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Sand in Their Shoes: The Story of American Steel Foundries
Par Franklin M. Reck. 2023
Fascinating history of American Steel Foundries, manufacturer of railroad couplers, trucks, and draft gear that cushion the shocks as well…
as cast armor for tanks, hydraulic presses, and numerous other specialized steel items. With corporate timeline. Illustrated throughout with pen and ink sketches.Historic Houses of New Jersey: [Illustrated Edition]
Par W. Jay Mills. 2023
One of the standard works on notable early houses in the state.“UNTIL now the State possessing the most inexhaustible supply…
of colonial, Revolutionary, and republican souvenirs has been almost neglected. Indeed, few of the original thirteen States can be compared with New Jersey in the number and importance of its landmarks. Her society, too, was as intellectual as that which sprang from the rocks of Puritanism, and it formed a brilliant pageant, rivalling the glittering line of the cavaliers. There is scarcely an acre of soil in the northern part of the State not once pressed by the foot of the Revolutionary soldier, and there are few of the many hundreds of dwellings which have survived the march of a century that did not shelter at one time or another some of the heroes of ‘76, or the colonial dames and daughters who played scarcely less potent parts in the drama of our struggle for freedom. This is the only book to tell the true story of the old houses of New Jersey, and such a record possesses deep significance for every American, as it has much more than a local or State interest.Of the glowing and passionate pictures of early days little more than the frames and the sentiment lingering about them now remain. It has been the author’s pleasure to fill in the frames with the portraits and the scenes that history and tradition, as contained in family recollection, in unpublished letters, and in local records suggest. Anecdote and gossip have supplied him with many a side-light on the great figures and their stirring times, and their chronicler will be satisfied if his story shall make more real the facts with which fancy delights to play.”Frontier Defence on the Upper Ohio, 1777-1778
Par Reuben Gold Thwaites. 2023
But the barbaric enemy facing the frontier differed greatly from the well-equipped, well-drilled professional army from Europe that confronted the…
armed men of the tidewater. The stealthy foes of the border aimed their heaviest blows at the homes, wives, and children of the settlers; no life was safe from them, no person secure. Through long and bitter experience, the backwoodsmen had come to understand the art of defense by concentration within neighborhood blockhouses and log forts. But a new danger presented itself. The Indians were now guided and stimulated by the nation’s white enemies, so that to their native cunning were added the superior intelligence and more astute methods of the English. The situation soon became desperate.The British authorities at Detroit were especially active in urging the Indians to war against the Americans. Permissory orders to that effect were received by Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton early in June, 1777. With consummate skill he roused the barbarians to frenzy; under his stimulus they prepared to hurl themselves upon the American frontier. The invading parties were provided by Hamilton with proclamations prepared both by Governor Carleton and himself, calling on the Western inhabitants to submit to King George and take refuge within the British posts, where a land bounty would be given them for loyal service. This project was adroitly devised to mingle terror and mercy, in the hope that the colonists’ rebellion would speedily be crushed on the Western borders; and that the Easterners, finding themselves between two fires, would be obliged to yield. The effect of these proclamations, scattered by Indian raiders throughout the American backwoods settlements, was considerable. In some cases they were suppressed by American officers, but the Loyalist disaffection in the trans-Alleghany is largely attributable to this source.The Civil War Letters of David R. Garrette,: Detailing the Adventures of the 6th Texas Cavalry, 1861-1865
Par David R. Garrette. 2023
With annotations and background information from the great grandson of David Garrett, this book details the adventures of the 6th…
Texas Cavalry (1861-1865) during the Civil War. It contributes to the soldier's viewpoint of the war; though beset by incredible hardships that soldier yet managed to find time to write the folks back home. The book includes a facsimile letter as well as maps, historic photographic images and genealogical information.Sibley's New Mexico Campaign
Par Martin Hardwick Hall. 2023
This long out-of-print and hard-to-find classic tells the story of the Texas invasion of New Mexico during the American Civil…
