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Vlad III, known as Vlad the Impaler was voivode of Wallachia three times. The tales about the burning of the lazy, the poor, and the lame at Vlad's order and the execution of the woman who had made her husband too short a shirt can also be found among the German and Slavic anecdotes. Books describing Vlad's cruel acts were among the first best sellers in the German-speaking territories.

Hosted by Dr. Sarah C. Schaefer (Assistant Professor, Art History, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee) and Dr. Tina Rivers Ryan (Assistant Curator, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY).

Frida Kahlo was ahead of her time. She was bisexual and would have fit in perfectly in the time we live in now. Her disabilities would be acceptable in our society of today and her husband, Diego would probably be run out of town by the Real Housewives of “Cheaters”. Frida came with a lot of baggage in her life starting when she was only six years old and even more baggage piled on when she was in high school. Her suffering was more than anyone can imagine but she kept her head held high and forged her way forward.

Unlike most artists, Van Gogh developed very slowly, beginning with work as an art dealer that exposed him to many great works. He undertook this work for several years, after which he spent time as a missionary for the Dutch Reformed Church. Thereafter, he drifted for several years before returning home to his parents’ house, where he took up painting, largely self-taught with books on anatomy and painting. His great works all date from the later years of his life.

Is everything about Henry Ford good? This is a man who was more than liberally doused in dogma. Ford was a man whose existence changed the way we live. With the Ford Model T, he brought affordable, flexible transport to the masses. Henry Ford opened up the world. Here is the story of a man of contrasts - genius and pendant, pacifist and supporter of thuggery, social liberator and Orwellian Big Brother. Whatever we conclude about Henry Ford, he is undoubtedly a man about whom we should know more.

Ludwig van Beethoven, a genius composer, one of the most recognized and influential of all composers. Ludwig van Beethoven is a crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Classical music. Beethoven displayed his musical talents at an early age and was taught by his father Johann van Beethoven and by composer and conductor Christian Gottlob Neefe.

Discover the lives and poltical history of German politician and demagogue Adolf Hitler - leader of the Nazi Party, chancellor of Germany, and führer of Nazi Germany - and Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union.

Initially presiding over an oligarchic one-party regime that governed by plurality, Joseph Stalin became the de facto dictator of the Soviet Union. Stalin raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, kidnappings, and protection rackets. To eradicate those regarded as "enemies of the working class", Stalin instituted the "Great Purge" in which more than a million were imprisoned and at least 700,000 were executed from 1934 to 1939.

Cleopatra VII Philopator was the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, nominally survived as pharaoh by her son Caesarion. She was also a diplomat, naval commander, polyglot, and medical author. As a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, she was a descendant of its founder, Ptolemy I Soter, a Macedonian Greek general and companion of Alexander the Great.

Nikola Tesla pursued his ideas for wireless lighting and worldwide wireless electric power distribution in his high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments. Hear more about Tesla in this audiobook.

Did Christopher Columbus discover America or a route to the Far East? He was an Italian explorer, navigator, and colonist who had a singular goal toward which he was driven. His courage was astounding, as he and his three small ships set sail across the Atlantic Ocean. Columbus and his men took precarious and dangerous journeys toward a blue horizon. All they had to depend upon were nautical charts, an astrolabe, and a quadrant. The maps he used were developed by more ancient astronomers such as Ptolemy and Eratosthenes – men who had never sailed the great sea.

We keep in our mind for some reason as we grow and get older that George Washington wore false wooden teeth and that is why you never see a picture of him smiling. The explanation sounds good when you are a child, and at that time you can’t refute that story. In this version, you will find things about George Washington that might surprise you and that you did not know before you listen to this audiobook. You will find out that he was the type of man that tried to lay things out in such a way as to make his opponent look bad or if need be, to bend the truth if necessary.

Patton’s life was a patchwork of a hard-driving leadership style, a colorful and sarcastic personality, and a series of dire political missteps. His image is often contradictory. On one hand, he was a hot spark who could often fly off the handle and say and do things that were injurious to himself and others. On the other hand, he was a gifted orator whose capacity to inspire his troops was second to none. Reconciling those elements of his being can sometimes be a tricky proposition.

It goes without saying that Eleanor of Aquitaine was a force of nature. She was the wife of kings, the mother of kings, a duchess in her own right, and a tool of no man. She was headstrong and independent in an age when women were essentially to be seen and not heard.

Has Ivan Chetvyorty been a wicked and ruthless leader? Has his nation suffered as he pursued his own corrupted agendas? Surely, though, none comes close to the violent, lascivious, vengeful reign of Ivan Chetvyorty Vasilyevich, born to the Rurik Dynasty in the Grand Duchy of Muscovy. Indeed, this man’s period in power was one of the longest in Russian history, lasting more than half a century.

Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, best known for his contributions to the science of evolution. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors and, in a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace, introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding.

Seen as a strong-willed, tenacious leader who saved the United States from the Great Depression and the death and destruction that could have been through World War II, Franklin Delano Roosevelt solidified the nation's place as a world superpower. As a dominant leader of his party, he built the New Deal Coalition, which realigned American politics into the Fifth Party System.

Was Don Juan an unconquerable womanizer and a philanderer whose life choices were driven by his loins, not his mind? A rich man of noble blood, indeed. But also, a scoundrel of the highest order. Still, not every story sees him as such. Some say he is more victim than culprit, others that there is nothing wrong with enjoying life, provided doing so harms no one and nobody is induced to do something they would rather not. Our challenge is to find out exactly what kind of man Don Juan really was. The answer might surprise us.

In the 20th century, the nation had come of age, a brand-new political landscape was taking shape. It was during the 20th century that the US president became not just the leader of the United States but the Leader of the Free World. The US essentially inherited this hegemony from the British Empire at the close of World War II and retained it for the remainder of the century, which gave the country’s presidents a whole new set of problems to deal with. While the Monroe Doctrine had long dictated concern for events in the Americas, the US now became the policeman of the entire world.

Albert Einstein was an outstanding physician and mathematician of the 20th century. He was a pure genius who created a formula that would build a bomb capable of killing thousands at a time. Albert learned to play the violin. He could play a few notes on the piano or the violin, and then he would jot down notes on some theory. Einstein won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922.