Download or read book Counterfeit Prince of Old Texas The Swindling Slaver Monroe Edwards written by Lora-Marie Bernard and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2017 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "After Monroe Edwards died in Sing Sing prison in 1847, penny dreadfuls memorialized him as the most celebrated American forger until the turn of the century. With a bizarre biography too complicated for easy history, his critical contributions to Texas settlement, revolution and annexation were inextricably mired in his activities as a slave smuggler and confidence man. Author Lora-Marie Bernard unravels the unbelievable story of one of the most notorious criminal adventurers ever to set foot on the soil of the Lone Star State." -- From cover.

Download or read book The Counterfeit Prince of Old Texas Swindling Slaver Monroe Edwards written by Lora-Marie Bernard and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2017-01-23 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After Monroe Edwards died in Sing Sing prison in 1847, penny dreadfuls memorialized him as the most celebrated American forger until the turn of the century. With a bizarre biography too complicated for easy history, his critical contributions to Texas settlement, revolution and annexation were inextricably mired in his activities as a slave smuggler and confidence man. Author Lora-Marie Bernard unravels the unbelievable story of one of the most notorious criminal adventurers ever to set foot on the soil of the Lone Star State.

Download or read book The Texas Lowcountry written by John R. Lundberg and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-18 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Texas Lowcountry: Slavery and Freedom on the Gulf Coast, 1822–1895, author John R. Lundberg examines slavery and Reconstruction in a region of Texas he terms the lowcountry—an area encompassing the lower reaches of the Brazos and Colorado Rivers and their tributaries as they wend their way toward the Gulf of Mexico through what is today Brazoria, Fort Bend, Matagorda, and Wharton Counties. In the two decades before the Civil War, European immigrants, particularly Germans, poured into Texas, sometimes bringing with them cultural ideals that complicated the story of slavery throughout large swaths of the state. By contrast, 95 percent of the white population of the lowcountry came from other parts of the United States, predominantly the slaveholding states of the American South. By 1861, more than 70 percent of this regional population were enslaved people—the heaviest such concentration west of the Mississippi. These demographics established the Texas Lowcountry as a distinct region in terms of its population and social structure. Part one of The Texas Lowcountry explores the development of the region as a borderland, an area of competing cultures and peoples, between 1822 and 1840. The second part is arranged topically and chronicles the history of the enslavers and the enslaved in the lowcountry between 1840 and 1865. The final section focuses on the experiences of freed people in the region during the Reconstruction era, which ended in the lowcountry in 1895. In closely examining this unique pocket of Texas, Lundberg provides a new and much needed region-specific study of the culture of enslavement and the African American experience.

Download or read book The Texas Archive War written by Lora-Marie Bernard and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2024-02-26 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Often relegated to a footnote, the Archive War almost plunged the Republic of Texas into civil war. Houston's Archive War began with the Texas Revolution, as the spoils of the battlefield gave way to bitter political strife. Sam Houston didn't expect a two-year standoff with Austin residents over the location of the new republic's capital. But if a few things had gone differently, his attempt to shift the seat of government back to the city named after him could have ended with Austin residents in outright rebellion. As it was, the feud between Lamar and Houston over the seat of government escalated into cannon-fire and continued until Texas was a Republic no more. Author Lora-Marie Bernard thumbs through the incendiary files of the Texas Archive War.

Download or read book Provenance written by Laney Salisbury and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-07-09 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tautly paced investigation of one the 20th century's most audacious art frauds, which generated hundreds of forgeries-many of them still hanging in prominent museums and private collections today Provenance is the extraordinary narrative of one of the most far-reaching and elaborate deceptions in art history. Investigative reporters Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo brilliantly recount the tale of a great con man and unforgettable villain, John Drewe, and his sometimes unwitting accomplices. Chief among those was the struggling artist John Myatt, a vulnerable single father who was manipulated by Drewe into becoming a prolific art forger. Once Myatt had painted the pieces, the real fraud began. Drewe managed to infiltrate the archives of the upper echelons of the British art world in order to fake the provenance of Myatt's forged pieces, hoping to irrevocably legitimize the fakes while effectively rewriting art history. The story stretches from London to Paris to New York, from tony Manhattan art galleries to the esteemed Giacometti and Dubuffet associations, to the archives at the Tate Gallery. This enormous swindle resulted in the introduction of at least two hundred forged paintings, some of them breathtakingly good and most of them selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Many of these fakes are still out in the world, considered genuine and hung prominently in private houses, large galleries, and prestigious museums. And the sacred archives, undermined by John Drewe, remain tainted to this day. Provenance reads like a well-plotted thriller, filled with unforgettable characters and told at a breakneck pace. But this is most certainly not fiction; Provenance is the meticulously researched and captivating account of one of the greatest cons in the history of art forgery.