War. In early 1862, Confederate General Henry Hopkins Sibley marched thirty-four hundred coarse Texas farmboys, cowhands, and frontiersmen into New Mexico and up the Rio Grande Valley. Although seriously bloodied, they repulsed Union troops at the Battle of Valverde. As the poorly supplied Texans pushed northward, New Mexicans stripped the land bare of food, fodder, and livestock. East of Santa Fe at Glorieta, Union volunteers defeated Sibley's Confederates and burned their quartermaster trains, and the starving Texans retreated back down the Rio Grande to El Paso.-Print ed.The Story of Wisconsin
Par Reuben Gold Thwaites. 2023
This is a short history that profiles the Badger State, which became part of the U.S. in 1848 but had…
settlements decades earlier. It also looks at the Native American history of the state.“Reuben Gold Thwaites (1853-1913) was a librarian, historian and editor. He attended public schools, and, after moving to Oshkosh in 1866, put himself through a "college course" while teaching school and working on local farms. He worked for a time on various newspapers in the Oshkosh area, and in 1874 enrolled in Yale University as a graduate student in history and economics.Returning to Wisconsin two years later, Thwaites settled in Madison, where he served for a time as managing editor of the Wisconsin State Journal. In 1885 he became assistant to Lyman C. Draper (q.v.), corresponding secretary of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, and when Draper retired in Jan., 1887, Thwaites succeeded him as executive officer of the Society; he served in this capacity from 1887 until his death. His energy in historical undertakings, and his ability as an administrator made the Society one of the leading organizations of its kind in the country, and made Thwaites "the best known non-political man in Wisconsin."Thwaites' own scholarly reputation rested primarily upon his skill as an editor of historical documents. Among the more important projects completed by Thwaites and his corps of assistants during his years with the Society were The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (73 vols.), Lewis and Clark Journals (8 vols.), Early Western Travels (32 vols.), and Collections of the State Historical Society (vols. 11-20).”-Wisconsin Hist.Dear Mom and Dad: A Letter About Family, Memory, and the America We Once Knew
Par Patti Davis. 2024
A remarkably poignant writer for our troubled times, Patti Davis writes about love, loss, and the power of redemption in…
this poetic letter to her long-gone parents. Written with dignity and grace in the form of a letter to her parents, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Dear Mom and Dad is that surprisingly poignant work that succeeds not only as a memoir but as a moving account that will inspire readers to recall their own childhoods in a totally new light. Eager to retell the narrative of her own family and her coming-of-age, Patti Davis casts aside misperceptions that defined her in the past. Far from being the enfant terrible, Dear Mom and Dad reveals young Patti as a sensitive child, who was not able to be the public person her family demanded. Just as she re-examines her own role in an increasingly dysfunctional family drama, Davis casts an empathetic yet honest eye on her parents—on her father, the eternal lifeguard, who saved seventy-seven people, yet failed to create a coherent AIDS policy, and her mother, who never escaped her own tortured youth. What comes across are Davis’s burnished skills as a writer, something she always dreamed of becoming. Even as she unravels her mother’s highly edited persona, and her father’s loving but distant personality, Davis remains steadfast in her artistic expression, as she melds irony, comedy, and tragedy with dreamlike memories of an ever-present past. Dear Mom and Dad, with its account of her father’s Alzheimer's and her mother’s end-of-life struggles, becomes an account of forgiveness, reaching levels of redemption rarely found in contemporary memoirs.Her Right Foot
Par Dave Eggers. 2017
If you had to name a statue, any statue, odds are good you'd mention the Statue of Liberty. Have you…
seen her?She's in New York. She's holding a torch. And she's taking one step forward. But why?In this fascinating, fun take on nonfiction, uniquely American in its frank tone and honest look at the literal foundation of our country, Dave Eggers and Shawn Harris investigate a seemingly small trait of America's most emblematic statue. What they find is about more than history, more than art. What they find in the Statue of Liberty's right foot is the powerful message of acceptance that is essential to an entire country's creation. Can you believe that? Plus, this is the fixed format version, which looks almost identical to the print edition.A Wall Is Just a Wall: The Permeability of the Prison in the Twentieth-Century United States
Par Reiko Hillyer. 2024
Throughout the twentieth century, even the harshest prison systems in the United States were rather porous. Incarcerated people were regularly…
