Historiske og politiske biografier

It all comes to an end, eventually, when people find out the truth...

This is the true story of a man who wronged no one, but was wronged by many.

Howard and Elsie Charlesworth vividly describe growing up on farms during the Great Depression and World War II in Cattaraugus County in Western New York. We can't imagine what it was like raising a family in a house with no electricity, no running water or indoor plumbing, and no telephone... whilst working the fields with a team of horses. It is amazing how hard people had to work just to survive. Even though life was always difficult and sometimes very painful, there were good times as well. The authors candidly and humorously discuss farm life, attending one-room schoolhouses, eccentric family members and neighbors, and attending High School during World War II, which gives you a comprehensive picture of what life was like growing up on a farm in the nineteen thirties and the early forties.

"Before the Gilded Age is the first modern and thorough biography of William Wilson Corcoran (1798-1888), one of the nation's earliest and most successful political insiders, financiers, philanthropists, and shapers of the emerging cultural elite during the era before the Gilded Age. He was a college dropout (Georgetown College) who became one of the richest men in Washington. A controversial figure in his own time and ours, Corcoran was a masterful political "shapeshifter" whose chameleonlike ability to work both sides of the Mason-Dixon line during and after the Civil War enabled him to thrive seamlessly between sitting out the war in Europe while rumors of treason swirled around him and then returning to the capital after the Union victory. He was friendly with Robert E. Lee and William Tecumseh Sherman; Jefferson Davis and Daniel Webster. He owned at least two individuals and worked to end Home Rule, disenfranchising the voters of Washington, DC, and ending Reconstruction in the District. He was one of the earliest consistent practitioners of the much-reviled activity of lobbying. And he devised the strategy to leverage public debt to finance the US prosecution of the Mexican-American War. Yet he also played a key role in stabilizing and merchandizing US financial securities at home and abroad, created a bank that remained independent for 175 years (Riggs Bank), and founded the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Corcoran's failings are examined along with his contributions to some of the major developments in finance and philanthropy of his era"--