Download or read book Telling Tales written by Melissa Katsoulis and published by Hardie Grant Publishing. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Dionysus the Renegade faked a Sophocles text in 400BC (cunningly inserting the arostic 'Heraclides is ignorant letters') to humiliate an academic rival, he paved the way for two millennia of increasingly outlandish literary hoaxers. The path from his mischievous stunt to more serious tricksters like the controversial memoirist and Oprah-duper James Frey, takes in every sort of writer: from the religious zealot to the bored student, via the vengeful academic and the out-and-out joker. But whether hoaxing for fame, money, politics or simple amusement, each perpetrator represents something unique about why we write. Their stories speak volumes about how reading, writing and publishing have grown out of the fine and private places of the past into big business, TV-book-club-led mass-marketplaces which, some would say, are ripe for the ripping. For the first time, the complete history of this fascinating sub-genre of world literature is revealed. Suitable for bookworms of all ages and persuasions, this is true crime for people who don't like true crime, and literary history for the historically illiterate. A treat to read right through or to dip into, it will make you think twice next time you slip between the covers of an author you don't know...

Download or read book Lower Brazos River Canals written by Lora-Marie Bernard and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2014 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Communities have spent more than 100 years mastering the mighty Brazos River and its waterways. In the 1800s, Stephen F. Austin chose the Brazos River as the site for the first Texas colony because of its vast water and fertile soil. Within 75 years, a pumping station would herald the way for crop management. A sugar mill that was eventually known as Imperial Sugar spurred community development. In 1903, John Miles Frost Jr. tapped the Brazos to expand the Cane and Rice Belt Irrigation System while Houston newspapers predicted the infrastructure marvel would change the region's future--and it did. Within a few decades, the Texas agricultural empire caused Louisiana to dub Texas farmers 'the sugar and rice aristocracy.' As the dawn of the industrial age began, the Brazos River and its waterways began supplying the Texas Gulf Coast industry"--Publisher description.

Download or read book Flim Flam Man written by Jennifer Vogel and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-06-15 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Major motion picture Flag Day starring Sean Penn and his daughter Dylan Penn is based on this father-daughter story of a charming criminal—told by the daughter who loved him. One frosty winter morning in 1995, Jennifer Vogel opened the newspaper and read that her father had gone on the run. John Vogel, fifty-two, had been arrested for single-handedly counterfeiting nearly $20 million in U.S. currency—the fourth-largest sum ever seized by federal agents—and then released pending trial. Though Jennifer hadn't spoken to her father in more than four years, the police suspected he might turn up at her Minneapolis apartment. She examined the shadows outside her building, thought she spotted him at the grocery store and the bus stop. He had simply vanished. Framed around the six months her father eluded authorities, Jennifer's memoir documents the police chase—stakeouts, lie detector tests, even a segment on Unsolved Mysteries—and vividly chronicles her tumultuous childhood while examining her father's legacy. A lifelong criminal who robbed banks, burned down buildings, scammed investors, and even plotted murder, John Vogel was also a hapless dreamer who wrote a novel, baked lemon meringue pies, and took his ten-year-old daughter to see Rocky in an empty theater on Christmas Eve. When it came time to pass his counterfeit bills, he spent them at Wal-Mart for political reasons. Culling from memories, photo albums, public documents, and interviews with the handful of people who knew the real John Vogel, this is an intimate and intensely moving psychological portrait of a charismatic, larger-than-life figure—as told by the daughter who nearly followed in his footsteps.

