17 Best South (AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, WV), History Books
South (AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, WV), History is a popular category for many book lovers. Our team at Speechify has curated a list of the top South (AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, WV), History audiobooks everyone must read.
See the top 17 South (AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, WV), History audiobooks below.
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The Half Has Never Been Told
- By: Edward E Baptist
- Narrator: Ron Butler
- Length: 19 hours 47 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: September 14, 2021
- Language: English
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4.46(4157 ratings)
4.46(4157 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0038.99 USDWinner of the 2015 Avery O. Craven Prize from the Organization of American HistoriansWinner of the 2015 Sidney Hillman PrizeA groundbreaking history demonstrating that America’s economic supremacy was built on the backs of enslavedWinner of the 2015 Avery O. Craven Prize from the Organization of American Historians
Winner of the 2015 Sidney Hillman Prize
A groundbreaking history demonstrating that America’s economic supremacy was built on the backs of enslaved people
Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution — the nation’s original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America’s later success. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy. As historian Edward E. Baptist reveals in The Half Has Never Been Told, the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States. In the span of a single lifetime, the South grew from a narrow coastal strip of worn-out tobacco plantations to a continental cotton empire, and the United States grew into a modern, industrial, and capitalist economy.
Told through the intimate testimonies of survivors of slavery, plantation records, newspapers, as well as the words of politicians and entrepreneurs, The Half Has Never Been Told offers a radical new interpretation of American history.
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The Last Slave Ship
- By: Ben Raines
- Narrator: Kevin R. Free
- Length: 8 hours 10 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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4.34(1003 ratings)
4.34(1003 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.99 USDThe “enlightening” (The Guardian) true story of the last ship to carry enslaved people to America, the remarkable town its survivors’ founded after emancipation, and the complicated legacy their descendants carry with them to thisThe “enlightening” (The Guardian) true story of the last ship to carry enslaved people to America, the remarkable town its survivors’ founded after emancipation, and the complicated legacy their descendants carry with them to this day–by the journalist who discovered the ship’s remains.
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Fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed, the Clotilda became the last ship in history to bring enslaved Africans to the United States. The ship was scuttled and burned on arrival to hide the wealthy perpetrators to escape prosecution. Despite numerous efforts to find the sunken wreck, Clotilda remained hidden for the next 160 years. But in 2019, journalist Ben Raines made international news when he successfully concluded his obsessive quest through the swamps of Alabama to uncover one of our nation’s most important historical artifacts.
Traveling from Alabama to the ancient African kingdom of Dahomey in modern-day Benin, Raines recounts the ship’s perilous journey, the story of its rediscovery, and its complex legacy. Against all odds, Africatown, the Alabama community founded by the captives of the Clotilda, prospered in the Jim Crow South. Zora Neale Hurston visited in 1927 to interview Cudjo Lewis, telling the story of his enslavement in the New York Times bestseller Barracoon. And yet the haunting memory of bondage has been passed on through generations. Clotilda is a ghost haunting three communities–the descendants of those transported into slavery, the descendants of their fellow Africans who sold them, and the descendants of their fellow American enslavers. This connection binds these groups together to this day. At the turn of the century, descendants of the captain who financed the Clotilda‘s journey lived nearby–where, as significant players in the local real estate market, they disenfranchised and impoverished residents of Africatown.
From these parallel stories emerges a profound depiction of America as it struggles to grapple with the traumatic past of slavery and the ways in which racial oppression continues to this day. And yet, at its heart, The Last Slave Ship remains optimistic–an epic tale of one community’s triumphs over great adversity and a celebration of the power of human curiosity to uncover the truth about our past and heal its wounds. -
The Ledger and the Chain
- By: Joshua D. Rothman
- Narrator: Leon Nixon
- Length: 13 hours 40 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: April 20, 2021
- Language: English
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4.28(178 ratings)
4.28(178 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0031.99 USDAn award-winning historian reveals the harrowing forgotten story of America’s internal slave trade–and its role in the making of America.Slave traders are peripheral figures in most histories of American slavery. But these men–whoAn award-winning historian reveals the harrowing forgotten story of America’s internal slave trade–and its role in the making of America.