released from prison for Christmas holidays; the wives of incarcerated men could visit for seventy-two hours relatively unsupervised; and governors routinely commuted the sentences of people convicted of murder. By the 1990s, these practices had become rarer as politicians and the media—in contrast to corrections officials—described the public as potential victims who required constant protection against the threat of violence. In A Wall Is Just a Wall Reiko Hillyer focuses on gubernatorial clemency, furlough, and conjugal visits to examine the origins and decline of practices that allowed incarcerated people to transcend prison boundaries. Illuminating prisoners’ lived experiences as they suffered, critiqued, survived, and resisted changing penal practices, she shows that the current impermeability of the prison is a recent, uneven, and contested phenomenon. By tracking the “thickening” of prison walls, Hillyer historicizes changing ideas of risk, the growing bipartisan acceptance of permanent exile and fixing the convicted at the moment of their crime as a form of punishment, and prisoners’ efforts to resist.Washington on Foot, Sixth Edition Revised and Expanded
Par William Bonstra, Judith Meany. 2024
An essential walking tour guide to one of the most walkable and historic cities in the US, perfect for first-time…
visitors and longtime residents alikeThis updated 6th edition of the perennial favorite Washington on Foot features 24 user-friendly maps, including new content on the Wharf, the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, H Street NE, and the Brookland/Catholic University neighborhood. With architectural illustrations and fascinating information on the city's history and culture, Washington on Foot makes touring DC (and its neighboring Old Town Alexandria and Takoma Park) easy, entertaining, and educational. The book guides readers on how to best appreciate all the city has to offer, from familiar monuments and museums to hidden gems and lesser-known historic sites and neighborhoods. Some exciting stops include: The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception US Botanic Garden Dumbarton Oaks National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden Friendship Firehouse Mexican Cultural Institute Old Georgetown Incinerator U Street NW There's no better way to experience the history and culture of the nation's capital than to walk through it and catch details you might miss otherwise. Washington on Foot highlights those details, large and small, to make for an unbeatable DC experience.A fascinating examination of what &“the pursuit of happiness&” meant to our nation&’s Founders and how that famous phrase defined…
their lives and became the foundation of our democracy.The Declaration of Independence identified &“the pursuit of happiness&” as one of our unalienable rights, along with life and liberty. Jeffrey Rosen, the president of the National Constitution Center, profiles six of the most influential founders—Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton—to show what pursuing happiness meant in their lives. By reading the classical Greek and Roman moral philosophers who inspired the Founders, Rosen shows us how they understood the pursuit of happiness as a quest for being good, not feeling good—the pursuit of lifelong virtue, not short-term pleasure. Among those virtues were the habits of industry, temperance, moderation, and sincerity, which the Founders viewed as part of a daily struggle for self-improvement, character development, and calm self-mastery. They believed that political self-government required personal self-government. For all six Founders, the pursuit of virtue was incompatible with enslavement of African Americans, although the Virginians betrayed their own principles. The Pursuit of Happiness is more than an elucidation of the Declaration&’s famous phrase; it is a revelatory journey into the minds of the Founders, and a deep, rich, and fresh understanding of the foundation of our democracy.The Search for Reagan: The Appealing Intellectual Conservatism of Ronald Reagan
Par Craig Shirley. 2024
Never before has anyone explored the mind, soul, and heart of Ronald Reagan. The Search for Reagan explores the challenges…
