Benson Bobrick

Angel in the Whirlwind is the epic tale of the American Revolution, from its roots among tax-weary colonists to the triumphant Declaration of Independence and eventual victory and liberty, recounted by Benson Bobrick, lauded by The New York Times as “perhaps the most interesting historian writing in America today. ” Overwhelmed with debt following its victory in the French and Indian Wars, England began imposing harsh new tariffs and taxes on its colonists in the 1760s. Rebellion against these measures soon erupted into war. Bobrick thrillingly describes all the major battles, from Lexington and Concord to the dramatic siege of Yorktown, when the British flag was finally lowered before patriot guns. At the same time he weaves together social and political history along with the military history, bringing to life not only the charismatic leaders of the independence movement, but also their lesser-known compatriots, both patriot and loyalist, English and American, whose voices vividly convey the urgency of war.Illuminated by fresh insight, Angel in the Whirlwind is a dramatic narrative of our nation’s birth, in all its passion and glory.

Tells the story of the English Bible, with details of how King James assembled a team of experts, including John Wycliffe and William Tyndale, to translate the text into English, and examines the political, social, cultural, and spiritual ramifications of the King James Bible. Reprint.

In this revelatory, dynamic biography, one of our finest historians, Benson Bobrick, profiles George H. Thomas, arguing that he was the greatest and most successful general of the Civil War. Because Thomas didn't live to write his memoirs, his reputation has been largely shaped by others, most notably Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, two generals with whom Thomas served and who, Bobrick says, diminished his successes in their favor in their own memoirs.Born in Virginia, Thomas survived Nat Turner's rebellion as a boy, then studied at West Point, where Sherman was a classmate. Thomas distinguished himself in the Mexican War and then returned to West Point as an instructor. When the Civil War broke out, Thomas remained loyal to the Union, unlike fellow Virginia-born officer Robert E. Lee (among others). He compiled an outstanding record as an officer in battles at Mill Springs, Perryville, and Stones River. At the Battle of Chickamauga, Thomas, at the time a corps commander, held the center of the Union line under a ferocious assault, then rallied the troops on Horseshoe Ridge to prevent a Confederate rout of the Union army. His extraordinary performance there earned him the nickname "The Rock of Chickamauga."Promoted to command of the Army of the Cumberland, he led his army in a stunning Union victory at the Battle of Chattanooga. Thomas supported Sherman on his march through Georgia in the spring of 1864, winning an important victory at the Battle of Peachtree Creek. As Sherman continued on his March to the Sea, Thomas returned to Tennessee and in the battle of Nashville destroyed the army of Confederate General John Bell Hood. It was one of the most decisive victories of the war, and Thomas won it even as Grant was on his way to remove Thomas from his command. (When Grant discovered the magnitude of Thomas's victory, he quickly changed his mind.) Thomas died of a stroke in 1870 while still on active duty. In the entire Civil War, he never lost a battle or a movement.Throughout his career, Thomas was methodical and careful, and always prepared. Unlike Grant at Shiloh, he was never surprised by an enemy. Unlike Sherman, he never panicked in battle but always remained calm and focused. He was derided by both men as "Slow Trot Thomas," but as Bobrick shows in this brilliant biography, he was quick to analyze every situation and always knew what to do and when to do it. He was not colorful like Grant and Sherman, but he was widely admired by his peers, and some, such as Grant's favorite cavalry commander, General James H. Wilson, thought Thomas the peer of any general in either army. He was the only Union commander to destroy two Confederate armies in the field.Although historians of the Civil War have always regarded Thomas highly, he has never captured the public imagination, perhaps because he has lacked an outstanding biographer -- until now. This informed, judicious, and lucid biography at last gives Thomas his due.

The story of Harun al-Rashid, the celebrated caliph from The Thousand and One Nights , who ruled the Islamic world when its power was at a peak in the late eighth and early ninth centuries and when the Arab world influenced Western Christian culture.The Caliph’s Splendor is a a history of a civilization we barely know that had a profound effect on our own culture.While the West declined following the collapse of the Roman Empire, a new Arab civilization arose to the east, reaching an early peak in Baghdad under the caliph Harun al-Rashid. Harun is the legendary caliph of The Thousand and One Nights, but his actual court was nearly as magnificent as the fictional one. In The Caliph’s Splendor, Benson Bobrick eloquently tells the little-known and remarkable story of Harun’s rise to power and his rivalries with the neighboring Byzantines and the new Frankish kingdom under the leadership of Charlemagne.When Harun came to power, Islam stretched from the Atlantic to India. The Islamic empire was the mightiest on earth and the largest ever seen. Although Islam spread largely through war, its cultural achievements were immense. Harun’s court at Baghdad outshone the independent Islamic emirate in Spain and all the courts of Europe, for that matter. In Baghdad, great works from Greece and Rome were preserved and studied, and new learning enhanced civilization. Over the following centuries Arab and Persian civilizations made a lasting impact on the West in astronomy, geometry, algebra (an Arabic word), medicine, and chemistry, among other fields of science. The alchemy (another Arabic word) of the Middle Ages originated with the Arabs. From engineering to jewelry to fashion to weaponry, Arab influences would shape life in the West, as they did in the fields of law, music, and literature.But for centuries Arabs and Byzantines contended fiercely on land and sea. Bobrick tells how Harun defeated attempts by the Byzantines to advance into Asia at his expense. He contemplated an alliance with the much weaker Charlemagne in order to contain the Byzantines, and in time Arabs and Byzantines reached an accommodation that permitted both to prosper. Harun’s caliphate would weaken from within as his two sons quarreled and formed factions; eventually Arabs would give way to Turks in the Islamic empire.Empires rise, weaken, and fall, but during its golden age, the caliphate of Baghdad made a permanent contribution to civilization, as Benson Bobrick so splendidly reminds us.

