Modern States

In 1893, the 27.5 million visitors to the Chicago World’s Fair feasted their eyes on the impressive architecture of the White City, lit at night by thousands of electric lights. In addition to marveling at the revolutionary exhibits, most visitors discovered something else: beyond the fair’s 633 acres lay a modern metropolis that rivaled the world’s greatest cities. The Columbian Exposition marked Chicago’s arrival on the world stage, but even without the splendor of the fair, 1893 would still have been Chicago’s greatest year.

In Mavericks, Money and Men, football historian Charles Ross chronicles the AFL's key events, including Buck Buchanan becoming the first overall draft pick in 1963, and the 1965 boycott led by black players who refused to play in the AFL All Star game after experiencing blatant racism. He also recounts how the success of the AFL forced a merger with the NFL in 1969, which arguably facilitated the evolution of modern professional football.

Driven by eyewitness accounts and combining urban history with a life-and-death drama and a technological detective story, Floodpath grippingly reanimates the reality behind LA noir fictions like the classic film Chinatown. In an era of climate change, increasing demand on water resources, and a neglected American infrastructure, the tragedy of the St. Francis Dam has never been more relevant.

Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th president of the United States of America, serving from 1981 to 1989. He was the Republican political party's 33rd governor of California from 1967 to 1975, following a profession as a Hollywood star and labor organizer. Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois, to a low-income family. In the year 1932, he finished from Eureka College and went to work in Iowa as a radio sports analyst.

Much is misunderstood about the man who bequeathed us with a framework of what it means to be free and live in a democracy. As a Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson was instrumental in defining and disseminating what it meant to be an American before an America existed. Washington may have won the battles on the field, but Jefferson won the battles in our hearts. That is why he is still fondly remembered and cherished. To understand America, one has to understand Jefferson. It is a course in citizenship.

In August 1969, two teenage Ojibwe cousins, Sher and Kris, leave their Northern Minnesota reservation for the lights of Minneapolis. The girls arrive in the city with only $12, their grandfather's WWII pack, two stainless steel cups, some face makeup, gum, and a lighter. But it's the ancestral connections they are also carrying—to the land and trees, to their family and culture, to love and loss—that shape their journey most. As they search for work, they cross paths with a gay Jewish boy, homeless White and Indian women, and men on the prowl for runaways.

During the last three decades of the 20th century, evangelical leaders and conservative politicians developed a political agenda that thrust "family values" onto the nation's consciousness. The family values agenda created a bond between evangelicalism and political conservatism. Family Values and the Rise of the Christian Right chronicles how the family values agenda became so powerful in American political life and why it appealed to conservative evangelical Christians.

No two men are more synonymous with what it means to be “American”. From leading the Continental Army in the battle for American Independence and being the first president of the United States to the writer of the Declaration of Independence and one of the most popular leaders in American History, these two embody what it means to be free. In this two-book set, you'll learn not only what made them American legends, but also what shaped their early years and made them who they were.