Town Histories

From one of the bestselling western novelists of all time, comes another classic story. Templeton Lambeth had so desperately wanted a son - an heir to ride by his side through the vast, wild ranges just west of the Pecos River. But to his disappointment, his wife bore a girl. His hopes crushed and in denial, he decides to raise his daughter as if she were a boy. In honor of Lambeth's more successful brother, they named her: Terrill.

Clarkston, Georgia, was a typical Southern town until it was designated a refugee settlement center in the 1990s, becoming the first American home for scores of families in flight from the world's war zones; from Liberia and Sudan to Iraq and Afghanistan. Suddenly Clarkston's streets were filled with women wearing the hijab, the smells of cumin and curry, and kids of all colors playing soccer in any open space they could find.

Often overshadowed by San Francisco, its larger and more glamorous twin, Oakland has a fascinating history of its own. From serving as a major transportation hub to forging a dynamic manufacturing sector, by the mid-twentieth century Oakland had become the urban center of the East Bay. Hella Town focuses on how political deals, economic schemes, and technological innovations fueled this emergence but also seeded the city's postwar struggles.

A genteel Border South town not far from the nation’s capital is shaken by a series of vicious slayings at historic sites. These include a Civil War cemetery for escaped slaves; a burial mound of Confederate soldiers; a church associated with George Washington; and a museum on the Antebellum Era. At the same time, violent break-ins take place at venerable banks and townhomes connected with the lives of Washington, Robert E. Lee, and civil rights figures.

The Anchor Hocking Glass Company, once the world's largest maker of glass tableware, was the base on which Lancaster's society was built. As Glass House unfolds, bankruptcy looms. With access to the company and its leaders, and Lancaster's citizens, Alexander shows how financial engineering took hold in the 1980s, accelerated in the 21st century, and wrecked the company.

Whether you call Cape Cod a man-made island or describe it as a geographic peninsula connected to the mainland by bridges, there is one non-debatable fact. Cape Cod is surrounded by water on all four sides, jutting out prominently into the Atlantic Ocean. This characteristic accounts in large measure for its history, its economic development, its aesthetic beauty, and its maritime legacy.

Andrea Wint’s life in the small town of Port Inez, Washington, is a simple one. She works, enjoys the gorgeous view from her bay window, and visits her dad at the memory-care facility. Her father is in the late stages of Alzheimer’s, but Andrea brings in one coin from his valuable collection every day—little bits of precious metals that seem to bring him back to himself, even if just for a few moments. So when Andrea’s house is burgled and the coins disappear, she’s bereft.

Statues and Storms offers a gripping insider’s account of Max Price’s tenure as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Town during a transformative period in South African higher education. In the wake of the Rhodes Must Fall protests, universities across the country were engulfed in sustained and often violent demonstrations, challenging institutional cultures and sparking a global movement. This book provides a unique perspective on the protests, delving into the reasons behind the decolonizing movement’s emergence at liberal universities two decades after the democratic transition.

In January of 1950, Mary Church Terrell, an 86-year-old charter member of the NAACP, headed into Thompson’s Restaurant, just a few blocks from the White House, and requested to be served. She and her companions were informed by the manager that they could not eat in his establishment, because they were “colored.” Terrell, a former suffragette and one of the country’s first college-educated African-American women, took the matter to court. Three years later, the Supreme Court vindicated her outrage: District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co., Inc. was decided in 1953.

It's March 2022 and Russian tanks are roaring across the vast, snow-dusted fields of Ukraine. Their destination: Voznesensk, a town with a small bridge that could change the course of the war. The heavily armed Russians are expecting an easy fight - or no fight at all. After all, Voznesensk is a quiet farming town, full of pensioners. But the locals appear to have other ideas. A gripping work of reportage that tells the story of a pivotal moment in Ukraine's war, this is a real-life thriller about ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances with resilience, humour and ingenuity.

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.

Historic quarters in cities and towns across the middle of Europe were devastated during the Second World War—some, like those of Warsaw and Frankfurt, had to be rebuilt almost completely. They are now centers of peace and civility that attract millions of tourists, but the stories they tell about places, peoples, and nations are selective. They are never the whole story. Exploring seven old towns, from Frankfurt and Prague to Vilnius in Lithuania, Marek Kohn examines how they have been used since the Second World War to conceal political tensions and reinforce certain versions of history.

Winsor Glanvil pays court to Louise Carney, heiress to a fortune, and she agrees to marry him. The marriage is opposed by big Jack Rutledge, a jealous rival and formidable foe, so Glanvil and Louise plan to be married in a sequestered valley by a local clergyman. Rutledge and his supporters, learning of the plan, arrive in the valley ahead of the two and seize Glanvil. Glanvil is beaten mercilessly and Rutledge disfigures him, destroying one side of his face with the cutting edge of a spur. Rutledge then rejoins his gang in the clergyman’s house.

During World War II, American soldiers from every city and walk of life rolled through North Platte, Nebraska, on troop trains, en route to Europe and the Pacific. The tiny town transformed its modest railroad depot into the North Platte Canteen, a place where soldiers could enjoy coffee, music, home-cooked food, magazines, and friendly conversation during a stopover that lasted only a few minutes.

In the fall of 1973, the Greek oil shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, husband of President John F. Kennedy's widow, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and arguably the richest man in the world, proposed to build an oil refinery on the New Hampshire coast, in the town of Durham. But three women vehemently opposed the project. Small Town, Big Oil is the story of how the residents of Durham, led by three women, out-organized, out-witted, and out-maneuvered the governor, media, and Onassis cartel to hand the powerful Greek billionaire the most humiliating defeat of his business career.

The area that became known as the Old Northwest caught the eye of European settlers as far back as the 17th century, when the French explorers Marquette and Jolliet found that waterways in the area connected the Mississippi River to the Great Lakes. The area was perfect for fur trade outposts before it was settled by whites. Throughout the 19th century, American settlers pushing across the Western frontier came into contact with diverse American tribes, producing a series of conflicts ranging from the Great Plains to the Southwest, and from the Trail of Tears to the Pacific Northwest.

From city streets to City Hall and to Midtown corporate offices, Saving Stuyvesant Town is the incredible true story of how one middle-class community defeated the largest residential real estate deal in American history.

School is out in the summer of 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee. For Frances Robinson, a 15-year-old daydreamer with a crush on her teacher, John T. Scopes, summer vacation promises tennis and Coca-Colas from her father's drug store. But when Frances' father, the school board chairman, has Scopes arrested for teaching evolution, the sleepiest place on earth becomes a hotbed for famous thinkers, including H.L. Mencken, Clarence Darrow, and William Jennings Bryan.

When the New Deal Came to Town is a snapshot of a time and place: Whiteland, Indiana during the Great Depression, one of the most fraught eras in American history. Imagine yourself transported back in time to April of 1933 and deposited in a small American town, when a young boy named George Melloan moved with his family to this quiet hamlet during the middle of the worst economic period in American history.

In April 1938, Swift River Valley residents held a farewell ball to mark the demise of the quintessential New England town of Enfield and its three smaller neighbors, Greenwich, Dana, and Prescott. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts sacrificed these three towns to build the Quabbin, a massive reservoir of drinking water for residents of Boston. Three prominent residents attended the somber occasion.