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Days On The Road: Crossing The Plains In 1865



Price: $0.99
(as of Apr 30, 2024 22:25:22 UTC – Details)



“Why are we here? Why have we left home, friends, relatives, associates, and loved ones, who have made so large a part of our lives and added so much to our happiness?”

On May 1, 1865, Sarah Raymond mounted her beloved pony and, riding alongside the wagon carrying her mother and two younger brothers, left war-torn Missouri and headed west.

With the sole motive of bettering themselves, the Raymonds began their journey undecided as to whether California or Oregon would be their ultimate destination.

By the middle of June, however, they had been persuaded that Montana was in fact the place to make for and the train altered path accordingly.

As they passed through Iowa, Nebraska and Wyoming towards the Rocky Mountains, they faced all manner of perils in experiencing the harsh reality of life on the Great Plains.

After four months and four days, the wagon train finally arrived in Virginia City, Montana in early September, and they set about beginning their new lives.

Unvarnished and evocative, Days on the Road is an extraordinary journal of what it was really like on the trail for the many who emigrated west in a bid to start over.

Sarah Raymond Herndon (1840-1914) arrived in Montana at the height of the Gold Rush in 1865. After teaching there for one school year, she married James M. Herndon in 1867. In addition to Days on the Road she also kept a diary of her experiences in Virginia City.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01DCBZWRY
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Lume Books (March 22, 2016)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 22, 2016
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2003 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 176 pages

Categories
History Kindle eBooks Kindle Store

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder



Price: $13.99
(as of Apr 30, 2024 12:19:20 UTC – Details)



#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. The powerful narrative reveals the deeper meaning of the events on The Wager, showing that it was not only the captain and crew who ended up on trial, but the very idea of empire.

A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, TIME, Smithsonian, NPR, Vulture, Kirkus Reviews

“Riveting…Reads like a thriller, tackling a multilayered history—and imperialism—with gusto.” —Time

“A tour de force of narrative nonfiction.” —The Wall Street Journal

On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty’s Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as “the prize of all the oceans,” it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing nearly 3,000 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.

But then … six months later, another, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they told a very different story. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes – they were mutineers. The first group responded with countercharges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous senior officer and his henchmen. It became clear that while stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death—for whomever the court found guilty could hang.

The Wager is a grand tale of human behavior at the extremes told by one of our greatest nonfiction writers. Grann’s recreation of the hidden world on a British warship rivals the work of Patrick O’Brian, his portrayal of the castaways’ desperate straits stands up to the classics of survival writing such as The Endurance, and his account of the court martial has the savvy of a Scott Turow thriller. As always with Grann’s work, the incredible twists of the narrative hold the reader spellbound.

From the Publisher

a tour de force of narrative nonfiction says the wall street journala tour de force of narrative nonfiction says the wall street journal

masterful...an adventure on the high seas, a horror story, and a courtroom dramamasterful...an adventure on the high seas, a horror story, and a courtroom drama

a rousing adventurea rousing adventure

a thrilling account...dramatic and engrossinga thrilling account...dramatic and engrossing

one of the finest nonfiction books i've ever read says the guardianone of the finest nonfiction books i've ever read says the guardian

riveting...reads like a thrillerriveting...reads like a thriller

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0B6Z4SVTH
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Doubleday (April 18, 2023)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 18, 2023
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 63844 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 327 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 147118370X

Categories
Books Europe History Italy

Rise and Fall of the Borgias



Price: $0.00
(as of Apr 28, 2024 04:47:27 UTC – Details)


Since its rise to the highest ranks of power in Renaissance Europe, the Borgia family has developed a scandalous reputation. While they were indeed ostentatious, calculating, worldly, cruel—and even, occasionally, murderous—listeners may be surprised to find that the Borgias were not terribly different from other powerful and ambitious families of their day. So why has history set them apart as one of the most corrupt and reviled families in history?

In the Rise and Fall of the Borgias, listeners will spend 10 revealing lectures untangling the web of rumors, speculation, and historical embellishment from what is actually known about the infamous Roman family. With Dr. William Landon, listeners will explore the historical context that helped the Borgias make their fortune and better understand how they could be both magnanimous and ruthless, pious and morally suspect.

