In easy-to-understand language, former NASA special projects engineer Robert Alston tackles cosmology's profoundest questions: Where did the universe come from, and how were its laws and constants finely tuned to allow for life? From Albert Einstein's biggest blunder to the perfect parameters that allow fragile life to persevere, this mini-book explores how astronomy and physics point to a cosmic architect.

Are life and the universe a mindless accident—the blind outworking of cosmic, chemical, and biological evolution? That's the official story many of us were taught somewhere along the way. But what does the science actually say? Drawing on recent discoveries in astronomy, cosmology, chemistry, biology, and paleontology, Evolution and Intelligent Design in a Nutshell shows how the latest scientific evidence suggests a very different story.

COMMON BLOOD sets the experiences of an extended family of post-Colonial English and German immigrants against the backdrop of more than eighty years of Charlestons tumultuous nineteenth-century history. For the reader who appreciates that history does indeed repeat itself, and who finds social, cultural, and political history fascinating in its ability to provide a vision of both the past and the future, the family stories narrated here are eminently illustrative of the intersection of in...

By 1900, the German population in the United States was close to 2.7 million. In numerous cities in the Northeast and Midwest, those who had immigrated in the nineteenth century congregated in demarcated ethnic neighborhoods—"little Germanies." This was not the case of the German immigrant community in Charleston, South Carolina. The establishment and evolution of the nineteenth-century German immigrant community there was as unique as the southern Lowcountry city itself.Early Germ...

The definitive biography of one of the most courageous women in American history "reveals Harriet Tubman to be even more remarkable than her legend" ( Newsday).Celebrated for her exploits as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman has entered history as one of nineteenth-century America's most enduring and important figures. But just who was this remarkable woman? To John Brown, leader of the Harper's Ferry slave uprising, she was General Tu...

The classic history demonstrating that America's economic supremacy was built on the backs of enslaved people.**"Gripping." —**New York Times**“A stinging indictment of slavery.” —**NPR Books?Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution—the nation's original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America's later success. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bon...

A testament to the power of the human spirit under conditions of extreme oppression, this landmark history of slavery in the South challenged conventional views by illuminating the many forms of resistance to dehumanization that developed in slave society.Displaying keen insight into the minds of both enslaved persons and slaveholders, historian Eugene Genovese investigates the ways that enslaved persons forced their owners to acknowledge their humanity through cul...

'…from time to time a study comes along that truly can be called ‘path breaking,’ ‘seminal,’ ‘essential,’ a ‘must read.’ How the Irish Became White is such a study.' John Bracey, W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachussetts, AmherstThe Irish came to America in the eighteenth century, fleeing a homeland under foreign occupation and a caste system that regarded them as the lowest form of humanity. In the new country – a la...

**A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICEA magisterial new work that rewrites the story of America's founding**The American Revolution is often portrayed as an orderly, restrained rebellion, with brave patriots defending their noble ideals against an oppressive empire. It’s a stirring narrative, and one the founders did their best to encourage after the war. But as historian Holger Hoock shows in this deeply researched and elegantly written account of America’...

"Traces the history of abolition from the 1600s to the 1860s . . . a valuable addition to our understanding of the role of race and racism in America."— Florida CourierReceived historical wisdom casts abolitionists as bourgeois, mostly white reformers burdened by racial paternalism and economic conservatism. Manisha Sinha overturns this image, broadening her scope beyond the antebellum period usually associated with abolitionism and recasting it as a radic...

In early 1864, as the Confederate Army of Tennessee licked its wounds after being routed at the Battle of Chattanooga, Major-General Patrick Cleburne (the "Stonewall of the West") proposed that "the most courageous of our slaves" be trained as soldiers and that "every slave in the South who shall remain true to the Confederacy in this war" be freed. In Confederate Emancipation, Bruce Levine looks closely at such Confederate plans to arm and free slaves. He shows that within a year...

Abraham H. Galloway (1837–1870) was a fiery young slave rebel, radical abolitionist, and Union spy who rose out of bondage to become one of the most significant and stirring black leaders in the South during the Civil War. Throughout his brief, mercurial life, Galloway fought against slavery and injustice. He risked his life behind enemy lines, recruited black soldiers for the North, and fought racism in the Union army’s ranks. He also stood at the forefront of an African American politica...