Download or read book Scoundrels Who Made America Great written by Martin Henley and published by Abbott Press. This book was released on 2016-01-21 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We like our heroes to wear white hats and our villains to wear black. Scoundrels Who Made America Great takes a fresh view of heroism by using a dramatic event in the life of each scoundrel to illustrate how disreputable labels can obscure heroic deeds. Some of them are household names. Others have been forgotten till now. Some are villains who turned out to be heroes. Others are heroes who proved to be all too human. They are The Scoundrels. And Martin Henley has brought them to life in a vividly-written volume that overflows with surprising stories, little-known facts, and the pure drama of history. Enjoy. William Martin, New York Times Bestselling author of The Lost Constitution and The Lincoln Letter By showing that the meanings assigned to the actions of prominent historical figures by contemporaries as well as future generations can fluctuate dramatically, Martin Henleys book inspires readers to reflect on the very nature of history. It helps them to understand that both scoundrels and heroes are made by their deeds as much as by the collective memory that shifts with time and place. Michal Rozbicki, Professor of History, St. Louis University With the rigorous research of a scholar and the superb story-telling skills of a novelist, Martin Henley has penned a wonderful book about five historical scoundrels who, upon further reading, were not the dreadful miscreants all of us have been led to believe. Scoundrels who Made America Great is a highly readable and truly enlightening slice of hidden history. Ronald E. Yates, Dean Emeritus, College of Media Studies, University of Illinois. Bestselling author of Finding Billy Battles website: www.martinhenley.com blog: www.ironicamericanhistory.blogspot.com
Download or read book Savages Scoundrels written by Paul VanDevelder and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-21 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of Coyote Warrior demolishes myths about America’s westward expansion and uncovers the federal Indian policy that shaped the republic. What really happened in the early days of our nation? How was it possible for white settlers to march across the entire continent, inexorably claiming Native American lands for themselves? Who made it happen, and why? This gripping book tells America’s story from a new perspective, chronicling the adventures of our forefathers and showing how a legacy of repeated betrayals became the bedrock on which the republic was built. Paul VanDevelder takes as his focal point the epic federal treaty ratified in 1851 at Horse Creek, formally recognizing perpetual ownership by a dozen Native American tribes of 1.1 million square miles of the American West. The astonishing and shameful story of this broken treaty—one of 371 Indian treaties signed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—reveals a pattern of fraudulent government behavior that again and again displaced Native Americans from their lands. VanDevelder describes the path that led to the genocide of the American Indian; those who participated in it, from cowboys and common folk to aristocrats and presidents; and how the history of the immoral treatment of Indians through the twentieth century has profound social, economic, and political implications for America even today. “[A] refreshingly new intellectual and legalistic approach to the complex relations between European Americans and Native Americans…. This superlative work deserves close attention…. Highly recommended.”—M. L. Tate, Choice “The haunting story stays with you well after you have turned the last page.”—Greg Grandin, author of Fordlandia
Download or read book Good Guys and Bad Guys written by Joe Nocera and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 2011-08-30 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The greatest columns and profiles by the bestselling coauthor of All the Devils Are Here. What's it like to be a top tobacco executive when your kid asks you about smoking? How did a young liberal arts major become the hottest tech-stock analyst of the '90s, and why did he self-destruct? How did one family's dysfunction change the media landscape? Some people think business journalism is all about balance sheets, income statements, and earnings per share. But if you want to answer the really interesting questions-about heroes and hucksters, visionaries and madmen, and other larger-than-life characters-you need a reporter like Joe Nocera. For more than twenty-five years Nocera has shed new light on the giants of the business world-Warren Buffett, T. Boone Pickens, Bob Nardelli-as well as on the less famous but equally fascinating. He builds stories around their motivations, personalities, and deepest characters. And instead of just pigeonholing them as good guys or bad guys, he explores the gray areas in between.
