history / north america

"This book is about the Stonewall Riots, a series of spontaneous, often violent demonstrations by members of the gay (LGBTQ+) community in reaction to a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. The Riots are attributed as the spark that ignited the LGBTQ+ Movement. The author describes American gay history leading up to the Riots, the Riots themselves, and the aftermath, and includes her interviews of people involved or witnesses, including a woman who was ten at the time"--.

"An overview of the history of Apache chief Geronimo, with a look at the timeless strategies that can be learned from his life"--Provided by publisher.

"The #1 New York Times bestselling authors of The Heart of Everything That Is return with one of the most inspiring--and underappreciated--chapters in American history: the story of the Continental Army's six-month transformation in Valley Forge. On December 19, 1777, some twelve thousand members of America's beleaguered Continental Army staggered into Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, a small encampment twenty-three miles northwest of British-occupied Philadelphia. The starving and half-naked force is reeling from a string of demoralizing defeats at the hands of King George III's army, and are barely equipped to survive the coming winter. Their commander in chief, the focused and forceful George Washington, is at the lowest ebb of his military career. The Continental Congress is in exile and the American Revolution appears to be lost. As the days and weeks passed, however, Washington embarked on a mission to transform his troops from a bobtail army of citizen soldiers into a professional fighting force. Keeping a wary eye out for a British attack, he was aided by a trio of home-grown generals as well as a young coterie of American advisors and foreign volunteers led by Alexander Hamilton, John Laurens, and the Marquis de Lafayette. Within six months Washington had achieved his miracle. Valley Forge is the riveting true story of a nascent United States toppling an empire. Using new and rarely seen contemporaneous documents--and drawing on a cast of iconic characters and remarkable moments that capture the innovation and energy that led to the birth of our nation--Drury and Clavin provide the definitive account of this seminal and previously undervalued moment in the battle for American independence"--.

"From the author of Apocalyptic Planet, an unsparing, vivid, revelatory travelogue through prehistory that traces the arrival of the First People in North America twenty thousand years ago and the artifacts that enable us to imagine their lives and fates. Scientists squabble over the locations and dates for human arrival in the New World. The first explorers were few, encampments fleeting. At some point in time, between twenty and forty thousand years ago, sea levels were low enough that a vast land bridge was exposed between Asia and North America. But the land bridge was not the only way across. This book upends our notions of where these people came from and who they were. The unpeopled continent they reached was inhabited by megafauna--mastodons, sloths, mammoths, saber-toothed cats, lions, bison, and bears. The First People were not docile--Paleolithic spear points are still encrusted with the protein of their prey--but they were wildly outnumbered and many were prey to the much larger animals. This is a chronicle of the last millennia of the Ice Age, the gradual oscillations and retreat of glaciers, the clues and traces that document the first encounters of early humans, and the animals whose presence governed the humans' chances for survival"--.