Tag: #History

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Wyatt Earp: A Vigilante Life

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

This acclaimed biography separates history from myth to reveal the man behind the enduring Western legend.

In popular culture, Wyatt Earp is the hero of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, and a beacon of rough cowboy justice in the tumultuous American West. The subject of dozens of films, he has been invoked in battles against everything from organized crime in the 1930s to al-Qaeda after 9/11. Yet as the historian Andrew C. Isenberg reveals here, the Hollywood Earp is largely a fiction—one created by none other than Earp himself.

The lawman played on-screen by Henry Fonda and Burt Lancaster is stubbornly duty-bound; in actuality, Earp led a life of impulsive lawbreaking and shifting identities. When he wasn’t wearing a badge, he was variously a thief, a brothel bouncer, a gambler, and a confidence man.

By 1900, Earp’s involvement as a referee in a fixed heavyweight prizefight brought him notoriety as a scoundrel. Determine to rebuild his reputation, he spent his last decades in Los Angeles, spinning yarns about himself for credulous silent film actors and directors. Isenberg argues that Hollywood’s embrace of Earp as a paragon of law and order was his greatest confidence game of all.

Finalist for the 2014 Weber-Clements Book Prize for the Best Non-fiction Book on Southwestern America

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After Etan: The Missing Child Case that Held America Captive

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

“Unravels a complex and tangled mystery while seamlessly telling the heart wrenching story of a family trying to cope with every parent’s worst nightmare.”*
“Every American needs to know Etan’s story.” —John Walsh
With a New Chapter
In After Etan, author Lisa R. Cohen draws on hundreds of interviews and nearly twenty years of research—including access to the personal files of the Patz family—to reveal, for the first time, the entire dramatic tale of Etan’s disappearance.

On the morning of May 25, 1979, six-year-old Etan Patz left his apartment to go to his school bus stop. But he never made it to school that day. He vanished somewhere between his home and the bus stop, and was never seen again.

The search for Etan quickly consumed his family’s downtown Manhattan neighborhood. “Missing” posters with Etan’s smiling face blanketed the city, followed by media coverage that turned Etan’s disappearance into a national story—one that would change our cultural landscape forever.

Thirty years later, in Etan’s honor, May 25 is recognized as National Missing Children’s Day. But despite the overwhelming publicity his case received, the public knows only a fraction of what happened. That’s because the story of Etan Patz is more than a heartbreaking mystery.

It is also the story of the men, women, and children who were touched by his life in the months and years after he vanished. It’s the story of the agonies and triumphs of the Patz family, and of all the heroic investigators who, to this day, continue to seek justice for Etan.

*Award-winning journalist John Miller

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Stupid American History: Tales of Stupidity, Strangeness, and Mythconceptions

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

New York Times Bestseller: Welcome to the land of the free, the home of the brave—and, apparently, the dumb, bizarre, and gullible . . .

 Did you know that . . .

*John Tyler was on his knees playing marbles when he was informed that Benjamin Harrison had died and he was now president of the United States

*For reasons still unknown, Texas congressman Thomas Lindsay Blanton, a Presbyterian Sunday school teacher and prohibitionist, inserted dirty words into the Congressional Record in 1921—for which his colleagues officially censured him by a vote of 293-0

*Two US presidents were indentured servants—and one of them ran away and wound up with a $10 reward posted for his capture

From Columbus to George W. Bush, the bestselling coauthor of America’s Dumbest Criminals leads us through the many mythconceptions of our nation’s history in this lively book, exposing lots of entertaining moments of idiocy and inanity along the time line.

jacobjc
5.0 out of 5 stars 
Completely amusing and most of the time interesting
Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2011
Verified Purchase
So here is a confession about me. I am a wee bit of a dork. I absolutely love history. With that said I jumped on the opportunity to read Stupid American History: Tales of Stupidity, Strangeness, and Mythconceptions by Leland Gregory. I absolutely loved reading this and finished it in about 2 days. This book is full of little facts that make you think about what really happened in our past and what is happening now that will be looked at in another 100 years as stupid, strange or as myths.
My only negative comment about this book is not really a negative comment at all. Some of the facts seemed a little too out there. I would love to see how Leland Gregory researched these facts. Where did he find his information?
If you are one of those people who always liked the Kennedy-Lincoln coincidences then you will love this book. At minimum it is worth a read for the laughs you will get at some of our countries past-leaders