Download or read book American Scoundrel written by Thomas Keneally and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charming and ambitious, Dan Sickles literally got away with murder. His protector was none other than the President himself, the ageing James Buchanan; his political friends quickly gathered round; and Sickles was acquitted. His trial is described with all Thomas Keneally's powers of dash and drama, against a backdrop of double-dealing, intrigue and 'the slavery question'. Enslaved, in her turn, by the hypocrisy of nineteenth-century society, his wife was shunned and thereafter banned from public life. Sickles, meanwhile, was free to accept favours and patronage. He raised a regiment for the Union, and went on to become a general in the army, rising to the rank of brigadier-general and commanding a flank at the Battle of Gettysburg - at which he lost a leg, which he put into the military museum in Washington where he would take friends to visit it. Thomas Keneally brilliantly recreates an extraordinary period, when women were punished for violating codes of society that did not bind men. And the caddish, good-looking Dan Sickles personifies the extremes of the era: as a womaniser, he introduced his favourite madam to Queen Victoria while his wife stayed at home; as minister to Spain, he began an affair with the queen while courting one of her ladies in waiting; and in his later years, he installed his housekeeper as his mistress while his second wife took up residence nearby. The brio with which Thomas Keneally tells the tale is equal to the pace and bravado of Sickles's life. But, more than this, AMERICAN SCOUNDREL is the lens through which the reader can view history at a time when America was being torn apart. This book resonates with uncomfortable truths, as relevant now as they were then.
Download or read book The King of Confidence written by Miles Harvey and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "unputdownable" (Dave Eggers, National Book award finalist) story of the most infamous American con man you've never heard of: James Strang, self-proclaimed divine king of earth, heaven, and an island in Lake Michigan, "perfect for fans of The Devil in the White City" (Kirkus) A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Longlisted for the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Finalist for the Midland Authors Annual Literary Award A Michigan Notable Book A CrimeReads Best True Crime Book of the Year "A masterpiece." —Nathaniel Philbrick In the summer of 1843, James Strang, a charismatic young lawyer and avowed atheist, vanished from a rural town in New York. Months later he reappeared on the Midwestern frontier and converted to a burgeoning religious movement known as Mormonism. In the wake of the murder of the sect's leader, Joseph Smith, Strang unveiled a letter purportedly from the prophet naming him successor, and persuaded hundreds of fellow converts to follow him to an island in Lake Michigan, where he declared himself a divine king. From this stronghold he controlled a fourth of the state of Michigan, establishing a pirate colony where he practiced plural marriage and perpetrated thefts, corruption, and frauds of all kinds. Eventually, having run afoul of powerful enemies, including the American president, Strang was assassinated, an event that was frontpage news across the country. The King of Confidence tells this fascinating but largely forgotten story. Centering his narrative on this charlatan's turbulent twelve years in power, Miles Harvey gets to the root of a timeless American original: the Confidence Man. Full of adventure, bad behavior, and insight into a crucial period of antebellum history, The King of Confidence brings us a compulsively readable account of one of the country's boldest con men and the boisterous era that allowed him to thrive.
Download or read book A Book of Scoundrels written by Charles Whibley and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2019-11-26 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From highwaymen and thieves to con artists and scammers, 'A Book of Scoundrels' chronicles the lives of the most notorious criminals in history. With razor-sharp wit and unapologetic frankness, Charles Whibley dives deep into the depravity of Moll Cutpurse, Jonathan Wild, Ralph Briscoe, Gilderoy, Sixteen-String Jack, Thomas Pureney, Jack Sheppard, Louis-Dominique Cartouche, Gentleman Harry, Deacon Brodie, Charles Peace, the Man in the Grey Suit, and Monsieur L'Abbé. Each chapter presents a fascinating story of the rogues and villains, their audacious crimes, and their ultimate downfall.
Download or read book Unearthing Ancient America written by Frank Joseph and published by Red Wheel/Weiser. This book was released on 2008-09-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of articles from Ancient American magazine.