Download or read book You Thought It Was More written by Louis Colavecchio and published by Vindicta Publishing. This book was released on 2024-06-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unravel the thrilling saga of an extraordinary counterfeiter in this raucously entertaining memoir! "You Thought It Was More" is the gripping memoir of Louis 'The Coin' Colavecchio, recognized as the world's best counterfeiter. Colavecchio takes readers on an amazing journey through his wild adventures around the United States and Europe through a fascinating and funny tale. He gives compelling details of his exploits as he made a great deal of undetectable slot machine tokens, exposing the hidden world of counterfeiting. Colavecchio's prowess as a jeweler, manufacturer, and charmer has earned him a place in history, having been featured on prestigious platforms such as The History Channel and The BBC. His profound impact on the casino gaming industry has left a lasting legacy, forever changing it.

Download or read book Kings of Crypto written by Jeff John Roberts and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2020-12-15 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Tech writer Roberts debuts with a page-turning account of the rise of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase from the Y Combinator startup incubator to becoming a 'pillar of the larger crypto economy.'" — Publisher's Weekly For a moment late in 2018, one bitcoin, which physically amounts to a few electrons blipping on a tiny bit of silicon, was worth $20,000—the same as a pound of gold. Libertarian technologists who believed bitcoin would be the foundation of a new world order saw the moment as an apotheosis. Everyone else saw a bubble. Everyone else was right, and the bubble burst. But bitcoin survived, and the battle for its soul rages on. Kings of Crypto drops us into the unfolding drama, tracing the rise, fall, and rebirth of cryptocurrency through the experiences of major players across the globe. We follow Silicon Valley entrepreneur Brian Armstrong and the turbulent rocket ride of his startup, Coinbase, as he tries to take bitcoin mainstream while fighting off hackers, thieves, and zealots. Author Jeff John Roberts keenly observes the world of virtual currencies and what happens when startups try to disrupt the world of high finance. Clear explanations of crypto technology are woven into an amazing landscape full of meme-fueled startup hijinks, hacking (so much hacking!), shady investors, government investigations, billionaire bros and their Lambos, and closed-door meetings with Jamie Dimon. This is the surprising story of the origins of cryptocurrency and how it is changing money forever.

Download or read book Lights Out written by Thomas Gryta and published by Houghton Mifflin. This book was released on 2020 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How could General Electric--perhaps America's most iconic corporation--suffer such a swift and sudden fall from grace? This is the definitive history of General Electric's epic decline, as told by the two Wall Street Journal reporters who covered its fall. Since its founding in 1892, GE has been more than just a corporation. For generations, it was job security, a solidly safe investment, and an elite business education for top managers. GE electrified America, powering everything from lightbulbs to turbines, and became fully integrated into the American societal mindset as few companies ever had. And after two decades of leadership under legendary CEO Jack Welch, GE entered the twenty-first century as America's most valuable corporation. Yet, fewer than two decades later, the GE of old was gone. ​Lights Out examines how Welch's handpicked successor, Jeff Immelt, tried to fix flaws in Welch's profit machine, while stumbling headlong into mistakes of his own. In the end, GE's traditional win-at-all-costs driven culture seemed to lose its direction, which ultimately caused the company's decline on both a personal and organizational scale. Lights Out details how one of America's all-time great companies has been reduced to a cautionary tale for our times.

Download or read book Insurgent Love written by Ardath Whynacht and published by Fernwood Publishing. This book was released on 2021-10-31T00:00:00Z with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Domestic homicide is violence that strikes within our most intimate relations. The most common strategy for addressing this kind of transgression relies on policing and prisons. But through examining commonly accepted typologies of high-risk intimate partner violence, Ardath Whynacht shows that policing can be understood as part of the same root problem as the violence it seeks to mend and provides an abolitionist frame for the most dangerous forms of intimate partner violence. This book illustrates that the origins of both the carceral state and toxic masculinity are situated in settler colonialism and racial capitalism and sees police homicide and domestic homicide as akin. Describing an experience of domestic homicide in her community and providing a deeply personal analysis of some of the most recent cases of homicide in Canada, the author inhabits the complexity of seeking abolitionist justice. Insurgent Love traces the major risk factors for domestic homicide within the structures of racial capitalism and suggests transformative, anti-capitalist, anti-racist, feminist approaches for safety, prevention and justice.

