Local History

For John Nance “Cactus Jack” Garner, there was one simple rule in politics: “You’ve got to bloody your knuckles.” It’s a maxim that applies in so many ways to the state of Texas, where the struggle for power has often unfolded through underhanded politicking, backroom dealings, and, quite literally, bloodshed. The contentious history of Texas politics has been shaped by dangerous and often violent events, and been formed not just in the halls of power but by marginalized voices omitted from the official narratives.

An old farmer boasts that he has used the same ax his whole life -- he's only had to replace the handle three times and the head twice. In an eclectic, insightful meditation on the powerful impulse to preserve and restore, Howard Mansfield explores the myriad ways in which we attempt to reconnect with and recover the past -- to use the same ax twice.

Most Holocaust survivors who came to the US after WWII settled in big cities, but some chose an alternative way of life on American farms. More of these accidental farmers wound up raising chickens in southern New Jersey than anywhere else. Speaking Yiddish to Chickens is the first book to chronicle this chapter in American Jewish history when these refugees—including the author's grandparents—found an unlikely gateway to new lives in the US on poultry farms.

Gunflint Burning is a comprehensive account of the dramatic events around the Ham Lake fire of 2007, one of the largest wildfires in Minnesota history. In sharp detail, Cary J. Griffith describes the key events of the fire as they unfold, transporting listeners to the front lines of an epic struggle that was at times heroic, tragic, and sublime.

Bartho deftly provides a new perspective on Reagan's political career and the Republican Party of the Reagan era while detailing the often-rancorous philosophical differences between Reaganism and southern conservatism and the resulting political conflicts. Whistling Dixie highlights a divide in the Republican Party and in American conservatism that has often been overlooked-a divide that laid the foundations for the GOP's southernization and ultimately led to the rise of Donald Trump.

In Old Man River, Paul Schneider tells the story of the river at the center of America's rich history - the Mississippi. Some fifteen thousand years ago, the majestic river provided Paleolithic humans with the routes by which early man began to explore the continent's interior. Since then, the river has been the site of historical significance, from the arrival of Spanish and French explorers in the 16th century to the Civil War. George Washington fought his first battle near the river, and Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman both came to President Lincoln's attention after their spectacular victories on the lower Mississippi.

What happened in Kirven, Texas, in May 1922, has been forgotten by the outside world. It was a coworker's whispered words, "Kirven is where they burned the [Negroes]", that set Monte Akers to work at discovering the true story behind a young white woman's brutal murder and the burning alive of three black men who were almost certainly innocent of it. This was followed by a month-long reign of terror as white men killed blacks while local authorities concealed the real identity of the white probable murderers and allowed them to go free.

When Kristin L. Hoganson arrived in Champaign, Illinois, after teaching at Harvard, studying at Yale, and living in the DC metro area with various stints overseas, she expected to find her new home, well, isolated. Even provincial. After all, she had landed in the American heartland, a place where the nation's identity exists in its pristine form. Or so we have been taught to believe.

Heroes and rascals...shipwrecks and lost gold... Since 2008, the Offbeat Oregon History syndicated newspaper column has entertained and informed Oregonians with the weirdest, quirkiest, funniest, and most outrageous true stories in the surprisingly long history of their young state. Now, for the first time, those stories have been collected together, re-researched, augmented with freshly discovered information, and presented to listeners in audiobook form.

Big Timber, Montana is one of the windiest towns in one of the windiest states in the country. Arctic chinooks and slashing westerlies howl down from the Crazy Mountains like a pack of coyotes. Most locals learn to live with the wind. Rick Jarrett sought his fortune in it. Like his pioneer ancestors who staked their claims in the Treasure State, he believed in his right to make a living off the land—and a newly precious resource, its million-dollar wind. The trouble was, Jarrett’s neighbors were some of the wealthiest and most well-connected men in America.