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Slave traders are peripheral figures in most histories of American slavery. But these men–who trafficked and sold over half a million enslaved people from the Upper South to the Deep South–were essential to slavery’s expansion and fueled the growth and prosperity of the United States.
In The Ledger and the Chain, acclaimed historian Joshua D. Rothman recounts the shocking story of the domestic slave trade by tracing the lives and careers of Isaac Franklin, John Armfield, and Rice Ballard, who built the largest and most powerful slave-trading operation in American history. Far from social outcasts, they were rich and widely respected businessmen, and their company sat at the center of capital flows connecting southern fields to northeastern banks. Bringing together entrepreneurial ambition and remorseless violence toward enslaved people, domestic slave traders produced an atrocity that forever transformed the nation. -
Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn
- By: Gary M. Pomerantz
- Narrator: Kevin R. Free
- Length: 25 hours 39 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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4.26(282 ratings)
4.26(282 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0034.99 USD“A magnificent piece of writing, a beautiful tapestry of prose in which the stories of two of Atlanta‘s most celebrated families have been woven densely into the history of the city itself.” —The New York TimesThe“A magnificent piece of writing, a beautiful tapestry of prose in which the stories of two of Atlanta‘s most celebrated families have been woven densely into the history of the city itself.” —The New York Times
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The Intersection of Peachtree Street, historically the residential and commercial street of Atlanta’s white elite, and Sweet Auburn Avenue, the spiritual main street of Atlanta’s community, mirrors the often separate but mutually dependent worlds of whites and blacks in this Southern city. In Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn, Gary M. Pomerantz traces five generations of two families–the Allens, descended from slave owners, and the Dobbses, from slaves. These families produced the two most influential mayors of the modern South, Ivan Allen Jr., and Maynard Jackson Jr.
Through hundreds of interviews and five years of painstaking research, Pomerantz shows how the families rose to social, economic, and political prominence. But he also demonstrates how their interesting lives paralleled the shifting relations between Atlanta’s blacks and whites as the city grew to become the capital of the New South. It is a representative story of the transformation of a city and the entire south. -
The Bedford Boys
- By: Alex Kershaw
- Narrator: William Dufris
- Length: 8 hours 20 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2008
- Language: English
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4.21(3052 ratings)
4.21(3052 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0021.95 USDThe Bedford Boys is the astonishing true story of twenty-one young men who were killed during the first horrifying minutes of D-Day and the friends and families they left behind in the small town of Bedford. Twenty-one sons killed–no otherThe Bedford Boys is the astonishing true story of twenty-one young men who were killed during the first horrifying minutes of D-Day and the friends and families they left behind in the small town of Bedford. Twenty-one sons killed–no other town in America suffered a greater loss in one day. It is an unforgettable story of triumph, courage, and tragedy based on extensive interviews with survivors and relatives as well as diaries and letters. Alex Kershaw’s remarkable book brings to vivid, heartbreaking life the hitherto untold story of one small American town, their sons, and the brutal, bloody war that deprived them of their futures.
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Calhoun
- By: Robert Elder
- Narrator: Rick Perez
- Length: 22 hours 1 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: February 16, 2021
- Language: English
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4.21(254 ratings)
4.21(254 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0044.99 USDA new biography of the intellectual father of Southern secession — the man who set the scene for the Civil War, and whose political legacy still shapes America today. John C. Calhoun is among the most notorious and enigmatic figures inA new biography of the intellectual father of Southern secession — the man who set the scene for the Civil War, and whose political legacy still shapes America today.... Read more
John C. Calhoun is among the most notorious and enigmatic figures in American political history. First elected to Congress in 1810, Calhoun went on to serve as secretary of war and vice president. But he is perhaps most known for arguing in favor of slavery as a “positive good” and for his famous doctrine of “state interposition,” which laid the groundwork for the South to secede from the Union — and arguably set the nation on course for civil war.
