Showing results by narrator "James McSorley" in All Categories

In his first fourteen seasons, as a pitcher for the Giants, Christy Mathewson never won fewer than twenty games in a season, and he almost single-handedly won the 1905 World Series. In 1918, though age thirty-eight and exempt from military service, he enlisted for World War I, where he exposed himself to nearly lethal amounts of mustard gas as he taught soldiers how to put on gas masks. When he returned home, he was diagnosed with lung problems and tuberculosis, which led to his untimely death at the age of forty-five.

Students and enthusiasts of American history are familiar with the Revolutionary War spies Nathan Hale and Benedict Arnold, but few studies have closely examined the wider intelligence efforts that enabled the colonies to gain their independence. Spies, Patriots, and Traitors provides readers with a fascinating, well-documented, and highly readable account of American intelligence activities during the era of the Revolutionary War, from 1765 to 1783.

Written in accessible prose that includes a synthesis of recent scholarship, this edition delves further into the life of an African American soldier in the 19th century. It also explores the experiences of soldiers' families at frontier posts. In a new epilogue, the authors summarize developments in the lives of buffalo soldiers after the Indian Wars and discuss contemporary efforts to memorialize them in film, art, and architecture.

He was always destined to be a champion. Royally bred, with English and American classic winners in his pedigree, Sir Barton shone from birth, dubbed the "king of them all". But after a winless two-year-old season and a near-fatal illness, uncertainty clouded the start of Sir Barton's three-year-old season. Then his surprise victory in America's signature race, the Kentucky Derby, started him on the road to history, where he would go on to dominate the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes, completing America's first Triple Crown.

In 1609, two years after its English founding, colonists struggled to stay alive in a tiny fort at Jamestown. John Smith fought to keep order. When he left, desperate colonists ate lizards, rats, and human flesh. Meanwhile, the Virginia-bound Sea Venture was shipwrecked on Bermuda, the dreaded, uninhabited “Isle of Devils”. Bermuda became England’s second New World colony in 1612. A Tale of Two Colonies examines the existing sources on the colonies, sets them in a transatlantic context, and weighs them against circumstantial evidence.

Granbury's Texas Brigade explores the motivations behind the unit's decision to continue to fight, even as it faced demoralizing defeats and Confederate collapse. Using a vast array of letters, diaries, and regimental documents, Lundberg offers provocative insight into the minds of the unit's men and commanders. The caliber of that leadership, he concludes, led to the group's overall high morale.

John Jacob Astor was the best-known and most important American businessman for more than a half-century. His career encompassed the country's formative economic years from the precarious days following the American Revolution to the emergence of an urban-centered manufacturing economy in the late 1840s.

Are you struggling to pay the bills? Are you burdened with debt? Are you getting by, but not saving as much money as you would like? Do you fear for your family's future? In tough economic times, millions of families are finding it harder than ever before to manage their money, prioritize their needs and wants, and lead a Christian life while still maintaining a prosperous lifestyle. As Christians, we have faith that God will provide for us - and this truth is more apparent than ever when we take charge of our own financial futures.

This is a brief highly digestable history of the Catholic experience in British America, which shaped the development of the colonies and the nascent republic in the 17th and 18th centuries. Historian Robert Emmett Curran begins his account with the English reformation, which helps us to understand the Catholic exodus from England, Ireland, and Scotland that took place over the nearly two centuries that constitute the colonial period.

In the height of the Second World War, US forces launched a long and grueling campaign to take the island of Guadalcanal, mounting the first major land attack against Japanese forces. What followed was a six-month string of devastating battles as these two forces wrestled over this key military position. In the wake of near-daily aerial attacks and several determined assaults from the Japanese navy, the Guadalcanal campaign culminated in a victory for America and marked the first of many offensive attacks aimed at neutralizing the Japanese in the Pacific Theater.

The war for the Pacific rages on. The US has set their sights on the Tarawa atoll - a small yet vital island which, if captured, would give the Allies a powerful stepping stone into the heart of Japanese waters and the rest of the Gilbert Islands. Through a coordinated assault of carefully planned beach landings, the Marines made their attack on November 20, 1943...and encountered a resistance so fierce and violent it shook the Allies to the core.

Aaron Sullivan explores the British occupation of Philadelphia, chronicling the experiences of a group of people who were pursued, pressured, and at times persecuted, not because they chose the wrong side of the Revolution but because they tried not to choose a side at all. For these people, the war was neither a glorious cause to be won nor an unnatural rebellion to be suppressed, but a dangerous and costly calamity to be navigated with care. Both the Patriots and the British referred to this group as "the disaffected".

By mid-1942 the Allies were losing the Mediterranean war: Malta was isolated and its civilian population faced starvation. In June 1942 the British Royal Navy made a stupendous effort to break the Axis stranglehold. The British dispatched armed convoys from Gibraltar and Egypt toward Malta. In a complex battle lasting more than a week, Italian and German forces defeated Operation Vigorous, the larger eastern effort, and ravaged the western convoy, Operation Harpoon, in a series of air, submarine, and surface attacks culminating in the Battle of Pantelleria.

Exploring the successful Norman invasion of England in 1066, this concise and listenable book focuses especially on the often dramatic and enduring changes wrought by William the Conqueror and his followers. Hugh M. Thomas considers the conquest's wide-ranging impact by taking a fresh look at such traditional themes as the influence of battles and great men on history and by assessing how far the shift in ruling dynasty and noble elites affected broader aspects of English history.

Although it was only in operation for about 18 months, the Pony Express remains the most famous and romanticized mailing system in American history. Starting shortly before the Civil War erupted across the United States, the Pony Express connected the east and west by having riders deliver mail from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California - a route set up by previous explorations and a system of relay stations and waypoints.

For much of the 20th century, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's life and career remained mostly obscure outside of dedicated scholars of the Battle of Gettysburg and alumni and students of Bowdoin College. Colonel Chamberlain had led the 20th Maine regiment at Gettysburg, holding the extreme left of the Union line on Little Round Top, and he continued to rise up the ranks toward the end of the war until he was commanding a brigade and present at the surrender ceremony of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox.

From wood to coal to oil and gas, the sources of energy on which civilization depends have always changed as technology advances. Now renewables are overtaking fossil fuels, with wind and solar energy becoming cheaper and more competitive every year. Growth in renewable energy will further accelerate as electric vehicles become less expensive than traditional automobiles. Understanding the implications of the energy transition will prepare us for the many changes ahead.

The revolutionary Ohio Valley is often depicted as a chaotic Hobbesian dystopia, in which Indians and colonists slaughtered each other at every turn. In Unsettling the West, Rob Harper overturns this familiar story. Rather than flailing in a morass, the peoples of the revolutionary Ohio Valley actively and persistently sought to establish a new political order that would affirm their land claims, protect them against attack, and promote trade.

Determined to capture a pivotal island in their war against the Japanese, the US 1st Marine Division was faced with a challenging task: to land on the fortified peninsula of Cape Gloucester and capture its two vital airfields. Taking the peninsula and the island of New Britain would give them a vital stepping stone in their campaign to push the Japanese out of New Guinea and the Bismarck Sea.

Over the course of its history, England has engaged in an uncountable number of battles, but a select few have been celebrated like the Battle of Trafalgar, one of the most important naval battles in history. Before the battle, Napoleon still harbored dreams of sailing an invasion force across the English Channel and subduing England, but that would be dashed on October 21, 1805 by a British fleet that was outnumbered and outgunned.