検索キーワード： 著者 "Charles River Editors" すべてのカテゴリー

Given his legacy, many Americans today believe Jackie Robinson was the first Black man to play in Major League Baseball, but that answer is wrong. As far back as the late 19th century, there had been professional baseball leagues that were every bit as segregated as any other aspect of society, but before that, there were, for a brief shining moment, teams of Black and White men playing with and against each other. One of the first Black men to play on such a team was Moses Fleetwood Walker, and he was the first who openly identified as Black.

Uranprojekt: The History and Legacy of Nazi Germany’s Nuclear Weapons Program During World War II examines the Nazis’ race to reach the ultimate goal from 1939-45, how they went about their objectives, and why they failed. You will learn about Nazi Germany’s nuclear weapons program like never before.

Leonid Brezhnev became First Secretary of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union in late 1964 after a plot to oust Khrushchev. Little is remembered in the public imagination about Brezhnev in comparison to Mikhail Gorbachev, Vladimir Lenin, or Joseph Stalin, despite the fact Brezhnev ruled the USSR from 1964-1982, longer than any Soviet leader other than Stalin. In fact, he held power during a tumultuous era that changed the world in remarkable ways, and that era has been favorably remembered by many former Soviet citizens.

The Cold War moved into one of its most dangerous phases after Brezhnev’s death as both sides deployed nuclear weapons within alarming proximity in Europe. A NATO exercise, “Operation Able Archer”, almost led to a Soviet miscalculation, and when the Soviets shot down a South Korean airliner in September 1983, claiming it had strayed into Soviet airspace, the Cold War became very tense indeed. 

Today the Space Race is widely viewed poignantly and fondly as a race to the Moon that culminated with Apollo 11 “winning” the Race for the United States. In fact, it encompassed a much broader range of competition between the Soviet Union and the United States...On February 20, 1962, John Glenn orbited the Earth, nearly a year after Gagarin’s orbit, and he remains best known for that historic feat...this audiobook profiles his life, chronicles his historic space mission, and details all the highlights before and after it.

When the phrase “the King” is used in the context of American music, most people think of Elvis Presley, but Presley was just a baby when the title was first conferred upon Benny Goodman as the King of Swing in 1935. The Swing Era was a magical period in American history between the hedonism of the Roaring Twenties and the rebelliousness sparked by rock music beginning in the 1950s. Swing music was rooted in ragtime, blues, and jazz music that had long been popular in African American enclaves in Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, and New Orleans.

The United Nations is one of the most famous bodies in the world, and its predecessor, the League of Nations, might be equally notorious. In fact, President Woodrow Wilson’s pet project was controversial from nearly the minute it was conceived. At the end of World War I, Wilson's pleas at the Paris Peace Conference relied on his Fourteen Points, which included the establishment of a League of Nations, but while his points were mostly popular amongst Americans and Europeans alike, leaders at the Peace Conference largely discarded them and favored different approaches.

The Dreyfus Affair: The History and Legacy of France’s Most Notorious Antisemitic Political Scandal examines the chain of events that produced one of the most notorious episodes in modern French history. A case was built with the central objective of protecting the integrity of French military establishment, and in the process, the relatively muted anti-Semitism in France (at least in comparison to other European nations) was transformed into an era of virulent and violent Jew-hatred that characterized and sullied the final decade of the 19th century in France. 

The 12 months known in history as the "Year of the Four Emperors" was a pivotal chapter in the long epoch of the Roman Empire. It marked the tumultuous end of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and the advent of a year of civil war, renewal, and realignment, the result of which was the establishment of a new era and the founding of a new (and arguably more rational and responsible) imperial dynasty.

The Kingdom of Italy: The History and Legacy of the Italian State from Unification to the End of World War II chronicles the turbulent events and wars that unified Italy into one kingdom, and the struggle to maintain it over the next 75 years. You will learn about the Kingdom of Italy like never before. 