and controversies in Reagan&’s life and how he successfully dealt with each, depicting a man who was never as conservative as some conservatives wanted him to be, but rather as conservative as he was comfortable being—a man who wanted to win on his own terms and integrity.Ronald Reagan was a singularly unique man and conservative who championed a wildly successful revolution—leading to more freedom and less government for the American people and to the fall of communism, while boosting American morale, which had been his three big goals. He was the first president in many years who believed optimism from the Oval Office had a direct bearing on the affairs of the nation. As a consequence, he left office more popular than when he entered with a whopping 73 percent approval. He is beloved even today as his presidential library is visited far more than any other presidential library, by more than five million people each year. He understood that American conservatism was based upon the individual and not the group. He is still regarded as one of the most admired men in America. The range of Reagan scholarship by virtue of books sold about him continues to grow. In his presidency, he solved the mystery of high inflation that had bedeviled his predecessor, high interest rates, and high gas prices. He created over twenty million new jobs, and the number of American millionares grew from 4,414 to 34,944. He quite literally changed our world for the better and is considered by most historians to be one of our four greatest presidents, along with George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt.Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration
Par Harold Holzer. 2024
From acclaimed Abraham Lincoln historian Harold Holzer, a groundbreaking account of Lincoln&’s grappling with the politics of immigration against the…
backdrop of the Civil War.In the three decades before the Civil War, some ten million foreign-born people settled in the United States, forever altering the nation&’s demographics, culture, and—perhaps most significantly—voting patterns. America&’s newest residents fueled the national economy, but they also wrought enormous changes in the political landscape and exposed an ugly, at times violent, vein of nativist bigotry.Abraham Lincoln&’s rise ran parallel to this turmoil; even Lincoln himself did not always rise above it. Tensions over immigration would split and ultimately destroy Lincoln&’s Whig Party years before the Civil War. Yet the war made clear just how important immigrants were, and how interwoven they had become in American society.Harold Holzer, winner of the Lincoln Prize, charts Lincoln&’s political career through the lens of immigration, from his role as a member of an increasingly nativist political party to his evolution into an immigration champion, a progression that would come at the same time as he refined his views on abolition and Black citizenship. As Holzer writes, &“The Civil War could not have been won without Lincoln&’s leadership; but it could not have been fought without the immigrant soldiers who served and, by the tens of thousands, died that the &‘nation might live.&’&” An utterly captivating and illuminating work, Brought Forth on This Continent assesses Lincoln's life and legacy in a wholly original way, unveiling remarkable similarities between the nineteenth century and the twenty-first.For two Americans in Saigon in 1963, the personal and the political combine to spark the drama of a lifetime…
Before it spread into a tragic war that defined a generation, the conflict in Vietnam smoldered as a guerrilla insurgency and a diplomatic nightmare. Into this volatile country stepped Frederick &“Fritz&” Nolting, the US ambassador, and his second-in-command, William &“Bill&” Trueheart, immortalized in David Halberstam&’s landmark work The Best and the Brightest and accidental players in a pivotal juncture in modern US history.Diplomats at War is a personal memoir by former Washington Post reporter Charles Trueheart—Bill&’s son and Nolting&’s godson—who grew up amid the events that traumatized two families and an entire nation. The book embeds the reader at the US embassy and dissects the fateful rift between Nolting and Trueheart over their divergent assessments of the South Vietnamese regime under Ngo Dinh Diem, who would ultimately be assassinated in a coup backed by the United States. Charles Trueheart retells the story of the United States&’ headlong plunge into war from an entirely new vantage point—that of a son piecing together how his father and godfather participated in, and were deeply damaged by, this historic flashpoint. Their critical rupture, which also destroyed their close friendship, served as a dramatic preface to the United States&’ disastrous involvement in the Vietnam conflict.How to Steal a Presidential Election
Par Lawrence Lessig, Matthew Seligman. 2024
From two distinguished experts on election law, an alarming look at how the American presidency could be stolen—by entirely legal…
means Even in the fast and loose world of the Trump White House, the idea that a couple thousand disorganized protestors storming the U.S. Capitol might actually prevent a presidential succession was farfetched. Yet perfectly legal ways of overturning election results actually do exist, and they would allow a political party to install its own candidate in place of the true winner. Lawrence Lessig and Matthew Seligman work through every option available for subverting a presumptively legitimate result—from vice-presidential intervention to election decertification and beyond. While many strategies would never pass constitutional muster, Lessig and Seligman explain how some might. They expose correctable weaknesses in the system, including one that could be corrected only by the Supreme Court. Any strategy aimed at hacking a presidential election is a threat to democracy. This book is a clarion call to shore up the insecure system for electing the president before American democracy is forever compromised.A Home Away from Home: Mutual Aid, Political Activism, and Caribbean American Identity