Calhoun has catapulted back into the public eye in recent years, as the strain of radical politics he developed has found expression once again in the tactics and extremism of the modern Far Right. In this revelatory biographical study, historian Robert Elder shows that Calhoun is crucial for understanding the political climate in which we find ourselves today. By excising him from the mainstream of American history, we have been left with a distorted understanding of our past and no way to explain our present. -
The Most They Ever Had
- By: Rick Bragg
- Narrator: Rick Bragg
- Length: 4 hours 16 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2009
- Language: English
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4.19(1360 ratings)
4.19(1360 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0011.95 USDIn the spring of 2001, a community of people in the Appalachian foothills had come to the edge of all they had ever been. Now they stood looking down, bitter, angry, afraid. Across the South, padlocks and logging chains bound the doors of silentIn the spring of 2001, a community of people in the Appalachian foothills had come to the edge of all they had ever been. Now they stood looking down, bitter, angry, afraid. Across the South, padlocks and logging chains bound the doors of silent mills, and it seemed a miracle to blue-collar people in Jacksonville, Alabama, that their mill still bit, shook, and roared. The century-old hardwood floors still trembled under whirling steel, and people worked on, in a mist of white air. The mill had become almost a living thing, rewarding the hardworking and careful with the best payday they ever had but punishing the careless and clumsy, taking a finger, a hand, or more.
The mill was here before the automobile, before the flying machine, and they served it even as it filled their lungs with lint and shortened their lives. In return, it let them live in stiff-necked dignity in the hills of their fathers. So when death did come, no one had to ship a body home on a train. This is a mill story–not of bricks, steel, and cotton–but of the people who suffered in it to live.
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Baptized in PCBs
- By: Ellen Griffith Spears
- Narrator: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 14 hours 21 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2014
- Language: English
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4.15(18 ratings)
4.15(18 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.95 USDIn the mid-1990s, residents of Anniston, Alabama, began a legal fight against the agrochemical company Monsanto over the dumping of PCBs in the city’s historically African American and white working-class west side. Simultaneously, AnnistonIn the mid-1990s, residents of Anniston, Alabama, began a legal fight against the agrochemical company Monsanto over the dumping of PCBs in the city’s historically African American and white working-class west side. Simultaneously, Anniston environmentalists sought to safely eliminate chemical weaponry that had been secretly stockpiled near the city during the Cold War. In this probing work, Ellen Griffith Spears offers a compelling narrative of Anniston’s battles for environmental justice, exposing how systemic racial and class inequalities reinforced during the Jim Crow era played out in these intense contemporary social movements.
Spears focuses attention on key figures who shaped Anniston–from Monsanto’s founders to white and African American activists to the ordinary Anniston residents whose lives and health were deeply affected by the town’s military-industrial history and the legacy of racism. Situating the personal struggles and triumphs of Anniston residents within a larger national story of regulatory regimes and legal strategies that have affected toxic towns across America, Spears unflinchingly explores the causes and implications of environmental inequalities, showing how civil rights movement activism undergirded Anniston’s campaigns for redemption and justice.
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The Lynching
- By: Laurence Leamer
- Narrator: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 10 hours 19 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: June 07, 2016
- Language: English
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4.09(1240 ratings)
4.09(1240 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.004.99 USDThe New York Times bestselling author of The Kennedy Women chronicles the powerful and spellbinding true story of a brutal race-based killing in 1981 and subsequent trials that undid one of the most pernicious organizations in AmericanThe New York Times bestselling author of The Kennedy Women chronicles the powerful and spellbinding true story of a brutal race-based killing in 1981 and subsequent trials that undid one of the most pernicious organizations in American history–the Ku Klux Klan.
On a Friday night in March 1981 Henry Hays and James Knowles scoured the streets of Mobile in their car, hunting for a black man. The young men were members of Klavern 900 of the United Klans of America. They were seeking to retaliate after a largely black jury could not reach a verdict in a trial involving a black man accused of the murder of a white man. The two Klansmen found nineteen-year-old Michael Donald walking home alone. Hays and Knowles abducted him, beat him, cut his throat, and left his body hanging from a tree branch in a racially mixed residential neighborhood.
Arrested, charged, and convicted, Hays was sentenced to death–the first time in more than half a century that the state of Alabama sentenced a white man to death for killing a black man. On behalf of Michael’s grieving mother, Morris Dees, the legendary civil rights lawyer and cofounder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, filed a civil suit against the members of the local Klan unit involved and the UKA, the largest Klan organization. Charging them with conspiracy, Dees put the Klan on trial, resulting in a verdict that would level a deadly blow to its organization.