Download or read book Eugenic Nation written by Alexandra Minna Stern and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "With an emphasis on the American West, Eugenic Nation explores the long and unsettled history of eugenics in the United States. This expanded second edition includes shocking details that demonstrate that the story is far from over. Alexandra Minna Stern explores the unauthorized sterilization of female inmates in California state prisons and ongoing reparations for North Carolina victims of sterilization, as well as the topics of race-based intelligence tests, school segregation, the U.S. Border Patrol, tropical medicine, the environmental movement, and opposition to better breeding. Radically new and relevant, this edition draws from recently uncovered historical records to demonstrate patterns of racial bias in California's sterilization program and to recover personal experiences of reproductive injustice. Stern connects the eugenic past to the genomic present with attention to the ethical and social implications of emerging genetic technologies"--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher written by Timothy Egan and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2012 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edward Curtis was charismatic, handsome, a passionate mountaineer, and a famous photographer, the Annie Leibovitz of his time. He moved in rarefied circles, a friend to presidents, vaudevill stars, leading thinkers. And he was thirty-two years old in 1900 when he gave it all up to pursue his Great Idea: to capture on film the continent's original inhabitants before the old ways disappeared.

Download or read book Froth and Scum written by Andie Tucher and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two notorious antebellum New York murder cases--a prostitute slashed in an elegant brothel and a tradesman bludgeoned by the brother of inventor Samuel Colt--set off journalistic scrambles over the meanings of truth, objectivity, and the duty of the press that reverberate to this day. In 1833 an entirely new kind of newspaper--cheap, feisty, and politically independent--introduced American readers to the novel concept of what has come to be called objectivity in news coverage. The penny press was the first medium that claimed to present the true, unbiased facts to a democratic audience. But in Froth and Scum, Andie Tucher explores--and explodes--the notion that 'objective' reporting will discover a single, definitive truth. As they do now, news stories of the time aroused strong feelings about the possibility of justice, the privileges of power, and the nature of evil. The prostitute's murder in 1836 sparked an impassioned public debate, but one newspaper's 'impartial investigation' pleased the powerful by helping the killer go free. Colt's 1841 murder of the tradesman inspired universal condemnation, but the newspapers' singleminded focus on his conviction allowed another secret criminal to escape. By examining media coverage of these two sensational murders, Tucher reveals how a community's needs and anxieties can shape its public truths. The manuscript of this book won the 1991 Allan Nevins Prize of the Society of American Historians for the best-written dissertation in American history. from the book Journalism is important. It catches events on the cusp between now and then--events that still may be changing, developing, ripening. And while new interpretations of the past can alter our understanding of lives once led, new interpretations of the present can alter the course of our lives as we live them. Understanding the news properly is important. The way a community receives the news is profoundly influenced by who its members are, what they hope and fear and wish, and how they think about their fellow citizens. It is informed by some of the most occult and abstract of human ideas, about truth, beauty, goodness, and justice.

Download or read book Blood Diamonds written by Greg Campbell and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2012-04-03 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First discovered in 1930, the diamonds of Sierra Leone have funded one of the most savage rebel campaigns in modern history. These "blood diamonds" are smuggled out of West Africa and sold to legitimate diamond merchants in London, Antwerp, and New York, often with the complicity of the international diamond industry. Eventually, these very diamonds find their way into the rings and necklaces of brides and spouses the world over. Blood Diamonds is the gripping tale of how the diamond smuggling works, how the rebel war has effectively destroyed Sierra Leone and its people, and how the policies of the diamond industry - institutionalized in the 1880s by the De Beers cartel - have allowed it to happen. Award-winning journalist Greg Campbell traces the deadly trail of these diamonds, many of which are brought to the world market by fanatical enemies. These repercussions of diamond smuggling are felt far beyond the borders of the poor and war-ridden country of Sierra Leone, and the consequences of overlooking this African tragedy are both shockingly deadly and unquestionably global. Updated with a new epilogue.

Download or read book True Crime Stories of Eastern North Carolina written by Cathy Pickens and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2020 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eastern North Carolina is a land of contrasts, and its crime stories bear this out. A lovelorn war hero or a stalker? Conniving wife or consummate homemaker? Murder or suicide? The answers can be as puzzling as the questions. Mystery author Cathy Pickens details an assortment of quirky cases, including a duo of poisoning cases more than one hundred years apart, a band of folk hero swamp outlaws, sex swingers and a couple of mummies. Each story has, in its way, helped define Eastern North Carolina and its history.