Showing results by narrator "Daniel Houle" in All Categories

The split between the two forms of Islam was already in the process of forming upon the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Muhammad had constructed around himself not only a potent new religious movement but also a powerful young state called the Ummah (the "Community" for lack of a better translation). Amid the upheaval in the Islamic world following Muhammad’s death, the Umayyad Caliphate lasted for less than a century, but in that time it managed to become one of the most influential of the major caliphates established following him.

The fight for civil rights was at the forefront of inspirational, high-octane movements that took 20th century America by storm. One of the most common complaints minorities had centered on the use of police brutality, an issue that remains at the forefront of the conversation today. While protests emerged after the death of George Floyd in 2020, perhaps the most notorious example of police brutality in modern American history was the beating of Rodney King, whose arrest was caught on video.

James Meredith’s struggle to integrate the University of Mississippi in 1962 is still remembered vividly, but the Little Rock Nine are frequently overlooked when it comes to discussing the Civil Rights Movement, despite attempting to integrate Little Rock Central High School five years earlier. For millions of kids, high school is a tumultuous time, but for the Little Rock Nine, the first African American students to attend a previously segregated high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, those years were nightmarish.

Tens of millions died during World War II as the warring powers raced to create the best fighter planes, tanks, and guns, and eventually that race extended to bombs which carried enough power to destroy civilization itself. While the war raged in Europe and the Pacific, a dream team of Nobel Laureates was working on the Manhattan Project, a program kept so secret that Vice President Harry Truman didn’t know about it until he took the presidency after FDR’s death in April 1945.

The Cristero War in Mexico is the last great armed movement in a country that for a hundred years suffered revolution after revolution, in an apparently endless cycle. Ignored for decades, the war was long seen simply as an unwanted corollary of the Mexican Revolution, a kind of anomaly in the official narrative.

The legendary Pablo Picasso once paid a visit to the legendary Altamira Caves, located near the town of Santillana del Mar in Cantabria, Spain. There, he viewed the ancient cave paintings, deemed to be among the most sophisticated examples in the world. He summarized the visit by saying, “After Altamira, all is decadence,”[1] suggesting a purity in early man that modern people have apparently lost. Other lesser-known artists, psychologists and various scientists have dismissed even the best of the Paleolithic cave painters.

When the American Revolution ended, the United States and Britain reached an impressively comprehensive peace in the Treaty of Paris. Among the important terms of the treaty, Britain recognized the colonies as free and relinquished territorial claims to them. The two sides then negotiated the boundaries that separated the United States from the British colonies in present-day Canada. Additionally, the British and Americans strove to share certain waters, including the Mississippi River and the fishing waters off Newfoundland.

In 323 BCE, Alexander the Great was on top of the world; on June 11, 323 B.C., Alexander the Great, King of Macedon, Hegemon of the League of Corinth, King of Kings, died. The Diadochi: The History of Alexander the Great’s Successors and the Wars That Divided His Empire chronicles how Alexander’s legendary conquests shaped the next several centuries, and how the successor generals carved out various empires. You will learn about the Diadochi like never before.

Over the last 2,000 years, ambitious men have dreamed of forging vast empires and attaining eternal glory in battle, but of all the conquerors who took steps toward such dreams, none were ever as successful as antiquity’s first great conqueror. Leaders of the 20th century hoped to rival Napoleon’s accomplishments, while Napoleon aimed to emulate the accomplishments of Julius Caesar. But Caesar himself found inspiration in Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE), the Macedonian king who managed to stretch an empire from Greece to the Himalayas in Asia by the age of 30.

The fighting in North Africa during World War II is commonly overlooked, aside from the famous battle at El Alamein that pitted the British under General Bernard Montgomery against the legendary “Desert Fox”, Erwin Rommel. But while the Second Battle of El Alamein would be the pivotal action in North Africa, the conflict in North Africa began all the way back in the summer of 1940 when Italian dictator Benito Mussolini declared Italy’s entrance into the war. From his perspective, the fact that the British and French had their hands full with the Germans created an opportunity.

Few things have captured the American imagination like the “Wild West,” which still evokes images of dusty cowboys, outlaws, gunfights, gamblers, and barroom brawls over 100 years after the West was settled. A constant fixture in American pop culture, the 19th century American West continues to be vividly and colorfully portrayed not just as a place but as a state of mind.

The Vietnam War could have been called a comedy of errors if the consequences weren’t so deadly and tragic. In 1951, while war was raging in Korea, the United States began signing defense pacts with nations in the Pacific, intending to create alliances that would contain the spread of Communism. As the Korean War was winding down, America joined the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, pledging to defend several nations in the region from Communist aggression. One of those nations was South Vietnam.

It is difficult to ignore the effortless cool of a saber-toothed tiger. The fanged feline was equipped with the savage strength of a lion, the lethal stealth of a puma, the intimidating gait of a black bear, and the strapping, muscular arms of a gorilla. Amazingly, however, those traits did not stand out as much as the long, dagger-like fangs that earned the Smilodon its famous nickname. The saber-toothed tiger, legend has it, was as ferocious as it was fearless, often tackling beasts twice its size.

The “Golden Age” of American film that began in the pre-World War II years has never truly ended, moving from its early connection with “film noir” to the epics of the 1960s and beyond. Similarly, movie stars still enjoy a degree of exoticism they have possessed since the days of silent film. However, in the modern day, the screen actor is not so narrowly constrained by public image as to prevent the leading of a double life, once impermissible for powerful studio heads.

"Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.” In that short line, Anatole Broyard, a 20th century American writer, compactly captures the timeless and enchanting beauty that resides within the Eternal City of Rome. This tourist destination is often one of the highest ranked on bucket lists, for how could one not want to experience its marvelous ruins, mirror-like rivers, and spectacular stretches of aqueducts, firsthand?

The IWW’s members have been known for more than a century as the Wobblies, and no one knows how they got the name, although there are stories that an immigrant had trouble pronouncing the letters. The Wobblies quickly became a considerable force in American labor, and by far the most colorful union of its era, if not always particularly effective. This work tells the story of how they came about, the peak of their influence, and the lasting legacy they forged.

The Korean War is often labeled “the forgotten war”, and though it has received renewed attention in recent years, it still pales compared to others in recent history like the Vietnam War or even the more recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What’s mostly overlooked is that the Korean War was one of the most intense conflicts the United States fought, and the soldiers who served in it were arguably in greater peril than in any other war over the last 75 years.

While America’s biggest city constantly changes, the largest police force in the United States, the New York Police Department (NYPD), is no stranger to the limelight. Quite the contrary, the NYPD has become immutably entrenched in American culture, past and present. The acronym itself, while a mouthful, is effortlessly musical and therefore commands a certain presence.

In terms of geopolitics, perhaps the most seminal event of the Middle Ages was the successful Ottoman siege of Constantinople in 1453. The city had been an imperial capital as far back as the fourth century, when Constantine the Great shifted the power center of the Roman Empire there, effectively establishing two almost equally powerful halves of antiquity’s greatest empire. Constantinople would continue to serve as the capital of the Byzantine Empire even after the Western half of the Roman Empire collapsed in the late fifth century.

The Bishops’ Wars: The History of the Religious Conflicts that Engulfed Britain and Led to the First English Civil War examines one of the most tumultuous periods in England’s history. Along with pictures depicting important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Bishops’ Wars like never before.