Download or read book Audacious Scoundrels written by Steven L. Piott and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-05-01 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century a growing number of ordinary citizens had the feeling that all was not as it should be. Men who were making money made prodigious amounts, but this new wealth somehow passed over the heads of the common people. As this new breed of journalists began to examine their subjects with scrutiny, they soon discovered that those individuals were essentially “simple men of extraordinary boldness.” And it was easy to understand how they were able to accomplish their sinister purposes: “at first abruptly and bluntly, by asking and giving no quarter, and later with the same old determination and ruthlessness but with educated satellites who were glad to explain and idealize their behavior.”[i] “Nothing is lost save honor,” said one infamous buccaneer, and that was an attitude that governed the amoral principles and extralegal actions of many audacious scoundrels. Relying on secondary sources, magazine and newspaper articles, and personal accounts from those involved, this volume captures some of the sensational true stories that took place in the western United States during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century. The theme that runs through each of the stories is the general contempt for the law that seemed to pervade the culture at the time and the consuming desire to acquire wealth at any cost—what Geoffrey C. Ward has called “the disposition to be rich.” End Notes Introduction [i]Louis Filler, Crusaders for American Liberalism (Yellow Springs, OH: Antioch Press, 1964), 14.
Download or read book BK OF SCOUNDRELS written by Charles 1859-1930 Whibley and published by Wentworth Press. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Download or read book Southern Scoundrels written by Jeff Forret and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2021-04-21 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of capitalist development in the United States is long, uneven, and overwhelmingly focused on the North. Macroeconomic studies of the South have primarily emphasized the role of the cotton economy in global trading networks. Until now, few in-depth scholarly works have attempted to explain how capitalism in the South took root and functioned in all of its diverse—and duplicitous—forms. Southern Scoundrels explores the lesser-known aspects of the emergence of capitalism in the region: the shady and unscrupulous peddlers, preachers, slave traders, war profiteers, thieves, and marginal men who seized available opportunities to get ahead and, in doing so, left their mark on the southern economy. Eschewing conventional economic theory, this volume features narrative storytelling as engaging and seductive as the cast of shifty characters under examination. Contributors cover the chronological sweep of the nineteenth-century South, from the antebellum era through the tumultuous and chaotic Civil War years, and into Reconstruction and beyond. The geographic scope is equally broad, with essays encompassing the Chesapeake, South Carolina, the Lower Mississippi Valley, Texas, Missouri, and Appalachia. These essays offer a series of social histories on the nineteenth-century southern economy and the changes wrought by capitalist transformation. Tracing that story through the kinds of oily individuals who made it happen, Southern Scoundrels provides fascinating insights into the region’s hucksters and its history. Contents Introduction, Jeff Forret and Bruce E. Baker “Preachers and Peddlers: Credit and Belief in the Flush Times,” John Lindbeck “A Gentleman and a Scoundrel? Alexander McDonald, Financial Reputation, and Slavery’s Capitalism,” Alexandra J. Finley “‘How Deeply They Weed into the Pockets’: Slave Traders, Bank Speculators, and the Anatomy of a Chesapeake Wildcat, 1840–1843,” Jeff Forret “Bernard Kendig: Orchestrating Fraud in the Market and the Courtroom,” Maria R. Montalvo “William A. Britton v. Benjamin F. Butler: Occupied New Orleans, Confiscation, and the Disruption of the Cotton Trade in Wartime Natchez,” Jeff Strickland “Devils at the Doorstep: Confederate Judges, Masters of Sequestration,” Rodney J. Steward “‘Irresistibly Impelled toward Illegal Appropriation’: The Civil War Schemes of William G. Cheeney,” Jimmy L. Bryan, Jr. “Das Kapital on Tchoupitoulas Street: The Marketing of Stolen Goods and the Reserve Army of Labor in Reconstruction-Era New Orleans,” Bruce E. Baker “The Violent Lives of William Faucett,” Elaine S. Frantz “Eureka! Law and Order for Sale in Gilded Age Appalachia,” T. R. C. Hutton
Download or read book The Comedians written by Kliph Nesteroff and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Funny [and] fascinating . . . If you’re a comedy nerd you’ll love this book.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews, National Post, and Splitsider Based on over two hundred original interviews and extensive archival research, this groundbreaking work is a narrative exploration of the way comedians have reflected, shaped, and changed American culture over the past one hundred years. Starting with the vaudeville circuit at the turn of the last century, the book introduces the first stand-up comedian—an emcee who abandoned physical shtick for straight jokes. After the repeal of Prohibition, Mafia-run supper clubs replaced speakeasies, and mobsters replaced vaudeville impresarios as the comedian’s primary employer. In the 1950s, the late-night talk show brought stand-up to a wide public, while Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, and Jonathan Winters attacked conformity and staged a comedy rebellion in coffeehouses. From comedy’s part in the civil rights movement and the social upheaval of the late 1960s, to the first comedy clubs of the 1970s and the cocaine-fueled comedy boom of the 1980s, The Comedians culminates with a new era of media-driven celebrity in the twenty-first century. “Entertaining and carefully documented . . . jaw-dropping anecdotes . . . This book is a real treat.” —Merrill Markoe, TheWall Street Journal
