In this vivid biography Geoffrey C. Ward brings back to life the most celebrated -- and the most reviled -- African American of his age. Jack Johnson battled his way out of obscurity and poverty in the Jim Crow South to win the title of heavyweight champion of the world. At a time when whites ran everything in America, he took orders from no one and resolved to live as if color did not exist. While most blacks struggled simply to exist, he reveled in his riches and his fame, sleeping with whomever he pleased, to the consternation and anger of much of white America. Because he did so the...
In this vivid biography Geoffrey C. Ward brings back to life the most celebrated -- and the most reviled -- African American of his age. Jack John...
Robert Hunt Rhodes Geoffrey C. Ward Elisha Hunt Rhodes
All for the Union is the eloquent and moving diary of Elisha Hunt Rhodes, featured throughout Ken Burns' PBS documentary The Civil War. Rhodes enlisted into the Union Army as a private in 1861 and left it four years later as a twenty-three-year-old colonel after fighting hard and honorably in battles from Bull Run to Appomattox. Anyone who heard these diaries excerpted in The Civil War will recognize his accounts of those campaigns, which remain outstanding for their clarity and detail. Most of all, Rhodes's words reveal the motivation of a common Yankee foot soldier, an...
All for the Union is the eloquent and moving diary of Elisha Hunt Rhodes, featured throughout Ken Burns' PBS documentary The Civil War. ...
The companion volume to the ten-part PBS TV series by the team responsible for The Civil War and Baseball. Continuing in the tradition of their critically acclaimed works, Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns vividly bring to life the story of the quintessential American music jazz. Born in the black community of turn-of-the-century New Orleans but played from the beginning by musicians of every color, jazz celebrates all Americans at their best. Here are the stories of the extraordinary men and women who made the music: Louis Armstrong, the fatherless waif whose unrivaled...
The companion volume to the ten-part PBS TV series by the team responsible for The Civil War and Baseball. Continuing in the trad...
African American historian Gerald Early refers to Jack Johnson (1878-1946), the first African American heavyweight champion of the world, as the first African American pop culture icon. Johnson is a seminal and iconic figure in the history of race and sport in America. This manuscript is the translation of a memoir by Johnson that was published in French, has never before been translated, and is virtually unknown. Originally published as a series of articles in 1911 and then in revised form as a book in 1914, it covers Johnson's colorful life and battles, both inside and outside the ring,...
African American historian Gerald Early refers to Jack Johnson (1878-1946), the first African American heavyweight champion of the world, as the fi...
A New York Times Notable Book The compelling behind-the-scenes story of the greatest swindler of the Gilded Age, whose villainy bankrupted Ulysses S. Grant and stunned the world of finance told by his great-grandson, award-winning historian Geoffrey C. Ward. Ferdinand Ward, the son of a Protestant missionary and small-town pastor, moved to New York at twenty-one and, in less than a decade, made himself the business partner of a former president and established himself as the Young Napoleon of Finance. In truth, he was running a massive pyramid scheme. Drawing from...
A New York Times Notable Book The compelling behind-the-scenes story of the greatest swindler of the Gilded Age, whose villainy b...
Before Pearl Harbor, before polio and his entry into politics, FDR was a handsome, pampered, but strong-willed youth, the center of a rarefied world. In Before the Trumpet, the award-winning historian Geoffrey C. Ward transports the reader to that world Hyde Park on the Hudson and Campobello Island, Groton and Harvard and the Continent to recreate as never before the formative years of the man who would become the 20th century s greatest president. Here, drawn from thousands of original documents (many never previously published), is a richly-detailed, intimate biography,...
Before Pearl Harbor, before polio and his entry into politics, FDR was a handsome, pampered, but strong-willed youth, the center of a raref...
