History Essays

This essay comes from the NPR series This I Believe, which features brief personal reflections from both famous and unknown Americans. The pieces that make up the series compel listeners to rethink not only what and how they have arrived at their beliefs, but also the extent to which they share them with others.

With a blend of reportage, historical data, and pop culture, Black Genius touches on timely issues of race, class, and creativity. Tre’s life and career put him in a unique position to become a cultural observer, diving into predominantly-Black cities, communities, and schools with an ever-watchful eye of what was happening around Black opportunity, mobility, politics, and institutions. In this collection Tre pinpoints four key aspects of Black American genius—innovation, family, celebration, and community as the recipe to coming out on top.

An experiment. A declaration. A spiritual awakening. Noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau spent two years, two months, and two days chronicling his near-isolation in a small cabin he built in the woods near Walden Pond, on land owned by his mentor and the father of Transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Immersing himself in nature and solitude, Thoreau sought to develop a greater understanding of society amidst a life of self-reliance and simplicity. Originally published in 1854, Walden remains one of the most celebrated works in American literature.

A fresh and fascinating reappraisal of the first half of the 20th century from one of our foremost historians. 'War, comrades,' declared Trotsky, 'is a great locomotive of history.' He was thought to be acknowledging the opportunity the First World War had offered the Bolsheviks to seize power in Russia in 1917. Peter Clarke explores the crucial ways in which war can be seen as a prime mover of history in the 20th century through the eyes of five major figures.

These passages from the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson on religion and spiritual philosophy reveal a metaphysical thought that is quintessentially American and universally relevant to the spiritual needs of today's world. It is seldom that an American philosopher is found among the gurus, mystics, and masters present in the spiritual milieu. Emerson combined the spiritual intuition of the East with the philosophical acumen of the West.

Welcome to "Funky Stuff that will Tickle your Brain," a captivating collection of 30 explanations and essays that will ignite your curiosity and expand your knowledge. This book is part of an epic 50-volume series, "Get Smarter One Book at a Time," which covers a wide range of topics from science and philosophy to creativity and adventure. Together, these books aim to nurture a lifelong love of learning and exploration. In this particular volume, you'll embark on a fascinating journey through a diverse array of subjects. From the intricacies of asphalt production and the history of fences ...

Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays showcases the Hitchens rejection of consensus and cliché, whether he's reporting from abroad in Indonesia, Kurdistan, Iraq, North Korea, or Cuba, or when his pen is targeted mercilessly at the likes of William Clinton, Mother Theresa ("a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud"), the Dalai Lama, Noam Chomsky, Mel Gibson, and Michael Bloomberg.

Despite their phenomenal decades-long success, the Harry Potter novels have attracted relatively little attention from literary critics and scholars. This book challenges that oversight, assembling and foregrounding some of the best literary critical work by scholars trying to move the needle on these novels to reflect their importance to twenty-first-century literary culture. In Open at the Close, contributors consciously address Harry Potter primarily as a literary phenomenon rather than a cultural one.

This book is for and about the women who kicked in doors, as pioneers of their craft or making politics central to their sound: those who offer a new way of thinking about the vast spectrum of women in music. In this radical departure from the historic narrative of music and music writing being written by men, for men, This Woman’s Work challenges the male dominance and sexism that have been hard-coded in the canons of music, literature, and film and has forced women to fight pigeon-holing or being side-lined by carving out their own space.

Within this essay, Orwell criticises the 'ugly and inaccurate' written English of his time and examines the connection between political orthodoxies and the debasement of language. The essay focuses on political language, which, according to Orwell, 'is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind'. Bad English, he believed, was a vehicle for oppressive ideology.

America was founded on the concept of the innate and inalienable rights of humankind. Many Christians see an echo of the imago Dei—that every human being carries the image of God—within those ideals. Yet these rights were systemically withheld from the Black and enslaved residents of this country for centuries. Through it all, Black people have proclaimed the truth of their dignity and personhood in powerful and profound ways. Crowned with Glory collects many of the writings of these men and women, both familiar and lesser-known, to shine a light on what has always been there.

Las indómitas rinde tributo al rostro anónimo de las mujeres que lucharon en la Revolución, a la inconfundible Jesusa Palancares y al silencio de las mujeres del servicio. Madres, activistas, revolucionarias, artistas y trabajadoras incansables; desde sus trincheras, han luchado por trastocar el orden patriarcal, pero también han sido el motor que le ha dado un nuevo giro a la historia y cuyo brillante ejemplo es el faro que nos guía hacia al futuro.

This essay comes from the NPR series This I Believe, which features brief personal reflections from both famous and unknown Americans. The pieces that make up the series compel listeners to rethink not only what and how they have arrived at their beliefs, but also the extent to which they share them with others.

When I set out to write this book, my goal was simple: I wanted to tickle brains. As the ninth volume in my explorative 50-book series spanning science, philosophy and adventure, I knew this collection needed to delight and intrigue. I embarked on a journey of discovery, relying on AI chatbots to rapidly search the internet and unearth fascinating facts for me to transform into succinct essays. Peppered with my own perspectives stemming from a lifelong curiosity about the world, together we explored the everyday and the cosmic. From the nuts and bolts of sleep cycles to the existential ...

In 2014, Sonya Bilocerkowycz is a tourist at a deadly revolution. At first she is enamored with the Ukrainians' idealism, which reminds her of her own patriotic family. But when the romantic revolution melts into a war with Russia, she becomes disillusioned, prompting a return home to the US and the diaspora community that raised her. As the daughter of a man who studies Ukrainian dissidents for a living, the granddaughter of war refugees, and the great-granddaughter of a gulag victim, Bilocerkowycz has inherited a legacy of political oppression.

In this fascinating collection of articles and speeches, Albert Einstein reflects not only on the scientific method at work in his own theoretical discoveries, but eloquently expresses a great appreciation for his scientific contemporaries and forefathers, including Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Max Planck, and Niels Bohr. While Einstein is renowned as one of the foremost innovators of modern science, his discoveries uniquely his own, through his own words it becomes clear that Einstein viewed himself as only the most recent in a long line of scientists driven to create new ways of understanding the world and to prove their scientific theories.

As an ever-curious explorer of life's mysteries, I've always been fascinated by the vast tapestry of knowledge that surrounds us. In this book, I invite you to join me on an exhilarating journey through some of the most captivating aspects of our world and beyond. From the depths of the ocean to the far reaches of space, from the intricacies of animal behavior to the complexities of human society, we'll delve into a treasure trove of fascinating topics that will tickle your brain and spark your imagination. In these pages, you'll discover the remarkable abilities of animals to regenerate ...

A collection of four essays by noted Masonic scholar Frank C. Higgins. The first explores the labyrinthine paths of solutions that attempt to define the exact character of the "riddle of the ages" that is known as Freemasonry, as it has survived throughout history, in multiple cultures

This collection gathers James Salter's thoughts on writing and profiles of famous writers, observations of the changing American military life, evocations of Aspen winters, musings on mountain climbing and skiing, and tales of travels to Europe and Asia which first appeared in the New Yorker, Esquire, People magazine, Conde Nast Traveler, the Aspen Times, and many other publications.

This is a collection of essays I have written over the years that are only related by the underlying subject matter of stupidity and social decline. Most of the essays deal in some way with stupidity, whether to describe or evaluate these issues, or try to counteract them. I hope you enjoy!