Based on numerous interviews and extensive archival research, The Lynching brings to life two dramatic trials, during which the Alabama Klan’s motives and philosophy were exposed for the evil they represent. In addition to telling a gripping and consequential story, Laurence Leamer chronicles the KKK and its activities in the second half the twentieth century, and illuminates its lingering effect on race relations in America today.
The Lynching includes sixteen pages of black-and-white photographs.
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The Politically Incorrect Guide to the South (and Why It Will Rise Again)
- By: Clint Johnson
- Narrator: Dianna Dorman
- Length: 8 hours 47 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2006
- Language: English
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3.94(6 ratings)
3.94(6 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDThe latest installment in the New York Times bestselling Politically Incorrect Guide series expands on the hugely successful Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. Far from being the backwater of prejudice and ignorance that the liberalThe latest installment in the New York Times bestselling Politically Incorrect Guide series expands on the hugely successful Politically Incorrect Guide to American History.
Far from being the backwater of prejudice and ignorance that the liberal media would have you believe, the South has always been the center of American culture. From the founding fathers—Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and many others—to the frontiersmen who tamed the West, to the country music and NASCAR-loving, Bible-thumping heart of “red state” America, the South is the quintessence of what’s original, unique, and most-loved about American culture. And with its emphasis on traditional values, family, faith, military service, good manners, small government, and independent-minded people, the South should certainly rise again.
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Rising Tide
- By: Randy Roberts
- Narrator: Alan Sklar
- Length: 15 hours 29 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: August 20, 2013
- Language: English
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3.91(114 ratings)
3.91(114 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.98 USDThe extraordinary story of how Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant and Joe Namath, his star quarterback at the University of Alabama, led the Crimson Tide to victory and transformed football into a truly national pastime. During the bloodiestThe extraordinary story of how Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant and Joe Namath, his star quarterback at the University of Alabama, led the Crimson Tide to victory and transformed football into a truly national pastime.
During the bloodiest years of the civil rights movement, Bear Bryant and Joe Namath-two of the most iconic and controversial figures in American sports-changed the game of college football forever. Brilliantly and urgently drawn, this is the gripping account of how these two very different men-Bryant a legendary coach in the South who was facing a pair of ethics scandals that threatened his career, and Namath a cocky Northerner from a steel mill town in Pennsylvania-led the Crimson Tide to a national championship.
To Bryant and Namath, the game was everything. But no one could ignore the changes sweeping the nation between 1961 and 1965-from the Freedom Rides to the integration of colleges across the South and the assassination of President Kennedy. Against this explosive backdrop, Bryant and Namath changed the meaning of football. Their final contest together, the 1965 Orange Bowl, was the first football game broadcast nationally, in color, during prime time, signaling a new era for the sport and the nation.
Award-winning biographer Randy Roberts and sports historian Ed Krzemienski showcase the moment when two thoroughly American traditions-football and Dixie-collided. A compelling story of race and politics, honor and the will to win, Rising Tide captures a singular time in America. More than a history of college football, this is the story of the struggle and triumph of a nation in transition and the legacy of two of the greatest heroes the sport has ever seen.
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Life on the Mississippi
- By: Mark Twain
- Narrator: Grover Gardner
- Length: 13 hours 37 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2010
- Language: English
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3.87(11041 ratings)
3.87(11041 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0022.95 USDThe Mississippi River, known as “America’s river,” and Mark Twain are practically synonymous in American culture. The popularity of Twain’s steamboat and steamboat pilot on the ever-changing Mississippi has endured for over aThe Mississippi River, known as “America’s river,” and Mark Twain are practically synonymous in American culture. The popularity of Twain’s steamboat and steamboat pilot on the ever-changing Mississippi has endured for over a century.
A brilliant amalgam of remembrance and reportage, by turns satiric, celebratory, nostalgic, and melancholy, Life on the Mississippi evokes the great river that Mark Twain knew as a boy and young man and the one he revisited as a mature and successful author. Written between the publication of his two greatest novels, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Twain’s rich portrait of the Mississippi marks a distinctive transition in the life of the river and the nation, from the boom years preceding the Civil War to the sober times that followed it.
Samuel Clemens became a licensed river pilot at the age of twenty-four under the apprenticeship of Horace Bixby, pilot of the Paul Jones. His name, Mark Twain, was derived from the river pilot term describing safe navigating conditions, or “mark two fathoms.” This term was shortened to “mark twain” by the leadsmen whose job it was to monitor the water’s depth and report it to the pilot.
