foul facts about the Stormin Normans, including why Norman knights slept with a dolly, which pirate hung up his eye-patch and became a saint and why Crusader ships were defended with barrels of pee. Now in audio format, this bestselling book is sure to be a huge hit with yet another generation of Terry Deary fans.

In 2001, at 47, Thomas DeWolf was astounded to discover that he was related to the most successful slave-trading family in American history, responsible for transporting at least 10,000 Africans to the Americas. His infamous ancestor, U.S. senator James DeWolf of Bristol, of Rhode Island, curried favor with President Jefferson to continue in the trade after it was outlawed.

In this engaging history, James MacGregor Burns brings to vivid life the two-hundred-year conflagration of the Enlightenment, during which audacious questions and astonishing ideas tore across Europe and the New World, transforming thought, bringing down governments, and inspiring visionary political experiments that would ultimately reach every corner of the globe. Unlike most historians, Burns pays particular attention to America's intellectual revolution, beginning and ending his story on American soil.

The second in an uproarious, sardonic and incisive look through English history. In this volume, we discover the actions of the Normans and King Richard, giving clear reasons why we history should hold them in nothing but contempt. It also covers the signing of the Magna Carta, the first bill of rights in England, which came about because a powerless king tried to go to war, realised that he had no-one behind him, and was bullied into signing in order to not simply be executed.

Congress is the first branch of government in the American system, write Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, but now it is a broken branch, damaged by partisan bickering and internal rancor. The Broken Branch offers both a brilliant diagnosis of the cause of Congressional decline and a much-needed blueprint for change, from two experts who understand politics and revere our institutions, but believe that Congress has become deeply dysfunctional.

Following the Battle of Agincourt, Henry V's second invasion of France in 1417 launched a campaign that would place the crown of France on an English head. By the time of Henry's premature death in 1422, nearly all of northern France lay in his hands and the Valois heir to the throne had been disinherited. Only Joan of Arc—a visionary peasant girl who claimed divine guidance—was able to halt the English advance, but not for long. Just six months after her death, Henry's young son was crowned in Paris as the first, and last, English king of France.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Watson was an infamous brute who ruled his remote patch of Florida with an iron fist. He had no problem killing those who got in his way, and was even rumored as the murderer of legendary outlaw Belle Starr. By 1910, Watson’s neighbors had endured enough. They greeted him as he returned home and promptly gunned him down.