Best of
Local-History

2006

The Imagineering Field Guide to Epcot at Walt Disney World


Alex Wright - 2006
    Who better to tour you around the Disney parks than the Imagineers who created them?

Sex among the Rabble: An Intimate History of Gender and Power in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia, 1730-1830


Clare A. Lyons - 2006
    Lyons uncovers a world where runaway wives challenged their husbands' patriarchal rights and where serial and casual sexual relationships were commonplace. By reading popular representations of sex against actual behavior, Lyons reveals the clash of meanings given to sex and illuminates struggles to recast sexuality in order to eliminate its subversive potential. Sexuality became the vehicle for exploring currents of liberty, freedom, and individualism in the politics of everyday life among groups of early Americans typically excluded from formal systems of governance--women, African Americans, and poor classes of whites. Lyons shows that men and women created a vibrant urban pleasure culture, including the eroticization of print culture, as eighteenth-century readers became fascinated with stories of bastardy, prostitution, seduction, and adultery. In the post-Revolutionary reaction, white middle-class men asserted their authority, Lyons argues, by creating a gender system that simultaneously allowed them the liberty of their passions, constrained middle-class women with virtue, and projected licentiousness onto lower-class whites and African Americans.Lyons's analysis shows how class and racial divisions fostered new constructions of sexuality that served as a foundation for gender. This gendering of sexuality in the new nation was integral to reconstituting social hierarchies and subordinating women and African Americans in the wake of the Revolution.

There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945-1975


Jason Sokol - 2006
    Now, in his brilliant debut book, historian Jason Sokol explores the untold stories of ordinary people experiencing the tumultuous decades that forever altered the American landscape. So often historical accounts of the era have focused on the movement’s most dramatic moments and figures, and paid greatest attention to the brave steps taken by blacks to effect long-awaited change. In this riveting book, Sokol goes beyond the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, the 1960 student sit-ins, and the soul-stirring speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., and into the lives of middle- and working-class whites whose world was becoming unrecognizable to them. He takes us to New Orleans’s Ninth Ward, where, in 1960, a painful episode of school integration brought out the fiercest prejudices in some and made accidental radicals of others; to Ollie’s Barbecue in Birmingham and Pickrick Fried Chicken in Atlanta, and thousands of lunch counters in between, where “some white employees greeted black customers as though they had been patrons for years; others slammed doors in their faces; still more served them hesitantly and reluctantly.” There Goes My Everything traces the origins of the civil rights struggle from World War II, when some black and white American soldiers lived and fought side by side overseas (leading them to question Jim Crow at home), to the beginnings of change in the 1950s and the flared tensions of the 1960s, into the 1970s, when strongholds of white rule suddenly found themselves overtaken by rising black political power. Through it all, Sokol resists the easy categorization of whites caught in the torrent of change; rather, he gives us nuanced portraits of people resisting, embracing, and questioning the social revolution taking place around them. Drawing on recorded interviews, magazine bureau dispatches, and newspaper editorials, Sokol seamlessly weaves together historical analysis with firsthand accounts. Here are the stories of white southerners in their own words, presented without condescension or moral judgment. An unprecedented picture of one of the historic periods in twentieth-century America.

The 1930s House Explained


Trevor Yorke - 2006
    We find the intoxicating blend of rustication and detailed styling more appealing than the plain and synthetic houses of recent years. The house-building boom of the late 1920s and the 1930s put home ownership within the reach of many for the first time. These were families with modest means but with high aspirations. Modern flat roofed Art Deco villas grew up alongside detached and semidetached mock Tudor styles. Many had both front and rear gardens. Interiors were required to be fashionable and to take advantage of new domestic inventions like the wireless and vacuum cleaner. They were light, clean family homes that were both practical and sexy, blending into a suburban splendor. Metro land had arrived. Using his own drawings, diagrams and photographs, author Trevor Yorke explains in an easy to understand manner, all aspects of the 1930s house, but particularly its style. The book provides a definitive guide for those who are renovating, tracing the history of their own house, or simply interested in this notable and ever popular period. As with other titles in this series, The 1930s House Explained is profusely illustrated with drawings of the period details which can help date them and there is a glossary of the more unfamiliar architectural terms. Trevor Yorke lives on the edge of the Peak District and is a full-time artist and designer. His books include Tracing the History of Villages, The Country House Explained, The Victorian House Explained and The Edwardian House Explained.

Historical Atlas of Vancouver and the Lower Fraser Valley


Derek Hayes - 2006
    More than 370 original maps chart the region's development beginning with the years of discovery and exploration. They depict its days as a fledgling colonial outpost, its appearance on the world scene after the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway, through to its emergence as a post-war Pacific metropolis. Included are many fascinating plans for schemes that never got off the drawing board.This is the sixth in a series of critically acclaimed, award-winning historical atlases researched, written and designed by Derek Hayes. They include, most recently, a Historical Atlas of Canada and America Discovered: A Historical Atlas of North American Exploration.

