English Revolution Historical

Gordon Wood's wondrous accomplishment here is to bring these men and their times down to earth and within our reach, showing us just who they were and what drove them. In so doing, he shows us that although a lot has changed in two hundred years, to an amazing degree the virtues these founders defined for themselves are the virtues we aspire to still.

In 1765, Michael Fallon, an Irishman on the run from brutal English overlords, makes his way to Charleston, South Carolina, as an indentured servant. Bound over to Thomas Carver, a successful merchant, he quickly shows a knack for trade—and a disturbing attraction to Carver's beautiful, sensual daughter, Elizabeth. With luck and intelligence—and not without bloodshed—he rises into the rice-planting aristocracy of the Carolina Lowcountry, where a frontier spirit pulses beneath the superficial trappings of an agrarian society that is heading rapidly toward revolution.

With this revelatory and painstakingly researched book, Martha Washington, the invisible woman of American history, at last gets the biography she deserves. In place of the domestic frump of popular imagination, Patricia Brady resurrects the wealthy, attractive, and vivacious young widow who captivated the youthful George Washington. And even as it brings Martha Washington into sharper and more accurate focus, this sterling life sheds light on her marriage, her society, and the precedents she established for future First Ladies.

In Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary, Stanford University lecturer Bertrand M. Patenaude tells the dramatic story of Leon Trotsky's final years in exile in Mexico. Shedding new light on Trotsky's tumultuous friendship with painter Diego Rivera, his affair with Rivera’s wife Frida Kahlo, and his torment as his family and comrades become victims of the Great Terror, Trotsky: Downfall ofa Revolutionary brilliantly illuminates the fateful and dramatic life of one of history's most famous yet elusive figures.

In the summer of 1776, fifty-six men risked their lives and livelihood to defy King George III and sign the Declaration of Independence - yet how many of them do we actually remember? Signing Their Lives Away introduces listeners to the eclectic group of statesmen, soldiers, slaveholders, and scoundrels who signed this historic document - and the many strange fates that awaited them. Some prospered and rose to the highest levels of United States government, while others had their homes and farms seized by British soldiers.

The body of a disgraced college lecturer is found on an abandoned railway line. In the four years since his dismissal for sexual misconduct, he’d been living like a hermit. So where did he get the 5,000 pounds found in his pocket? Leading the investigation, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks begins to suspect that the victim's past may be connected to his death. Forty years ago the dead man attended a university that was a hotbed of militant protest and divisive, bitter politics. And as the seasoned detective well knows, some grudges are never forgotten - or forgiven.

1792. A tyrannical government is determined to make England a mighty commercial empire. In France, Napoleon Bonaparte begins his rise to power, and with dissent rife, France’s neighbours are on high alert. Unprecedented industrial change sweeps the land, making the lives of the workers in Kingbridge’s prosperous cloth mills a misery. Rampant modernization and dangerous new machinery are rendering jobs obsolete and tearing families apart. Now, as international conflict nears, a story of a small group of Kingsbridge people will come to define the struggle of a generation.

Award-winning author Philip Dray delves into the lesser-known side of an American icon in Stealing God's Thunder. Benjamin Franklin, more often viewed as a statesman and founding father than as a man of science, challenged religion, science, and reason with his inventions. But in a time when everything was blamed on sin, it was the lightning rod, Franklin's attempt to control the heavens, that caused the greatest controversy.

Among the defining figures of the Age of Revolution, Toussaint Louverture is the most enigmatic. Though the Haitian revolutionary’s image has multiplied across the globe—appearing on banknotes and in bronze, on T-shirts and in film—the only definitive portrait executed in his lifetime has been lost. Well versed in the work of everyone from Machiavelli to Rousseau, he was nonetheless dismissed by Thomas Jefferson as a “cannibal.” A Caribbean acolyte of the European Enlightenment, Toussaint nurtured a class of black Catholic clergymen who became one of the pillars of his rule.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Chernow presents a landmark biography of Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Father who galvanized, inspired, scandalized, and shaped the newborn nation.