Although Mark Twain used his childhood experiences growing up along the Mississippi in numerous works, nowhere is the river and the pilot’s life more thoroughly described than in Life on the Mississippi.
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Screening Room
- By: Alan Lightman
- Narrator: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 5 hours 59 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2015
- Language: English
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3.74(132 ratings)
3.74(132 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDFrom the acclaimed author of the international bestseller Einstein’s Dreams, here is a lyrical memoir of Memphis from the 1930s through the 1960s: the music and the racism, the early days of the movies, and a powerful grandfather whose ghostFrom the acclaimed author of the international bestseller Einstein’s Dreams, here is a lyrical memoir of Memphis from the 1930s through the 1960s: the music and the racism, the early days of the movies, and a powerful grandfather whose ghost continues to haunt the family.
Alan Lightman’s grandfather M. A. Lightman was the family’s undisputed patriarch: it was his movie theater empire that catapulted the family to prominence in the South, his fearless success that both galvanized and paralyzed his descendants, haunting them for a half century after his death. In this lyrical and impressionistic memoir, Lightman writes about returning to Memphis in an attempt to understand the people he so eagerly left behind forty years earlier. As aging uncles and aunts begin telling family stories, Lightman rediscovers his southern roots and slowly realizes the errors in his perceptions of his grandfather and of his own father, who had been crushed by M. A. Here is a family saga set against a throbbing century of Memphis–the rhythm and blues, the barbecue and pecan pie, and the segregated society–that includes personal encounters with Elvis, Martin Luther King Jr., and E. H. “Boss” Crump. At the heart of it all is a family haunted by the ghost of the domineering M. A. and the struggle of the author to understand his conflicted loyalties to his father and grandfather.
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The Feud
- By: Dean King
- Narrator: Dan Woren
- Length: 12 hours 3 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: May 14, 2013
- Language: English
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3.72(1063 ratings)
3.72(1063 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.98 USDFor more than a century, the enduring feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys has been American shorthand for passionate, unyielding, and even violent confrontation. Yet despite numerous articles, books, television shows, and feature films, nobodyFor more than a century, the enduring feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys has been American shorthand for passionate, unyielding, and even violent confrontation. Yet despite numerous articles, books, television shows, and feature films, nobody has ever told the in-depth true story of this legendarily fierce-and far-reaching-clash in the heart of Appalachia. Drawing upon years of original research, including the discovery of previously lost and ignored documents and interviews with relatives of both families, bestselling author Dean King finally gives us the full, unvarnished tale, one vastly more enthralling than the myth.... Read moreUnlike previous accounts, King’s begins in the mid-nineteenth century, when the Hatfields and McCoys lived side-by-side in relative harmony. Theirs was a hardscrabble life of farming and hunting, timbering and moonshining-and raising large and boisterous families-in the rugged hollows and hills of Virginia and Kentucky. Cut off from much of the outside world, these descendants of Scots-Irish and English pioneers spoke a language many Americans would find hard to understand. Yet contrary to popular belief, the Hatfields and McCoys were established and influential landowners who had intermarried and worked together for decades.
When the Civil War came, and the outside world crashed into their lives, family members were forced to choose sides. After the war, the lines that had been drawn remained-and the violence not only lived on but became personal. By the time the fury finally subsided, a dozen family members would be in the grave. The hostilities grew to be a national spectacle, and the cycle of killing, kidnapping, stalking by bounty hunters, and skirmishing between governors spawned a legal battle that went all the way to the United States Supreme Court and still influences us today.
Filled with bitter quarrels, reckless affairs, treacherous betrayals, relentless mercenaries, and courageous detectives, The Feud is the riveting story of two frontier families struggling for survival within the narrow confines of an unforgiving land. It is a formative American tale, and in it, we see the reflection of our own family bonds and the lengths to which we might go in order to defend our honor, our loyalties, and our livelihood.
