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The Wright Brothers
Summary On December 17, 1903, on a windswept beach at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville Wright flew a powered aircraft for twelve seconds and covered 120 feet. It was the first time in human history that a heavier-than-air machine had achieved controlled, powered flight. He and his brother Wilbur had achieved what the Smithsonian Institution…
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A People’s History of the United States
Summary Howard Zinn opens A People’s History of the United States with Columbus’s arrival in the Caribbean and his first encounter with the Arawak people, whom he described in his journal as gentle, intelligent, and potential Christians and then enslaved for gold extraction. The Arawak had, as Zinn quotes, no iron tools and no desire…
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John Adams
Summary John Adams has always been the underrated founder. Washington was the indispensable man, Jefferson the poet of liberty, Hamilton the financial genius. Adams was the vice president who called his office the most insignificant invented by man or his imagination, the president who lost to Jefferson after one term, the founder whose son became…
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In the Heart of the Sea
Summary On November 20, 1820, a sperm whale attacked and sank the Nantucket whaleship Essex in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 2,000 miles from the nearest land. Twenty men were left alive in three small whaleboats with enough provisions for perhaps sixty days. The nearest inhabited land was the Marquesas Islands, 1,200 miles to…