Few cities are so dramatically identified with their environment as San Francisco—the landscape of hills, the expansive bay, the engulfing fog, and even the deadly fault line shifting below. Yet most residents think of the city itself as separate from the natural environment on which it depends. In Our Better Nature, Philip J. Dreyfus recounts the history of San Francisco from Indian village to world-class metropolis, focusing on the interactions between the city and the land and on the generations of people who have transformed them both.

Decades of cuts to local government amidst rising concentrations of poverty have wreaked havoc on communities left behind by the modern economy. Forty years after the anti-tax revolution began protecting wealthy taxpayers and their cities, our high-poverty cities and counties have run out of services to cut, properties to sell, bills to defer, and risky loans to take. In The Fight to Save the Town, urban law expert and author Michelle Wilde Anderson offers unsparing, humanistic portraits of the hardships left behind in four such places.

Texas may well be America’s most controversial state. Evangelicals dominate the halls of power, millions of its people live in poverty, and its death row is the busiest in the country. Skeptical outsiders have found much to be offended by in the state’s politics and attitude, and yet, according to journalist and Texan Erica Grieder, the United States has a great deal to learn from Texas. In Big, Hot, Cheap, and Right, Grieder traces the political history of a state that was always larger than life. From its rowdy beginnings, Texas has combined a long-standing suspicion of government intrusion with a passion for business.

Anthony Bourdain chases the fumigation truck in Bergen County, New Jersey. Dave Eggers tells it straight: Illinois is Number 1. Louise Erdrich loses her bikini top in North Dakota. Jonathan Franzen gets waylaid by New York's publicist...and personal attorney...and historian...and geologist. John Hodgman explains why there is no such thing as a "Massachusettsean."

11. september 2001 forsvandt tvillingetårnene i New York sammen med verden, som vi kendte den. En ny global tidsalder begyndte: krigen mod terror. Siden da har Danmark og resten af Vesten jagtet jihadister på tværs af kloden – fra Tora Bora i Afghanistan til Brabrand i Østjylland.

This book tells the story of a time when society was divided and Harvard was becoming what it is today. It is not an exhaustive biography, but it has family information which puts things in perspective, and tells how he and Mather, who were about the same age, lived through the Salem witch trials. Leverett was busy writing logic textbooks in Latin at the time, but didn't dare speak out against the leader of the colony.

This book includes new heartbreaking stories, such as the seven canyoneers in 2015 who all died in a flash flood in Keyhole Canyon, two separate BASE jumping deaths, rock climbing, and flash flood deaths in the Narrows. Zion National Park is home to majestic and wondrous canyons, cliffs, crags, mesas, rivers, and slot canyons. World travelers remain in awe as they drive, walk, hike, and climb into such a unique place that is filled with vibrant, sacred, and mystical energy.

Die Brandstifter zeichnet die Geschichte der Republikanischen Partei nach und stellt ihre wichtigsten Akteure vor. Dabei wird deutlich, wie porös die Brandmauer zwischen Rechtsextremismus und Konservatismus in den USA schon immer war, nicht erst seit Trump. Brockschmidt erzählt packend, wie historische Entwicklungen und Machtkämpfe die Partei geprägt und radikalisiert haben – und warum das Ergebnis der Präsidentschaftswahl 2024 nicht nur für die USA von entscheidender Bedeutung sein wird.

When both levees and governments failed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, an organization calling itself the Common Ground Collective formed to become the largest anarchist inspired organization in modern US history. In solidarity with people in New Orleans, Common Ground built medical clinics, distributed aid, formed neighborhood assemblies and created food security through community gardens. The group also defied unjust laws by resisting home demolitions, and defended communities from white militias and police brutality.

Steel City is the story of the 1890s golden age of Pittsburgh when its technological innovations and wealth creation made it the Silicon Valley of its day. Pittsburgh was first in steel, food processing, and electricity, and the leaders of those industries—Carnegie, Frick, Heinz, and Westinghouse—are names we still know today.