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The Fair Chase
- By: Philip Dray
- Narrator: Will Collyer
- Length: 14 hours 9 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: May 01, 2018
- Language: English
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3.65(57 ratings)
3.65(57 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0025.98 USDAn award-winning historian tells the story of hunting in America, showing how this sport has shaped our national identity. From Daniel Boone to Teddy Roosevelt, hunting is one of America’s most sacred-but also most fraught-traditions. It wasAn award-winning historian tells the story of hunting in America, showing how this sport has shaped our national identity.
From Daniel Boone to Teddy Roosevelt, hunting is one of America’s most sacred-but also most fraught-traditions. It was promoted in the 19th century as a way to reconnect “soft” urban Americans with nature and to the legacy of the country’s pathfinding heroes. Fair chase, a hunting code of ethics emphasizing fairness, rugged independence, and restraint towards wildlife, emerged as a worldview and gave birth to the conservation movement. But the sport’s popularity also caused class, ethnic, and racial divisions, and stirred debate about the treatment of Native Americans and the role of hunting in preparing young men for war.
This sweeping and balanced book offers a definitive account of hunting in America. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the evolution of our nation’s foundational myths.
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The Jamestown Brides
- By: Jennifer Potter
- Narrator: Charlotte Strevens
- Length: 10 hours 2 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2019
- Language: English
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3.52(279 ratings)
3.52(279 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0022.95 USDJamestown, England’s first real foothold in the New World, was fraught with danger—from starvation and disease to violent skirmishes between colonists and the native populations. Mortality rates were impossibly high: six out of sevenJamestown, England’s first real foothold in the New World, was fraught with danger—from starvation and disease to violent skirmishes between colonists and the native populations. Mortality rates were impossibly high: six out of seven settlers died within the first few years. How clear these and other perils were made to the fifty-six young women who left their homes and boarded ships in England in 1621, nearly fifteen years after Jamestown’s founding, is not known. But we do know who they were. Their ages ranged from sixteen to twenty-eight, and they were deemed “young and uncorrupt.” Each had a bride price of 150 pounds of tobacco set by the Virginia Company, which funded their voyage. Though the women had all gone of their own free will, they were to be sold into marriage, generating a profit for investors and helping ensure the colony’s long-term viability.
Without letters or journals (young women from middling classes had not generally been taught to write), Jennifer Potter turned to the Virginia Company’s merchant lists—which were used as a kind of sales catalog for prospective husbands—as well as censuses, court records, the minutes of Virginia’s General Assemblies, letters to England from their male counterparts, and other such accounts of the everyday life of the early colonists. In The Jamestown Brides, she spins a fascinating tale of courage and survival, exploring the women’s lives in England before their departure and their experiences in Jamestown. Some were married before the ships left harbor. Some were killed in an attack by the native population only months after their arrival. A few never married at all. In telling the story of these “Maids for Virginia,” Potter sheds light on life for women in early modern England and in the New World.
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Kingfish
- By: Richard D. White
- Narrator: John Lescault
- Length: 11 hours 16 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2006
- Language: English
Regular Price:Try for $0.0020.95 USDOutrageous demagogue or charismatic visionary? In this powerful new biography, Richard D. White, Jr., brings Huey Long to life in all his blazing, controversial glory. From the moment he took office as governor in 1928 to the day an assassin’sOutrageous demagogue or charismatic visionary? In this powerful new biography, Richard D. White, Jr., brings Huey Long to life in all his blazing, controversial glory.
From the moment he took office as governor in 1928 to the day an assassin’s bullet cut him down in 1935, Huey Long wielded all but dictatorial control over the state of Louisiana. A man of shameless ambition and ruthless vindictiveness, Huey orchestrated elections, hired and fired thousands at will, and deployed the state militia as his personal police force. And yet, paradoxically, as governor and later as senator, Huey did more good for the state’s poor and uneducated than any politician before or since.
With Kingfish, White has crafted a balanced, lucid, and absolutely spellbinding portrait of the life and times of the most incendiary figure in American politics.
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Cliff Weitzman
Cliff Weitzman is a dyslexia advocate and the CEO and founder of Speechify, the #1 text-to-speech app in the world, totaling over 100,000 5-star reviews and ranking first place in the App Store for the News & Magazines category. In 2017, Weitzman was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list for his work making the internet more accessible to people with learning disabilities. Cliff Weitzman has been featured in EdSurge, Inc., PC Mag, Entrepreneur, Mashable, among other leading outlets.
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