Par Tyesha Maddox. 2024
A Home Away from Home examines the significance of Caribbean American mutual aid societies and benevolent associations to the immigrant…
experience, particularly their implications for the formation of a Pan-Caribbean American identity and Black diasporic politics.At the turn of the twentieth century, New York City exploded with the establishment of mutual aid societies and benevolent associations. Caribbean immigrants, especially women, eager to find their place in a bustling new world, created these organizations, including the West Indian Benevolent Association of New York City, founded in 1884. They served as forums for discussions on Caribbean American affairs, hosted cultural activities, and provided newly arrived immigrants with various forms of support, including job and housing assistance, rotating lines of credit, help in the naturalization process, and its most popular function—sickness and burial assistance. In examining the number of these organizations, their membership, and the functions they served, Tyesha Maddox argues that mutual aid societies not only fostered a collective West Indian ethnic identity among immigrants from specific islands, but also strengthened kinship networks with those back home in the Caribbean. Especially important to these processes were Caribbean women such as Elizabeth Hendrickson, co-founder of the American West Indian Ladies’ Aid Society in 1915 and the Harlem Tenants’ League in 1928.Immigrant involvement in mutual aid societies also strengthened the belief that their own fate was closely intertwined with the social, economic, and political welfare of the Black international community. A Home Away from Home demonstrates how Caribbean American mutual aid societies and benevolent associations in many ways became proto-Pan-Africanist organizations.A Quilted Life: Reflections of a Sharecropper's Daughter
Par Catherine Meeks. 2024
Catherine Meeks shares the wisdom she has garnered over the journey of her life, from her father&’s sharecropping fields to…
the academy and beyond. Today, Catherine Meeks is a national leader of racial healing and an esteemed retired professor of African American studies. But being a Black woman in America can be difficult. Join Meeks as she describes the adventures and adversity she encountered on her path to becoming an empowered voice for change. Growing up in Arkansas under the terror of Jim Crow, Meeks learned firsthand about injustice and the desperation it causes. But with the support of her family, she moved to LA to study at Pepperdine. When a Black teenager was killed by a campus security guard, Meeks awakened to her prophetic voice, and a local women&’s group gave her hope that racial reconciliation was possible. She later led a group of students to West Africa, where she met her husband. Yet her years-long battle with rheumatoid arthritis severed their relationship, leaving her a single mother. Meanwhile, she worked tirelessly at Mercer University to expand the African American studies program, all while earning her MSW and PhD. Quilting together these memories—bitter and sweet, traumatic and triumphant—Meeks shares her hard-earned wisdom: Learn how to discern the Creator&’s work. Listen to the voice saying &“yes&” to opportunity. Become a wounded healer. Know when to practice silence and when to speak out. Readers will leave the pages of A Quilted Life enriched by Meeks&’s unique perspective and insight.The Essential Writings of Robert A. Hill
Par Adam Ewing. 2024
Collected for the first time, the foundational contributions of a scholar and activist who shaped the study of Garveyism and…
pan-Africanism This volume brings together Robert A. Hill’s most important writings for the first time, highlighting his intellectual contributions to the history of pan-Africanism. A pioneering scholar and activist, a groundbreaking builder of pan-African archives, and the editor of the multivolume Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Hill remains underacknowledged for his influence on the field. This collection is a long-overdue testament to his legacy. Adam Ewing showcases Hill’s groundbreaking writings on Garveyism, the pan-African, anticolonial movement that spread across the globe following World War I. Hill’s essays trace Marcus Garvey’s evolving thought and illuminate the resonance of the movement in the Caribbean and its diaspora, in the United States, and across sub-Saharan Africa. The volume also includes Hill’s writings on diverse aspects of pan-Africanism, including the impostor figure in diaspora history, Cyril Briggs’s African Blood Brotherhood, the Rastafarian movement, the fiction of George Schuyler, George Beckford and the Abeng collective in Jamaica, the theories of Walter Rodney, the life and thought of C.L.R. James, and the music of Bob Marley. This volume not only demonstrates Hill’s intellectual praxis and its roots in his academic influences and personal experiences but also reveals the breadth, diversity, complexity, and centrality of the pan-African tradition in African diasporic politics and thought. Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.&“No journalist knows more about toxic chemicals in the workplace than Jim Morris. The Cancer Factory is the crowning achievement of his…
estimable career spent walking fence lines, factory floors, and doctor&’s offices.&”—Dan Fagin, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Toms River&“The Cancer Factory could not come at a better time, as we reckon with how our bodies pay the price for our nation&’s toxic history and as today&’s workers fight not for only their rights but for their very lives.… A powerful and essential read.&”—Anna Clark, author of The Poisoned CityThe story of a group of Goodyear Tire and Rubber workers fatally exposed to toxic chemicals, the lawyer who sought justice on their behalf, and the shameful lack of protection our society affords all workersWorking at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company chemical plant in Niagara Falls, New York, was considered a good job. It was the kind of industrial manufacturing job that allowed blue-collar workers to thrive in the latter half of the 20th century—that allowed them to buy their own home, and maybe a small boat for the lake.But it was also the kind of job that exposed you to toxic chemicals and offered little to no protection from them, either in the way of protective gear or adequate ventilation. Eventually, it was a job that gave you bladder cancer.The Cancer Factory tells the story of the workers who experienced one of the nation&’s worst, and best-documented, outbreaks of work-related cancer, and the lawyer who has represented the bladder-cancer victims at the plant for more than 30 years. Goodyear, and its chemical supplier, DuPont, knew that two of the chemicals used in the plant had been shown to cause cancer, but made little effort to protect the plant&’s workers until the cluster of cancer cases—and deaths—was undeniable.In doing so it tells a broader story of corporate malfeasance and governmental neglect. Workers have only weak protections from exposure to toxic substances in America, and regulatory breaches contribute to an estimated 95,000 deaths from occupational illness each year. Based on 4 decades of reporting and delving deeply into the scientific literature about toxic substances and health risks, the arcana of worker regulations, and reality of loose enforcement, The Cancer Factory exposes the terrible health risks too many workers face.This amazing true story of America&’s first Black generals, Benjamin O. Davis Sr. and Jr., a father and son who…
helped integrate the American military and created the Tuskegee Airmen, is &“the book Black America needs in this moment&” (Eboni K. Williams, lawyer and cohost of State of the Culture).Red Tails, George Lucas&’s celebration of America&’s first Black flying squadron, the Tuskegee Airmen, should have been a moment of victory for Doug Melville. He expected to see his great-uncle Benjamin O. Davis Jr.—the squadron&’s commander—immortalized on-screen for his selfless contributions to America. But as the film rolled, Doug was shocked when he realized that Ben Jr.&’s name had been omitted and replaced by the fictional Colonel A. J. Bullard. And Ben&’s father, Benjamin O. Davis Sr., America&’s first Black general who helped integrate the military, was left out completely. Dejected, Doug looked inward and realized that unless he worked to bring their inspirational story to light, it would remain hidden from the world just as it had been concealed from him. In this &“thoughtful, highly readable blend of family and military history&” (Kirkus Reviews), Melville shares his quest to rediscover his family&’s story across five generations, from post-Civil War America to modern day Asia and Europe. In life, the Davises were denied the recognition and compensation they&’d earned, but through his journey, Melville uncovers something greater: that dedication and self-sacrifice can move proverbial mountains—even in a world determined to make you invisible. Invisible Generals recounts the lives of a father and his son who always maintained their belief in the American dream. As the inheritor of their legacy, Melville retraces their steps, advocates for them to receive their long-overdue honors and unlocks the potential we all hold to retrieve powerful family stories lost to the past.