As a reporter for the “New York Evening Post” during the time of New York’s Tammany Hall Machine, William L. Riordan compiled and published this work in 1905 from a series of articles he wrote on George Washington Plunkitt, the millionaire ward boss of New York’s 15th District. Plunkitt is best remembered as a streetwise politician who practiced what he called “honest graft”, or what is otherwise known today as “machine politics”. Of the Tammany ...
Widely considered the most famous work of the professional soldier and writer Xenophon, “Anabasis” is a true tale of dangerous adventure in ancient Greece. Though advised not to join the army of 10,000 by his friend Socrates, Xenophon does set out with Cyrus the Great in that man’s attempt to gain the empire of Persia from his brother. When this leader is killed in battle, however, the army loses cause and direction, and the result is a ‘marchin ...
Gaius Sallustius Crispus, or Sallust, was a renowned Roman historian and a decided partisan of Caesar. After his retirement from statesmanship, Sallust devoted his time to the writing of literary and historical works that focused on great persons and events of his age. Although a lesser-known Roman historian, Sallust has become particularly revered for his intention to write scholarly, not merely anecdotal, discussions of events. Nietzsche descr ...
Little is definitively known of the life and schooling of Geoffrey of Monmouth, but his extraordinary literary works have survived centuries as a testament to his legacy. Around the time of Geoffrey’s life, the written Arthurian legends were mostly fragmentary and often incoherent. He therefore took on the task of creating the first full biographies of King Arthur and Merlin, which from that point on remained the quintessential source for all Ar ...
Written by Daniel Defoe nearly sixty years after the bubonic plague of 1665 swept through London, “A Journal of the Plague Year”, published in 1722, is an historically accurate account of one man’s experiences during a year of the Great Plague. In astonishing detail, Defoe takes readers through a vivid and horrific tour of the neighborhoods, houses, and streets that have drastically changed as the city is ravaged by the plague. The bustle of bus ...
Written in 1542 and first published in 1552, “A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies” by Bartolome de Las Casas, a Dominican friar, is a moving and shocking account of the atrocities and mistreatment suffered by the indigenous people of South America under Spanish colonial rule. Bartolome de Las Casas, believed to have been born in 1484, immigrated to the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean from Spain in 1502 with his father and was ...
Written by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus in 121 AD while he was the personal secretary to emperor Hadrian, “The Twelve Caesars” is a series of twelve biographies of Roman rulers beginning with Julius Caesar and ending with Domitian. The tales of Rome’s emperors are deeply personal and informative, while also entertaining and often filled with drama. Suetonius included invaluable descriptions of the rulers’ public and private lives, physical appear ...
First published in 1921 and awarded the first ever Newbery Medal of 1922 for its contribution to children’s literature, “The Story of Mankind” follows the history of western civilization from prehistoric times to the early 20th century. Originally written for his children, Hendrik van Loon, a Dutch-American journalist and historian, both wrote and illustrated this classic for children to learn about world history in an entertaining way. From the ...
First published in 1954, “Stolen Legacy” is the thought-provoking and controversial book by George G. M. James, a Guyanese-American historian and author. James makes the argument that Greek philosophy originated in Ancient Egypt, rather than Greece and was stolen and used without acknowledgement by Greek philosophers. In support of his premise, James contends that when Alexander the Great invaded Egypt and sacked the Royal Library at Alexandria ...