The story of the Borgias is rich with intrigue, even without the fictional enhancement it has received from the numerous films, novels, and television shows that have been created based on the family’s notoriety. Dr. Landon introduces listeners to the major players and lays bare their machinations to reach the highest offices of church and state. Were their exploits as salacious as listeners have been led to believe? Did they manipulate the papacy for their own gain? Are the rumors of incest, bribery, political assassinations, and other morally questionable behaviors true or the stuff of historical gossip?

As listeners explore these and other rumors surrounding the Borgias, they will pull back the curtain on the historian’s craft and see how the story of this Renaissance dynasty has been shaped over time and how new research and a healthy dose of skepticism has allowed us to get a little closer to the truth—without losing any of the drama.

Categories
Air Forces Armed Forces Audible Books & Originals History Military

Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany



Price: $0.00
(as of Apr 25, 2024 18:24:15 UTC – Details)


Soon to be a major television event from Apple TV, Masters of the Air is the riveting history of the American Eighth Air Force in World War II, the story of the young men who flew the bombers that helped bring Nazi Germany to its knees, brilliantly told by historian and World War II expert Donald Miller.

Masters of the Air is the deeply personal story of the American bomber boys in World War II who brought the war to Hitler’s doorstep. With the narrative power of fiction, Donald Miller takes you on a harrowing ride through the fire-filled skies over Berlin, Hanover, and Dresden and describes the terrible cost of bombing for the German people.

Fighting at 25,000 feet in thin, freezing air that no warriors had ever encountered before, bomber crews battled new kinds of assaults on body and mind. Air combat was deadly but intermittent: periods of inactivity and anxiety were followed by short bursts of fire and fear. Unlike infantrymen, bomber boys slept on clean sheets, drank beer in local pubs, and danced to the swing music of Glenn Miller’s Air Force band, which toured US air bases in England. But they had a much greater chance of dying than ground soldiers.

The bomber crews were an elite group of warriors who were a microcosm of America—white America, anyway. The actor Jimmy Stewart was a bomber boy, and so was the “King of Hollywood,” Clark Gable. And the air war was filmed by Oscar-winning director William Wyler and covered by reporters like Andy Rooney and Walter Cronkite, all of whom flew combat missions with the men. The Anglo-American bombing campaign against Nazi Germany was the longest military campaign of World War II, a war within a war. Until Allied soldiers crossed into Germany in the final months of the war, it was the only battle fought inside the German homeland.

Masters of the Air is a story of life in wartime England and in the German prison camps, where tens of thousands of airmen spent part of the war. It ends with a vivid description of the grisly hunger marches captured airmen were forced to make near the end of the war through the country their bombs destroyed.

Drawn from interviews, oral histories, and American, British, German, and other archives, Masters of the Air is an authoritative, deeply moving account of the world’s first and only bomber war.

Categories
History Kindle eBooks Kindle Store

The Bedford Boys



Price: $12.99
(as of Apr 23, 2024 16:23:21 UTC – Details)



On 6 June 1944, nineteen boys from Bedford, Virginia – population just 3,000 in 1944 – died in the first bloody minutes of D-Day.

Later in the campaign, three more boys from this small Virginia town died of gunshot wounds. Twenty-two sons of Bedford were lost in total. Based on extensive interviews with survivors and relatives, as well as diaries and letters, Alex Kershaw’s book focuses on several remarkable individuals and families to tell one of the most poignant stories of World War II – the story of one small American town that went to war and died on Omaha Beach.

The Bedford Boys is the true and intimate story of these men and the friends and families they left behind.

Praise for The Bedford Boys:

‘Not only have I read this book twice, but I have purchased extra copies and mailed them to friends. The story of the Bedford Boys needs to be told. Not enough people know about them. I have read many books on the topic of WW2. However, this is the best one at linking the events, the soldiers and their families together’ – Amazon review

‘I loved this book. I laughed, I cried, and I have so much respect for the boys who fought in Normandy. They may be heroes, but they still are just boys … Anyone interested in the human side of war will want to read this book’ – Curledup.com

Alex Kershaw is a British journalist and author. A former history teacher, he has written several best-selling books and screenplays, and has written for The Guardian, The Independent and The Sunday Times. Kershaw has a doctorate in military history and is a board director of Friends of the National WWII Memorial.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08Q7GCL94
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Lume Books (December 9, 2020)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 9, 2020
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3604 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 240 pages