Showing titles in 19th Century

From Richard Zacks, bestselling author of Island of Vice and The Pirate Hunter, a rich and lively account of how Mark Twain’s late-life adventures abroad helped him recover from financial disaster and family tragedy—and revived his world-class sense of humor Mark Twain, the highest-paid...

A spectacular generational saga of the making (and undoing) of a family dynasty: the riveting untold story of the gilded Jewish Bagdadi Sassoons, who built a vast empire through global finance and trade—cotton, opium, shipping, banking—that reached across three continents and ultimately...

Named One of the Best True Crime Books of the Year by The New York Times A “spellbinding, thriller-like” (Shelf Awareness) history of early cinema and the invention of motion pictures centered on the mysterious, forgotten man behind it—detailing his life, work, disappearance, and legacy...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The perfect companion to the PBS Masterpiece series Victoria A gripping account of Queen Victoria’s rise and early years in power from CNN’s official royal historian “Kate Williams has perfected the art of historical biography. Her pacy writing is...

'They have left here today!' he calls to the others. When King puts his hand down above the ashes of the fire, it is to find it still hot. There is even a tiny flame flickering from the end of one log. They must have left just hours ago. MELBOURNE, 20 AUGUST 1860. In an ambitious quest to be the...

*Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography* *Winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award* *Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography* A “captivating” (The Washington Post) work of history that explores the life of an unconventional woman during the first half...

Personalities. Characters. History. John C. Waugh, the author of the popular and award-winning The Class of 1846, presents forty of the most memorable and impactful individuals he has come across during his three decades of researching and writing about the American Civil War—or as he calls them, his “Unforgettables” in the aptly titled, Unforgettables: Winners, Losers, Strong Women, and Eccentric Men of the Civil War Era.

Booker Taliaferro Washington was born in a southern plantation. He was a son of a black slave woman and unknown white man. His mother worked as a cook in a house of plantation owners. In childhood he idn't have a surname as other slaves, but after the American Civil War that set the black slaves free Booker chose the surname of the first American President George Washington.

The early decades of the nineteenth century saw the expansion of slavery, Native dispossession, and wars with Canada and Mexico. Mass immigration and powerful religious movements sent tremors through American society. But even as the powerful defended the status quo, others defied it. Edward L. Ayers's rich history examines the visions that moved Frederick Douglass, Margaret Fuller, the Native American activist William Apess, and others to challenge entrenched practices and beliefs.

Maria, jeune fille d'une famille polonaise noble mais démunie, a été mariée au riche Comte Walewski, de 50 ans son aîné. Son existence auprès de ce vieillard, pourtant doux et bon, est morne et sans joie. Alors que Napoléon entre en Pologne en libérateur avec ses troupes, elle lui est présentée lors d'une fête. Pour Napoléon, c'est le coup de foudre immédiat. Il n'en est rien de tel pour la jeune fille, pourtant objet des injonctions pressantes de son entourage : sa liaison avec Napoléon pourrait sauver la Pologne.

In the wake of the American and French Revolutions, thousands of men and women took to the roads and waterways on both sides of the Atlantic—refugees in search of their inalienable rights. Although larger nations fortified their borders and circumscribed citizenship, two port cities, German Hamburg and Danish Altona, opened their doors, as did the federated Swiss cantons and the newly independent Belgian monarchy. The refugees thrived and the societies that harbored them prospered.

A pesar de sus paradójicas luminarias, la historia de México a veces es cruel con sus caudillos. Los arrincona, los hunde en empresas destinadas al fracaso, los arrumba en el olvido; prueba de ello es la mítica figura de Ireneo Paz, emblema de los liberales mexicanos, militar, poeta, crítico de su tiempo, novelista, editor vehemente y al final de sus días...solo un fantasma.

The discovery of Robert E. Lee's Special Orders No. 191 outside of Frederick, Maryland, on September 13, 1862, is one of the most hotly disputed events of the American Civil War. For more than 150 years, historians have debated if George McClellan, commander of the Union Army of the Potomac, dawdled after receiving a copy of the orders before advancing to challenge Lee's forces. Authors Gene Thorp and Alexander Rossino document in exhaustive fashion how "Little Mac" in fact moved with uncharacteristic energy to counter the Confederate threat and take advantage of Lee's divided forces.

Sarmiento renunció a la masonería antes de asumir, vivió de prestado en casas de parientes y sufrió un grave atentado por parte del mismo bando que propició el asesinato de Urquiza. Cargó con la epidemia de la fiebre amarilla y la mayor tragedia naval de su tiempo. Completó su mandato en medio de una rebelión militar. Lo trataron de borracho, corrupto, inútil y anticonstitucional. Pero el contexto hostil no le impidió expandir los ferrocarriles y el telégrafo, promover la ciencia y la tecnología, impulsar el uso de maquinaria agrícola.

John Ross served the Cherokee Nation in a public capacity for nearly fifty years, thirty-eight as its constitutionally elected principal chief. Historian W. Dale Weeks describes Ross's efforts to protect the tribe's interests amid systematic attacks on indigenous culture throughout the nineteenth century. At the outset of the Civil War, Ross called for all Cherokees to remain neutral in a war they did not support—a position that became untenable when the US withdrew its forces from Indian Territory.

Fear swept Zhenjiang as British soldiers gathered outside the city walls in the summer of 1842. Already suspicious of foreigners, locals had also heard of the suffering the British inflicted two months earlier, in Zhapu. A wave of suicides and mercy killings ensued: rather than leave their families to the invaders, hundreds of women killed themselves and their children or died at the hands of male family members. British observers decried an "Asian culture" of ritual suicide. In reality, the event was sui generis—a tragic result of colliding local and global forces in nineteenth-century China.

It has been said that the number of women who served as soldiers, both North and South, approached 400. It is known that a large number of women disguised themselves and enlisted in the service, for one cause or another. Entrenched in secrecy, and regarded as men, they were sometimes revealed as women, by pregnancy or casualty.

¿Cómo era la Argentina entre 1810 y 1824? Hay un montón de sucesos ocultos en los años posteriores a la Revolución de Mayo. Hechos inéditos que no aparecen en los libros tradicionales de historia.

En el siglo XIX de México suceden, entre otras situaciones, el (desdichado) primer imperio, la ronda de las presidencias malogradas, la invasión norteamericana, la pérdida de una parte (substancial) del territorio, la Reforma liberal, la presidencia de don Benito Juárez, la gran batalla por la definición de lo nacional, las arcas siempre vacías y la mala educación que imparten, por así decirlo, el Padre Ripalda y el odio a la laicidad. Un grupo de liberales talentosos, valientes, lúcidos, construye simultáneamente la literatura y la historia de las nuevas libertades.

When Union and Confederate forces met at the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861, each side was confident of victory. The Northern and Southern Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis each hoped for a triumph that would bring a swift and decisive end to the Civil War that split the United States into two warring nations. Union General Irvin McDowell was the first of a succession of commanders who failed to deliver victories for the North. The South could boast of the military brilliance of General Thomas Jackson.