NCW Libraries

Created in 1942, the Navajo code talker units of the US Marine Corps relayed radio and phone messages in their native dialect during World War II combat operations. The method was fast and indecipherable to enemy eavesdroppers, as Navajo is an unwritten language of extreme complexity--with its syntax, tonal qualities and various dialects--making it unintelligible to anyone without extensive exposure and training. It has no alphabet or symbols, and...

Ancient Wonderings tells a tale of stepping into the past, of journeying across Britain's wildest lands on a trail of prehistoric worlds. James Canton immerses himself into the landscape, chasing physical obsessions of prehistory: stone circles, flint arrowheads, sacred stones, gold, tin, and a lost Roman road. He explores those wonders of the natural world which occupied ancient minds: the night sky, shooting stars, the rising and setting sun. And...

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour. Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States, is an American icon. To many, he is a symbol of values, sacrifice and determination. Modern notions of nationalism, liberty, and constitution all owe their debt to Lincoln, as does the unity of the American states. And yet, in his own day, Lincoln was also reviled by many as a traitor, tarnished by his associations with the wrong kind...

On July 4, 1999, in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, a bizarre confluence of meteorological events resulted in the most damaging blowdown in the region's history. Gunflint Falling tells the story of this devastating storm from the perspectives of those who were on the ground before, during, and after the catastrophic event. The forecasts in Duluth predicted the day would be "warm and humid. Partly sunny with a 30% chance of thunderstorms."...

The oldest book in the world is the filled with wisdom quotes and teachings on how one is to conduct one’s life and how to treat his fellow man. Good old ancient wisdom in its simplest form.

H.P. Lovecraft (1890 - 1937) was an American horror fiction writer. Though he died in poverty and was only published in pulp magazines before his death, he is now regarded as one of the most significant 20th-century authors in the genre. Lovecraft was a prodigy, reciting poetry at the age of three, and writing complete poems by six. His grandfather encouraged his interest in the unusual by telling him his own original tales of gothic horror. Lovecraft's...

David Lloyd George (Jan. 17, 1863 - March 26, 1945) was a British politician of great audacity, charm, wit, and mastery of the art of debate. A champion of liberal causes throughour his career, Lloyd George entered Parliament in 1890, and was later was appointed to the president of the Board of Trade in 1906. As Prime Minister, from 1916 to 1922, Lloyd George led Britain to victory in World War I. In this recording, Lloyd George discusses the famous...

In the Editor's Introduction to the Series: That a new history of the United States is needed, extending from the discovery down to the present time hardly needs a statement. No such comprehensive work by a competent writer is now in existence. Individual writers have treated only limited chronological fields. Meantime there is a rapid increase of published sources and serviceable monographs based on material hitherto unused. On the one side, there...

Alexander the Great's story often reads like fiction: son to a snake-loving mother and a battle-scarred father; tutored by Aristotle; a youth from the periphery of the Greek world who took part in his first campaign aged sixteen, becoming king of Macedon at twenty and king of Asia by twenty-five; leading his armies into battle like a Homeric figure. Each generation has peered through the frosted glass of history and come to their own conclusion about...

This classic Soviet Union history traces the USSR from 1917, to its fall, offering "a master class in understanding the structures and intricate workings of the Soviet system" (Ian Kershaw, historian and Hitler biographer). Today, the Soviet Union remains the most extraordinary but tragic attempt to create a society beyond capitalism. Yet its history was one that for a long time proved impossible to write. In The Soviet Century, Moshe Lewin follows...