Showing results for "john shorter"

My Marathon: Reflections on a Gold Medal Life is a revealing memoir by Frank Shorter, the father of American distance running. After winning the 1969 NCAA title in the 10,000 meters during his senior year at Yale, Shorter went on to win a staggering 24 national titles on track, road, and cross-country courses, but it was in the marathon that Shorter achieved his greatest fame and recognition.At the 1972 Munich Games, Shorter won the Olympic marathon finishing more than 2 m...

This brief history of Appleton Estate traces the ownership pattern of the property, from the land grant to Francis Dickinson, through William Hill, Alexander McDowell Nathan, Cecil Lindo and his brothers and heirs, down to J. Wray & Nephew Ltd and its present-day owners, the Campari Group of Italy. The book is a mere snippet of the vast history of the home of Jamaica’s famous rum brand that is said to have had its origins dating back to the English conquest of Jamaica in 1655, but, hopeful...

A National Book Award FinalistWinner of the Frederick Douglass Book PrizeA startling and eye-opening look into America’s First Family, Never Caught is the powerful story about a daring woman of “extraordinary grit” (The Philadelphia Inquirer).When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation’s ...

This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even...

"The Underground Railroad: Next Stop, Toronto! stands out as an engaging and highly readable account of the lives of Black people in Toronto in the 1800s. Adrienne Shadd, Afua Cooper and Karolyn Smardz Frost offer many helpful points of entry for readers learning for the first time about Black history in Canada. They also give surprising and detailed information to enrich the understanding of people already passionate about this n...

'Engrossing and powerful . . . rich and thought-provoking'Fara Dabhoiwala, Guardian'Path-breaking . . . a major rewriting of history'Mihir Bose, Irish Times'Slave Empire is lucid, elegant and forensic. It deals with appalling horrors in cool and convincing prose.'The EconomistThe British empire, in sentimental myth, was more free, more just and more fair than ...

When Thomas Harding discovered that his family had profited from slavery, he set out to interrogate the choices of his ancestors and Britain's role in this terrible history. His investigation took him to Demerara (now Guyana), the site of an uprising by enslaved people in 1823, the largest in the British Empire and a key trigger in the abolition of slavery. Charting the dramatic build-up to this landmark event through the eyes of four people - an enslaved man, a missionary, a colonist, and...

"Engaging and steeped in years of research . . . a must read for all who care about the intersection of Canadian, American, British, and African history." —Lawrence Hill, award-winning author of Someone Knows My NameIn an attempt to ruin the American economy during the Revolutionary War, the British government offered freedom to slaves who would desert their rebel masters. Many Black men and women escaped to the British fleet patrolling the East Coast, or t...

Eighteenth-century Jamaica, Britain’s largest and most valuable slave-owning colony, relied on a brutal system of slave management to maintain its tenuous social order. Trevor Burnard provides unparalleled insight into Jamaica’s vibrant but harsh African and European cultures with a comprehensive examination of the extraordinary diary of plantation owner Thomas Thistlewood.Thistlewood’s diary, kept over the course of forty years, describes in graphic detail how white rule over slav...

Ontario’s African-Canadian Heritage is composed of the collected works of Professor Fred Landon, who for more than 60 years wrote about African-Canadian history. The selected articles have, for the most part, never been surpassed by more recent research and offer a wealth of data on slavery, abolition, the Underground Railroad, and more, providing unique insights into the abundance of African-Canadian heritage in Ontario. Though much of Landons research was published in the Ontario Histori...

An "enthralling" chronicle of the nearly two decades the statesman, scientist, inventor, and Founding Father spent in the British imperial capital (BBC Radio 4, Book of the Week).For more than a fifth of his life, Benjamin Franklin lived in London. He dined with prime ministers, members of parliament, even kings, as well as with Britain's most esteemed intellectuals—including David Hume, Joseph Priestley, and Erasmus Darwin—and with more notorious individuals, such ...

In the early to mid-nineteenth century, Isaac Brown, a slave, was accused of the attempted murder of a prominent plantation owner, despite there being no evidence of his guilt. Brown, after enduring two brutal floggings, was shipped to a New Orleans slave pen. From there the resourceful Brown was able to make a daring escape to Philadelphia in the free state of Pennsylvania. His biggest error was writing a note informing his free wife and eleven children in Maryland of his whereabouts. The...