In the 18th century, Italy was still divided into smaller states, but differently than during medieval times when the political entities were independent and were flourishing economic and cultural centers almost unrivaled in Europe. The events of 1848-1849 began to pull the peninsula together, however. The Unification of Italy: The History of the Risorgimento and the Conflicts that Unified the Italian Nation chronicles the turbulent events and wars that unified Italy, and the struggle to maintain the new nation.

For more than a century, radio has been a part of people’s lives. No one alive today remembers a time when it hadn't always been there as a familiar, reliable source of information and entertainment...Weird Radio and Television: A Collection of Spy Transmissions, Unidentified Stations, Paranormal Activities, and Other Mysteries Across the Media includes strange stories that will make these famous forms of media seem a bit less familiar and far more interesting.

Sprightly swing music spills across the dimly lit club. The grayish curtains of cigarette smoke part every once in a while to reveal a sparkling stage and tables upon tables of patrons, some incurably inebriated and others high on the fast-paced nightlife. Fabulous flappers in shimmery cocktail dresses and stylish feather headbands throw their hands up and stomp their feet to the addictive beat on the dance floor. Smartly dressed men, their hair neatly parted and slicked back, toss fistfuls of dice onto the plush green baize of the craps tables.

In terms of geopolitics, perhaps the most seminal event of the Middle Ages was the successful Ottoman siege of Constantinople in 1453. The city had been an imperial capital as far back as the fourth century, when Constantine the Great shifted the power center of the Roman Empire there, effectively establishing two almost equally powerful halves of antiquity’s greatest empire. Constantinople would continue to serve as the capital of the Byzantine Empire even after the Western half of the Roman Empire collapsed in the late fifth century.

For more than two generations, television has been a part of most people’s lives, and few could remember a time when it wasn’t there as a familiar, reliable source of information and entertainment...Weird Television: A Collection of Interrupted Broadcasts, Paranormal Apparitions, and Other Mysteries on TV includes strange stories that will make this familiar medium seem a bit less familiar and far more interesting. You will learn about some of the world’s strangest TV stories like never before.

In the 18th century, Italy was still divided into smaller states, but differently than during medieval times when the political entities were independent and were flourishing economic and cultural centers almost unrivaled in Europe. During the 18th century, all of them were submitted, in one way or another, to one of the greater hegemonic powers. This process of conquest and submission began during the early 16th century, when France was called on by the Duke Milan to intervene in his favor and from there never stopped. 

At the start of the 1840s, the Oregon Country had no political boundaries or effective government. The first to begin showing up in large numbers were missionaries...Narcissa Prentiss Whitman became the first white women to cross the Rocky Mountains...A teacher and missionary, she accomplished the journey with her like-minded husband, Dr. Marcus Whitman. Their history-making tenure in the northwestern wilderness caused them to become one of the most well-known couples of the 19th century, and their story was soon known to the entire nation.

It is hard to find an island on the map more central than Sicily. Located at the crossroads between Europe and Africa, and between the eastern and western Mediterranean, Sicily has rarely been governed as an independent, unified state. Nonetheless, the island has been the seat of some of the most important events in history, and nowhere is this more obvious than during antiquity.

In the 18th century, Italy was still divided into smaller states but differently than during medieval times when the political entities were independent and were flourishing economic and cultural centers, almost unrivaled in Europe. The First Italian War of Independence chronicles the turbulent events that led to 1848, and how the revolutions of that year set Italy on the path to unification. 

Worship of the Feathered Serpent can be traced back 2,000 years, and the Serpent’s cults appear all across Mesoamerica. The Olmec, the Aztec, and both the Yucatec and K’iche Mayans all had different names for this deity, including Kukulkan, Q’uq’umatz, and Tohil...Quetzalcoatl was and remains one of the most interesting and enlightening stories ever to have come out of any civilization, and his stories offer a better understanding of the Mesoamerican world.