The year is 1780 and the American Colonies are in revolt against Britain. Spain entered the conflict as an ally of the rebels in 1779 and seized Baton Rouge from the British, securing the flow of supplies to the western front. Bernardo Gálvez, the Spanish Governor-General of Louisiana has determined to send a reconnaissance force into Florida to prepare for an assault on the British fort at Mobile. Sergeant Diego deMelilla of the Spanish Fixed Regiment of Louisiana has been selected to lead that reconnaissance. Grieving over the recent loss of his beautiful wife, deMelilla is confronted ...

Three years after the storming of the Bastille, the streets of Paris are roiling with the spirit of revolution. The citizens of France are enlivened by the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The monarchy of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette has been dismantled - with the help of the guillotine - and a new nation is rising in its place. Jean-Luc, an idealistic young lawyer, moves his wife, Marie, and their infant son from their comfortable life in Marseille to Paris in the hopes of joining the cause.

After thirty-five years, the Three Musketeers - Athos, Aramis, and Porthos - join forces again. This time, it’s to rid France of corrupt King Louis XIV. True to their ingenuity, they plan to replace him with the mysterious prisoner in the barbaric iron mask now languishing in the Bastille. But their old comrade D’Artagnan, still in loyal service to the court, stands in their way. As the daring coup unfolds, literature’s legendary brotherhood is put to the test.

In this new audiobook, Hall makes the airtight case that America's Founders were not deists; that they did not create a "godless" Constitution; that even Jefferson and Madison did not want a high wall separating church and state; that most Founders believed the government should encourage Christianity; and that they embraced a robust understanding of religious liberty for biblical and theological reasons. In addition, Hall explains why and how the Founders' views are absolutely relevant today.

After two bestselling series examining the Civil War and WWII, Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen have turned their sharp eye for detail on the Revolutionary War with To Try Men's Souls. The story follows three men with three very different roles to play in history: General George Washington, Thomas Paine, and Jonathan Van Dorn, a private in Washington's army.

"Who is this man, this Scarlet Pimpernel?" Each day this question grew more pressing to the leaders of the French Revolution. Only this man and his band of followers threatened their total power. Only this maddeningly elusive figure defied the vast network of fanatics, informers, and secret agents that the Revolution spread out to catch its enemies.

A brand-new, unabridged recording of Baroness Orczy's classic tale of adventure, read by Julian Rhind-Tutt. Paris, 1792. The Terror has begun. Every day, scores of the French nobility are delivered to the guillotine. Trapped in the capital, they have no way of escape. But rumours abound of a league of young English gentlemen who are risking their lives to spirit French aristocrats away to safety across the Channel. Led by a man known only as the 'Scarlet Pimpernel', they leave no trace behind them save a single note.

This historical adventure with a hint of romance takes place during the American Revolution, when a man, only known as Mr. Harper, requests shelter at The Locusts during a storm. When another unknown stranger appears in want of shelter, Mr. Harper, and the Locust family, become quite suspicious. As the battle between the Patriots and the British is fought in their midst, an internal struggle occurs in the house of one family.

In To Try Men's Souls, Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen cast a new light on the year 1776 . Valley Forge picks up the narrative a year after Washington’s triumphant surprise attack on Trenton, and much has changed since then. It’s the winter of 1777, and Washington’s battered, demoralized army retreats from Philadelphia.

Edward Rutherfurd has enthralled millions of people with his grand, sweeping historical sagas that tell the history of a famous place over multiple generations. Now, in China: The Novel, Rutherfurd takes listeners into the rich and fascinating milieu of the Middle Kingdom. The story begins in 1839, at the dawn of the First Opium War, and follows Chinese history through Mao's Cultural Revolution and up to the present day. Rutherfurd chronicles the rising and falling fortunes of members of Chinese, British, and American families, as they negotiate the tides of history.