Revolution History

In late December 1776, the American War of Independence appeared to be on its last legs. General George Washington's continental forces had been reduced to a shadow of their former strength, and the British Army had chased them across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. Desperate times call for desperate measures, however, and George Washington responded to this crisis with astonishing audacity. On Christmas night 1776, he recrossed the Delaware as a nor'easter churned up the coast, burying his small detachment under howling sheets of snow and ice.

In the 1970s, Atari became the leader in home video gaming with the Atari 2600. But were they the first? And how did it evolve into the revolutionary games and systems of today? Listen to learn the answers to these questions and more.

The Russian Revolution was the most important and progressive political event of the 20th century. There is a lot to learn from these explosive political episodes and many remarkable stories to discover.

The Irish-American story, with all its twists and triumphs, is told through the improbable life of one man. A dashing young orator during the Great Famine of the 1840s, in which a million of his Irish countrymen died, Thomas Francis Meagher led a failed uprising against British rule, for which he was banished to a Tasmanian prison colony. He escaped and six months later was heralded in the streets of New York - the revolutionary hero, back from the dead, at the dawn of the great Irish immigration to America.

When Kevin Garnett shocked the world by announcing that he would not be attending college - as young basketball prodigies were expected to do - but instead would enter the 1995 NBA draft directly from high school, he blazed a trail for a generation of teenage basketball players to head straight for the pros. That trend would continue until the NBA instituted an age limit in 2005, requiring all players to attend college or another developmental program for at least one year.

This panoramic account of 1776 chronicles the other revolutions unfolding that year across North America, far beyond the British colonies. In 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense, the Continental Congress declared independence, and Washington crossed the Delaware. We are familiar with these famous moments in American history, but we know little about the extraordinary events occurring that same year far beyond the British colonies.

Oxford, 1836. The city of dreaming spires. It is the centre of all knowledge and progress in the world. And at its centre is Babel, the Royal Institute of Translation. The tower from which all the power of the Empire flows. Orphaned in Canton and brought to England by a mysterious guardian, Babel seemed like paradise to Robin Swift. Until it became a prison. But can a student stand against an empire?

Running from Bondage, Karen Cook Bell's enlightening and original contribution to the study of slave resistance in eighteenth-century America, explores the individual and collective lives of these women and girls of diverse circumstances, while also providing details about what led them to escape. She demonstrates that there were in fact two wars being waged during the Revolutionary Era: a political revolution for independence from Great Britain and a social revolution for emancipation and equality in which Black women played an active role.

Shots Heard Round the World is a bold, comprehensive rendering of the world war that erupted out of America’s battle for independence. Ferling highlights underestimated pivotal moments to reveal why the British should have put down the rebellion within a couple years of fighting. As European rivals France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic entered the fray, Britain’s problems grew, but after seven long years, the war’s outcome remained very much in doubt.

This captivating history audiobook presents a general outline of the American Revolution, focusing largely on the period between the outbreak of rebellion in 1765 until the ratification of the US Constitution in 1789.

Neoliberalism took shape in the 1930s and 1940s as a transnational political philosophy and system of economic, political, and cultural relations. As neoliberal ideas gained political currency in the 1960s and 1970s, reactionary cultural turn catalyzed their ascension. The cinema, music, magazine culture, and current events discourse of the 1970s provided the space of negotiation permitting these ideas to take hold and be challenged.

By the middle of the second century BC, the city of Rome was spiraling toward bankruptcy and moral decay. The generation which had defeated Hannibal and brought the Mediterranean under Roman control had now passed away, even as gold poured in. Hardly a Roman name of any note appears for half a century. The noble Roman has disappeared. The once feared Roman army has become a mere shadow of its former self, and the public have come to accustom themselves to news of shattering defeats.

From the author of the acclaimed history The Island at the Center of the World, an intimate new epic of the American Revolution that reinforces its meaning for today. With America's founding principles being debated today as never before, Russell Shorto looks back to the era in which those principles were forged. Drawing on new sources, he weaves the lives of six people into a seamless narrative that casts fresh light on the range of experience in colonial America on the cusp of revolution.

In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I and the failed November Revolution of 1918-19, the conservative government of Bavaria identified Jews with left-wing radicalism. Munich became a hotbed of right-wing extremism, with synagogues under attack and Jews physically assaulted in the streets. It was here that Adolf Hitler established the Nazi movement and developed his anti-Semitic ideas. Michael Brenner provides a gripping account of how Bavaria's capital city became the testing ground for Nazism and the Final Solution.

From one of the truly preeminent historians of our time, this is a landmark book chronicling the French Revolution. Simon Schama deftly refutes the contemporary notion that the French Revolution represented an uprising of the oppressed poor against a decadent aristocracy and corrupt court. He argues instead that the revolution was born of a rift among the elite over the speed of progress toward modernity and science, social and economic change.

Who invented supply-side economics - the idea that cutting tax rates can result in more growth, more prosperity at all income levels, and even more tax revenue flowing into the IRS? Most people would credit the economic team that advised Ronald Reagan in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But in fact supply-side economics came of age two decades earlier. And the first president who embraced it was one of the biggest icons of the Democratic Party - John F. Kennedy.

In Empire of Liberty, one of America's most esteemed historians, Gordon S. Wood, offers a brilliant account of the early American Republic, ranging from 1789 and the beginning of the national government to the end of the War of 1812. As Wood reveals, the period was marked by tumultuous change in all aspects of American life - in politics, society, economy, and culture.

The Haitian Revolution was a slave rebellion that began in 1791 in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, now known as Haiti. On this small island, the tyrants were the slave owners, people who not only denied their slaves freedom, but felt justified in killing them. The Haitian Revolution began to change the way slaves were viewed all over the world.

Much has been written about Thomas Jefferson, with good reason: His life was a great American drama, one of the greatest, played out in compelling acts. He was the architect of our democracy, a visionary chief executive who expanded this nation's physical boundaries to unimagined lengths.

The Reagan Revolution: A Very Short Introduction identifies and tackles some of the controversies and historical mysteries that continue to swirl around Reagan and his legacy, while providing an illuminating look at some of the era's defining personalities, ideas, and accomplishments.