I Wish I'd Been There (R)
Book Two: European History
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
“What is the scene or incident in European history that you would like to have witnessed-and why?”
With lively and detailed accounts of some of the most dramatic events in history, some of our finest historical writers now turn their attention to Europe in this companion volume to I Wish I'd Been There: Twenty Historians Bring to Life the Dramatic Events that Changed America.
Guided by peerless scholars such as Paul Kennedy, John Keegan, Ross King, Freeman Dyson, and Katherine Duncan-Jones, readers will be transported to the signing of Magna Carta, the Versailles Conference, the German surrender in WWII on Luneburg Heath, and other key turning points in the drama of European history. These essays encompass two millenia and an entire continent, addressing issues of politics, law, religion, peace and war, science and the arts, and social change, all telescoped into finely observed narratives. The result is an historical pageant of characters and episodes that will attract and delight all readers of history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
If she could be a fly on the wall at a pivotal moment in American history, Mary Beth Norton would have witnessed the Salem witch trials. These were driven not by greed or, as Arthur Miller would have it, by adultery, she writes, but by Massachusetts colonists' overwhelming fears about the frontier war with the Wabanaki Indians. Gathered by Hollinshead, former president of Oxford University Press and publisher of the military history journal MHQ, the best pieces in this uniformly perceptive and provocative volume dispel popular myths and serve up familiar events and heroes from fresh vantage points. According to Joseph Ellis, George Washington spent most of his first term trying to find a just solution to the Native American sovereignty problem and bribed a Creek chief to achieve his goals. Geoffrey Ward wonders if FDR's physicians gave him the lowdown on his failing health before he decided to run for a fourth term, and William Leuchtenburg reimagines the tongue-lashing LBJ gave fellow "good ole boy" George Wallace before the 1965 civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery. Personal essays on the Scopes "monkey" trial, the day Lincoln was shot and the flourishing Indian metropolis of Cahokia (in present-day Illinois) circa 1030 round out this tantalizing collection. B&w illus.