Download or read book American Scoundrel written by Tom Keneally and published by Random House Australia. This book was released on 2013-12-01 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Murder, Love and politics in Civil War America. On the last, cold Sunday of February 1859, Daniel Sickles shot his wife's lover in Washington's Lafayette Square, just across from the White House ... this is the story of that killing and its repercussions. Charming and ambitious, Dan Sickles literally got away with murder. His protector was none other than the President himself, the ageing James Buchanan; his political friends quickly gathered round; and Sickles was acquitted. His trial is described with all Thomas Keneally's powers of dash and drama, against a backdrop of double-dealing, intrigue and 'the slavery question'. Enslaved, in her turn, by the hypocrisy of nineteenth-century society, his wife was shunned and thereafter banned from public life. Sickles, meanwhile, was free to accept favours and patronage. He raised a regiment for the Union, and went on to become a general in the army, rising to the rank of brigadier-general and commanding a flank at the Battle of Gettysburg - at which he lost a leg, which he put into the military museum in Washington where he would take friends to visit it. Thomas Keneally brilliantly recreates an extraordinary period, when women were punished for violating codes of society that did not bind men. And the caddish, good-looking Dan Sickles personifies the extremes of the era: as a womaniser, he introduced his favourite madam to Queen Victoria while his wife stayed at home; as minister to Spain, he began an affair with the queen while courting one of her ladies in waiting; and in his later years, he installed his housekeeper as his mistress while his second wife took up residence nearby. The brio with which Thomas Keneally tells the tale is equal to the pace and bravado of Sickles's life. But, more than this, American Scoundrel is the lens through which the reader can view history at a time when America was being torn apart. This book resonates with uncomfortable truths, as relevant now as they were then.
Download or read book Villains Scoundrels and Rogues written by Paul Martín and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the back pages of history, vivid, entertaining portraits of little-known scoundrels whose misdeeds range from the simply inept to the truly horrifying.
Download or read book They Made America Great written by Rick Rhodes and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning more than 250 years of history, this work is a collection of 31 heartwarming stories of fellow Americans who have traveled that road behind us. Some people here are well known. Others presented here are lesser known, but also have contributed to our American Legacy. Harry Truman once stated, "The only thing really new, is the history you don't know." Distinguished historian David McCullough affirms, "History is a great way to meet people." This book does that.
Download or read book Scoundrel written by Sarah Weinman and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2022-02-22 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Recommended Read from: The Los Angeles Times * Town and Country * The Seattle Times * Publishers Weekly * Lit Hub * Crime Reads * Alma From the author of The Real Lolita and editor of Unspeakable Acts, the astonishing story of a murderer who conned the people around him—including conservative thinker William F. Buckley—into helping set him free In the 1960s, Edgar Smith, in prison and sentenced to death for the murder of teenager Victoria Zielinski, struck up a correspondence with William F. Buckley, the founder of National Review. Buckley, who refused to believe that a man who supported the neoconservative movement could have committed such a heinous crime, began to advocate not only for Smith’s life to be spared but also for his sentence to be overturned. So begins a bizarre and tragic tale of mid-century America. Sarah Weinman’s Scoundrel leads us through the twists of fate and fortune that brought Smith to freedom, book deals, fame, and eventually to attempting murder again. In Smith, Weinman has uncovered a psychopath who slipped his way into public acclaim and acceptance before crashing down to earth once again. From the people Smith deceived—Buckley, the book editor who published his work, friends from back home, and the women who loved him—to Americans who were willing to buy into his lies, Weinman explores who in our world is accorded innocence, and how the public becomes complicit in the stories we tell one another. Scoundrel shows, with clear eyes and sympathy for all those who entered Smith’s orbit, how and why he was able to manipulate, obfuscate, and make a mockery of both well-meaning people and the American criminal justice system. It tells a forgotten part of American history at the nexus of justice, prison reform, and civil rights, and exposes how one man’s ill-conceived plan to set another man free came at the great expense of Edgar Smith’s victims.