If you like my review and want to read more of them I have a blog chronicaling my first year with my Kindle. I would love your suggestions and comments. Check out my profile for the website.
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The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England: 400 – 1066 

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

A sweeping and original history of the Anglo-Saxons by national bestselling author Marc Morris.

Sixteen hundred years ago Britain left the Roman Empire and swiftly fell into ruin. Grand cities and luxurious villas were deserted and left to crumble, and civil society collapsed into chaos. Into this violent and unstable world came foreign invaders from across the sea, and established themselves as its new masters.

The Anglo-Saxons traces the turbulent history of these people across the next six centuries. It explains how their earliest rulers fought relentlessly against each other for glory and supremacy, and then were almost destroyed by the onslaught of the vikings. It explores how they abandoned their old gods for Christianity, established hundreds of churches and created dazzlingly intricate works of art. It charts the revival of towns and trade, and the origins of a familiar landscape of shires, boroughs and bishoprics. It is a tale of famous figures like King Offa, Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor, but also features a host of lesser known characters – ambitious queens, revolutionary saints, intolerant monks and grasping nobles. Through their remarkable careers we see how a new society, a new culture and a single unified nation came into being.

Drawing on a vast range of original evidence – chronicles, letters, archaeology and artefacts – renowned historian Marc Morris illuminates a period of history that is only dimly understood, separates the truth from the legend, and tells the extraordinary story of how the foundations of England were laid.

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Mark Twain

Posted on by Reluctant Retiree

The #1 New York Times Bestseller!

“Comprehensive, enthralling . . . Mark Twain flows like the Mississippi River, its prose propelled by Mark Twain’s own exuberance.” —The Boston Globe

“Chernow writes with such ease and clarity . . . For all its length and detail, [Mark Twain] is deeply absorbing throughout.” — The Washington Post

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow illuminates the full, fascinating, and complex life of the writer long celebrated as the father of American literature, Mark Twain

Before he was Mark Twain, he was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Born in 1835, the man who would become America’s first, and most influential, literary celebrity spent his childhood dreaming of piloting steamboats on the Mississippi. But when the Civil War interrupted his career on the river, the young Twain went west to the Nevada Territory and accepted a job at a local newspaper, writing dispatches that attracted attention for their brashness and humor. It wasn’t long before the former steamboat pilot from Missouri was recognized across the country for his literary brilliance, writing under a pen name that he would immortalize.

In this richly nuanced portrait of Mark Twain, acclaimed biographer Ron Chernow brings his considerable powers to bear on a man who shamelessly sought fame and fortune, and crafted his persona with meticulous care. After establishing himself as a journalist, satirist, and lecturer, he eventually settled in Hartford with his wife and three daughters, where he went on to write The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He threw himself into the hurly-burly of American culture, and emerged as the nation’s most notable political pundit. At the same time, his madcap business ventures eventually bankrupted him; to economize, Twain and his family spent nine eventful years in exile in Europe. He suffered the death of his wife and two daughters, and the last stage of his life was marked by heartache, political crusades, and eccentric behavior that sometimes obscured darker forces at play.

Drawing on Twain’s bountiful archives, including thousands of letters and hundreds of unpublished manuscripts, Chernow masterfully captures the man whose career reflected the country’s westward expansion, industrialization, and foreign wars, and who was the most important white author of his generation to grapple so fully with the legacy of slavery. Today, more than one hundred years after his death, Twain’s writing continues to be read, debated, and quoted. In this brilliant work of scholarship, a moving tribute to the writer’s talent and humanity, Chernow reveals the magnificent and often maddening life of one of the most original characters in American history.