In sweep, color & grandeur, the conquest & settlement of Siberia compares with the winning of the American West. It's the greatest pioneering story in history, uniquely combining the heroic colonization of an intractable virgin land, the ghastly dangers & high adventure of Arctic exploration, & the grimmest saga of penal servitude. 400 years of continual human striving chart its course, a drama of unremitting extremes & elemental confrontations, pitting man against nature, & man against man. East of the Sun, a work of panoramic scope, is the 1st complete account of this strange & terrible story. To most Westerners, Siberia is a vast & mysterious place. The richest resource area on the face of the earth, its land mass covers 5 million square miles-7.5% of the total land surface of the globe. From the 1st foray in 1581 across the Ural Mountains by a band of Cossack outlaws to the fall of Gorbachev, East of the Sun is history on a grand scale. With vivid immediacy, Bobrick describes the often brutal subjugation of Siberia's aboriginal tribes & the cultures that were destroyed; the great 18th-century explorations that defined Siberia's borders & Russia's attempt to "extend" Siberia further with settlements in Alaska, California & Hawaii; & the transformation of Siberia into a penal colony for criminal & political exiles, an experiment more terrible than Australia's Botany Bay. There's the building of the stupendous Trans-Siberian Railway across 7 time zones; Siberia's key role in the bloody aftermath of the October Revolution in 1917; & Stalin's dreaded Gulag, which corrupted its very soil. Today, Siberia is the hope of Russia's future, now that all her appended republic have broken away. Its story has never been more timely.

In a horoscope he cast in 1647 for Charles I, Wm Lilly, a noted English astrologer, noted the following: 'Luna is with Antares, a violent fixed star, which is said to denote violent death, & Mars is approaching Caput Algol, which is said to denote beheading.' Two years later the king's head fell on the block. 'Astrology must be right,' wrote the American astrologer Evangeline Adams, claimed descendant of John Quincy Adams, in a challenge to skeptics in 1929. 'There can be no appeal from the Infinite.' The Fated Sky explores both the history of astrology & the controversial subject of its historical influence. It's the 1st serious book to fully engage astrology in this way. Astrology is the oldest occult sciences, also the origin of science itself. Astronomy, mathematics & other disciplines arose in part to make possible the calculations necessary in casting horoscopes. For 5000 years, the influence of the stars has been viewed as shaping the course of affairs. According to recent polls, at least 30% of Americans believe in it, tho modern astrology is utterly different from the doctrine of the stars that won the respect & allegiance of the greatest thinkers, scientists & writers--Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Arab & Persian--of earlier days. Statesmen, popes & kings once embraced it. Th Aquinas found it compatible with Xian faith. There are some 200 allusions to it in Shakespeare's plays, all their predictions fulfilled. The great astronomers of the scientific revolution--Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler--were adherents. Newton's appetite for mathematics was whetted by an astrological text. Prominent figures such as Churchill, deGaulle & Reagan have consulted astrologers, heeding their advice. Universities as diverse as Oxford & Spain's Univ. of Zaragoza offer courses in the subject, fulfilling Jung's prediction that astrology would again become the subject of serious discourse. Whether astrology actually has the powers ascribed to it is open to debate. But there's no doubt that it maintains a hold on the human mind. The Fated Sky gives a comprehensive account of this subject & its enduring influence on history & the history of ideas.

Traces the life of the sixteenth century Russian czar, describes the historical background of his reign, and discusses his indirect influence on modern East-West relations