Download or read book Scoundrels written by Robert Firth and published by eBookIt.com. This book was released on 2011-07 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Lesson of Scoundrels is one of crime and punishment. The author tells the story of a number of men, some of them probably were great men, most were well educated and all had driving ambition far above that of most. The book focuses on elected scoundrels, as it is those placed in high office by the people who then betray that trust whom we most abhor. The individuals described can all be characterized by a monumental and unrealistic sense of self-worth, outrageous hubris and a mile-wide streak of pure greed so powerful that they risked all to grab the golden ring whenever it came into their reach- that the proverbial ring belonged to the people meant absolutely nothing! Greed drives the elected white collar criminal who learns to steal, lie and defraud the people he serves, believing that because he is who he is, he can act with impunity. In almost every case, the characters described in this book were not entirely bad men- each and every one of them did some good or tried to and were loyal to their friends and family. After all, even Hitler loved his dog! What exactly led them to throw it all away for money you will have to decide for yourselves. Scoundrels tells you who they were, what they did and what it eventually cost them at the bar of justice. In most cases, the law finally did catch up with them- mostly by the opposing party dropping a dime. A few have so far remained free from the clutches of the law but, with reputations so tarnished that, in most cases, they are beyond salvage. For you students of the law, give some serious thought to how these bad guys were caught, the laws they broke and how the courts dealt with them. Most of them were lawyers themselves but likely forgot their lessons in ethics. None of these mendacious rascals cared a whit about morals or ethics when they might get in the way of some easy money. All of the men in this book were and are successful politicians, outgoing, gregarious and, when in top from, bursting with a magnetic enthusiasm (charisma) that draws voters to them like flies to honey. Their powerful personalities and determined energy brought them to high office- many were state governors and all were in positions to get their sticky fingers into the people's cookie jar. The book presents only a small sampling of the vast number of crooked public servants. It's highly likely that the percentage of elected officials, in any capacity, who have not misappropriated public funds, in one way or another, is very small- I would venture to guess the percentage of truly honest politicians (oxymoron) is well under twenty percent. The only difference between the vast majority of elected public servants and those identified in this book is that the former haven't yet been caught. There is a discernible and tragic flaw in many, if not most, of those we choose to represent us. Perhaps, it is because honest, reasonable and intelligent men do not care to run for public office, preferring to retain the peace and happiness of private life. Given the unscrupulous nature of the modern media, I don't blame anyone for avoiding public office. Whatever the reasons, we, the people, are the losers.
Download or read book No Good Duke Goes Unpunished written by Sarah MacLean and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rogue ruined . . . He is the Killer Duke, accused of murdering Mara Lowe on the eve of her wedding. With no memory of that fateful night, Temple has reigned over the darkest of London’s corners for twelve years, wealthy and powerful, but beyond redemption. Until one night, Mara resurfaces, offering the one thing he’s dreamed of . . . absolution. A lady returned . . . Mara planned never to return to the world from which she’d run, but when her brother falls deep into debt at Temple’s exclusive casino, she has no choice but to offer Temple a trade that ends in her returning to society and proving to the world what only she knows...that he is no killer. A scandal revealed . . . It’s a fine trade, until Temple realizes that the lady—and her past—are more than they seem. It will take every bit of his strength to resist the pull of this mysterious, maddening woman who seems willing to risk everything for honor . . . and to keep from putting himself on the line for love.