Maine's Visible Black History: The First Chronicle of Its People


H.H. Price - 2006
    Indeed, Mainers of African descent served in every American conflict from the King Philip's War to the present. However, the many contributions of blacks in shaping Maine and the nation have, for a number of reasons, gone largely unacknowledged. Maine's Visible Black History now uncovers and reveals a rich and long-neglected strata of state history and proves a very real connection to regional and national events. Drawing on the excellent writing of contributors Herb Adams, William David Barry, Beverly Dodge Bowens, Stephen Ellis, Leigh Donaldson, Robert Greene, Douglas Hall, Charles L. Lumpkins, Reginald Pitts, Marcia Robinson, Geneva McAuley Sherrer, Helene Ertha Vann, and others, the project covers many facets of history including slavery in Maine (which lasted until 1783), work, religions, family, education, military service, community, social change, arts and science,

Researching Your Colonial New England Ancestors


Patricia Law Hatcher - 2006
    Family historians beginning the search for their ancestors from this period run into a similar adventure, as research in the colonial period presents a number of exciting challenges that genealogists may not have experienced before. This book is the key to facing those challenges. This new book, Researching Your Colonial New England Ancestors, leads genealogists to a time when their forebears were under the rule of the English crown, blazing their way in that uncharted territory. Patricia Law Hatcher, FASG, provides a rich image of the world in which those ancestors lived and details the records they left behind. With this book in hand, family historians will be ready to embark on a journey of their own, into the unexplored lines of their colonial past.

Birmingham Broadcasting


Tim Hollis - 2006
    The city's first radio station aired in 1922, and television arrived in 1949. Both media produced personalities who became household names in the city. Audiences came to know Joe Rumore, Tommy Charles, Country Boy Eddy, Cousin Cliff Holman, Rosemary, Pat Gray, Tom York, and many others as if they were members of their own families. Even the commercials became as memorable as the news, entertainment, talk, and children's shows they interrupted.

900 Miles from Nowhere: Voices from the Homestead Frontier


Steven R. Kinsella - 2006
    Traveling across oceans and continents, these hard-nosed, pragmatic people began arriving in the 1860s with shovels and plows, convinced they were part of something important. They were. Putting hand to plow and breaking the sod for their first crude homes, these hardy settlers left an indelible thumbprint on American history and on the country’s character. Though many of their ventures ended in failure, their risks permanently enhanced the nation’s diversity and its sense of independence and resourcefulness. 900 Miles from Nowhere is the heartfelt chronicle of the daily lives and personal struggles of Great Plains homesteaders, told in their own voices through many never-before-published letters, diaries, and photographs. Believing absolutely that they could control their own destiny, they bet everything they owned, even in the face of insurmountable obstacles. This is the remarkable and ever-inspiring story of life on the grasslands that stretch from Canada to Mexico.

Ferries of Puget Sound


Steven J. Pickens - 2006
    From the wooden Mosquito Fleet to the sleek art deco Kalakala, the ferries of Puget Sound serve as a cultural icon to visitors and locals alike. Running from Point Defiance to Sidney, British Columbia, the Washington State ferry system is the single largest tourist attraction in the state, with 28 routes and 23 million riders annually. Names like Vashon, Kalakala, and Chetzemoka still resonate with fondness and nostalgia long after they have gone, while ships built the year Lindberg flew solo across the Atlantic will soon be pensioned off and pass into the "Ghost Fleet." In this volume, travelers are invited to look back to the past and bid Puget Sound's "ancient mariners" a fond farewell.

Great Graves of Upstate New York!: The Upstate New York Final Resting Places of 70 True American Legends


Chuck D'Imperio - 2006
    Author Chuck D'Imperio has spent more than five years and traveled thousands of miles around this beautiful and historic region in search of the graves of the famous (and infamous!). Great Graves of Upstate New York! is a fascinating, fact-filled, guide to the regional gravesites of a wide spectrum of recognizable names from the near and distant past. And all in Upstate New York! And the list is nothing short of incredible: singer Kate Smith, "The God Bless America Girl"; Mafia figure Joe "the Barber" Barbara; John Burroughs, "The Father of the American Conservation Movement"; Annie Edson Taylor, "Niagara''s REAL Maid of the Mist"; Dr. Mary Walker, America's first and only female Congressional Medal of Honor winner; Jennie Grossinger, "The Catskill''s Innkeeper"; Virginia O. Douglas, "Yes, Virginia! There is a Santa Claus"; Tim Murphy, "The Savior of Schoharie"; Sam Patch, "The Yankee Leaper"; Matthew Vassar, "The Brewer Philanthropist"; Lucille Ball, "The Queen of Comedy"; Ann Trow Lohman, "The Wickedest Woman in New York"; Ernie Davis, "The Pride of the Syracuse Orangemen"; and many more, including four U.S. Presidents, one Kentucky Derby winning horse and the most famous one-legged tap-dancer in the world!