The story of the author's great-grandfather's Civil War experience, based on a remarkable set of newly discoverd letters—a powerful, moving addition to the firsthand soldiers' accounts of the Civil War.Dear Mother,I was very glad to hear from home this morning. It is the first time since I left Otterville. We marched from Sedalia 120 miles....I almost feel anxious to be in a battle & yet I am almost afraid. I feel very brave sometimes & think if I should be in an engagement, I never would leave the field alive unless the stars & stripes floated triumphant. I do not know how it may be. If there is a battle & I should fall, tell with pride & not with grief that I fell in defense of liberty. Pray that I may be a true soldier.Not since Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage have the trials and tribulations of a private soldier of the Civil War been told with such beguiling force. The Red Badge of Courage, however, was fiction. This story is true.In Testament, Benson Bobrick draws upon an extraordinarily rich but hitherto untapped archive of material to create a continuous narrative of how that war was fought and lived. Here is virtually the whole theater of conflict in the West, from its beginnings in Missouri, through Kentucky and Tennessee, to the siege of Atlanta under Sherman, as experienced by Bobrick's great-grandfather, Benjamin W. ("Webb") Baker, an articulate young Illinois recruit. Born and raised not far from the Lincoln homestead in Coles County, Webb had stood in the audience of one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, become a staunch Unionist, and answered one of Abraham Lincoln's first calls for volunteers. The ninety-odd letters on which his story is based are fully equal to the best letters the war produced, especially by a common soldier; but their wry intelligence, fortitude, and patriotic fervor also set them apart with a singular and still-undying voice.In the end, that voice blends with the author's own, as the book becomes a poignant tribute to his great-grandfather's life -- and to all the common soldiers of the nation's bloodiest war.

Renowned historian Benson Bobrick has written a moving chronicle of the American Revolution for young readers. From the first stirrings of unrest under British rule at the Boston Tea Party, to the treachery of Benedict Arnold at West Point, to George Washington's Christmas Eve surprise attack at the Battle of Trenton, to the British surrender at the Battle of Yorktown, Fight for Freedom explores the war that created one independent nation out of thirteen diverse colonies.Fight for Freedom contains personal anecdotes from soldiers and civilians, as well as profiles of the many historical luminaries who were involved in America's fight for independence, such as George Washington, King George III, Abigail Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Paul Jones, Thomas Jefferson, and Lord Cornwallis. Bobrick also explores the origins of colonialism in the New World, the roles women and Native Americans played during the American Revolution, the intricacies of building a new government, and the fate of those who remained loyal to the British crown after the onset of war.Bobrick's dynamic narrative is highlighted with many period oil paintings, political cartoons, and key campaign and battlefield maps, making Fight for Freedom the ultimate book on the American Revolution for kids.

From the barefoot races of 8th century BC to the underwater obstacle courses in the early 20th century to the high-tension Berlin Games preceding World War II, the Olympics have always been exciting dramas of athletic prowess and human interest. In A Passion for Victory , award-winning author Benson Bobrick tells the details of the captivating story of the Olympic Games, starting with their inception in Ancient Greece. This wonderfully readable narrative is rich with anecdotes and profiles of athletes and weaves in important historical events to create a complete picture of each installment of the Games. This thorough account of an international fixation is gripping, poignant, and occasionally hilarious.

Traces the history and development of subways, focusing on the systems in London, Paris, and New York

A social history of a puzzling medical condition identifies famous individuals who have struggled with stutters while examining the various treatments that have been applied, including effective contemporary techniques

A dynamic Civil War book with a fresh angle from an award-winning writer. Bobrick profiles General George H. Thomas, an overlooked scion of the Civil War, and shows the military choices that saved the Union. Also examined are President Lincoln, the causes of the war and the various personalities who have shaped our understanding of the war today. This compelling book, rich with visuals including maps, photos, original documents, and more, offers new insights into a key topic for American homes and classrooms. A particularly exciting read for boys.The Battle of Nashville is another contribution to Knopf's list of high quality nonfiction such as Children of the Dust Bowl by Jerry Stanley and Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World by Jennifer Armstrong.

"BOBRICK IS A GREAT HISTORIAN. HIS MEMOIR IS SPELLBINDING" -- Steve Donoghue, Book Critic-at-Large, The Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal, and The Boston Globe. This poignant, at times dramatic, beautifully written, and deeply reflective book, is the farewell work of "perhaps the most interesting American historian writing today." (The New York Times) Benson Bobrick earned his doctorate in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, and in 2002 received the Literature Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His fourteen books (including two national best sellers) have been featured on the front page of The New York Times Book Review, widely praised in both academic and popular journals, and published in sixteen different lands. Throughout his career, Bobrick's work--which has ranged from Russian and American history to medicine and technology to topics on religious and esoteric themes--has appealed not only to historians and general readers but to men and women of letters across a wide field. After his first book, LABYRINTHS OF IRON, was published in 1981, Lewis Mumford, the great social historian, called it “an extraordinarily original work, by a mind of the first order.” And in a letter to the author, the famed playwright John Guare described Bobrick’s WIDE AS THE WATERS as “Thrilling. It made my jaw drop, consistently drop, with amazement….A remarkable accomplishment.” Part memoir, part religious autobiography, RETURNING FROM AFAR is a unique summing up. The author and his wife, Hilary, make their home in Vermont.

This wonderful and historic Parsons The First Hundred Year is the corporate history hundred years of engineering as a profession in America throughout the life and example of one firm. The story of Parson Brickerhoff is a tale of survival through times of crisis--two world wars, the Great Depression, the recent recession-and triumphs through work of renown--the IRT, the Cape Cod Canal, the Garden State Parkway

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