A Failure of Initiative: Final Report of the Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina: Final Report of the Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane ...


U.S. House of Representatives - 2006
    Union Calendar No. 205. Tom Davis, Chairman of the Select Bipartisan Committee. Tells the story of inadequate preparation and response in evacuations, medical care, communications, and contracting. Concludes that the government's best efforts, at all levels of government, were not good enough. The writers hope that their findings will prompt the changes needed to make all levels of government better prepared and better able to respond the next time.

Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950


Rosemary Feurer - 2006
    Rosemary Feurer examines the fierce battles between these Midwestern electrical workers and the bitterly anti-union electrical and metal industry, Exploring the role of radicals in local movement formation, Feurer reveals a "civic" unionism that could connect community and union concerns to build solidarity and contest the political economy. District 8's spirited unionism included plant occupations in St. Louis and Iowa; campaigns to democratize economic planning; and strategies for national bargaining that elected officials inevitably branded as part of a communist conspiracy. Though destroyed by reactionaries and an anticommunist backlash, District 8 molded a story that tells another side of the labor movement's formation in the 1930s and 1940s, and can inform current struggles against corporate power in the modern global economy.

Milwaukee's Bronzeville: 1900-1950


Paul H. Geenen - 2006
    Most settled around a 12-block area along Walnut Street that came to be known as Milwaukee's Bronzeville, a thriving residential, business, and entertainment community. Barbershops, restaurants, drugstores, and funeral homes were started with a little money saved from overtime pay at factory jobs or extra domestic work taken on by the women. Exotic nightclubs, taverns, and restaurants attracted a racially mixed clientele, and daytime social clubs sponsored "matinees" that were dress-up events featuring local bands catering to neighborhood residents. Bronzeville is remembered by African American elders as a good place to grow up--times were hard, but the community was tight.

Philadelphia: City of Music


James Rosin - 2006
    Join the Soul Survivors, Delfonics, Stylistics, O'Jays, Spinners, Billy Paul, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, and a host of others to relive the excitement of this remarkable era in "Philadelphia: City of Music."

Carroll County


Catherine Baty - 2006
    It takes its name from Charles Carroll, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He lived the longest of all the signers, dying a few years before the county's founding. Carroll County's location has influenced its history, bringing together Mason and Dixon, the Baltimore and Ohio and Western Maryland Railroads, the Union Army of the Potomac, J. E. B. Stuart's Confederate cavalry, and the rural free delivery of mail. Settled by Pennsylvania Germans along the northern border and English settlers in the south, its diverse heritage is reflected in the cities of Westminster, Hampstead, Manchester, Mount Airy, New Windsor, Sykesville, Taneytown, Union Bridge, and the crossroad communities of Linwood, Patapsco, and Union Mills.

Vancouver Remembered


Michael Kluckner - 2006
    Divided into neighborhood sections, it was accessible to everyone from the serious historian to the new resident. It became one of the classic books about the city, and remained in print for more than a decade.In Vancouver Remembered, Kluckner continues his exploration of the city and its multi-layered past. Dozens of new, contemporary watercolors and a tremendous range of previously unpublished images concentrating on the city and its neighborhoods since the Second World War make Vancouver Remembered an essential record of the city's recent history. Also included is an introductory essay on the city, a section on day trips, an extensive bibliography and bird's-eye maps of areas that have drastically changed.

Passions in Print: Private Press Artistry in New Mexico: Private Press Artistry in New Mexico


Pamela S. Smith - 2006
    From the work of nineteenth-century printers to the illustrated books created by Santa Fe and Taos art colonists in the 1920s and 1930s to contemporary printings spawned by creative-edge book artists, t profiles twenty-nine presses and artists including Gustave Baumann, Willard Clark, and Linnea Gentry.

New England Court Records: A Research Guide for Genealogists And Historians


Diane Rapaport - 2006
    Whether you are a novice researcher--or an experienced genealogist or historian--this book will help you to research court records with confidence. Learn how to read and use court records--with clear explanations of legal terms, illustrations from real cases and step-by-step research examples. This book also shows you where to find court records, in hundreds of sources--courthouses, archives, books, microfilm, and the latest CDs and Internet databases (which you can access without leaving home!).