Best of
Local-History

2017

Wounds: A Memoir of War and Love


Fergal Keane - 2017
    It is a family story of war and love, and how the ghosts of the past return to shape the present.Wounds is a powerful memoir about Irish people who found themselves caught up in the revolution that followed the 1916 Rising, and in the pitiless violence of civil war in north Kerry after the British left in 1922.It is the story of Keane’s grandmother Hannah Purtill, her brother Mick and his friend Con Brosnan, and how they and their neighbours took up guns to fight the British Empire and create an independent Ireland. And it is the story of another Irishman, Tobias O’Sullivan, who fought against them as a policeman because he believed it was his duty to uphold the law of his country.Many thousands of people took part in the War of Independence and the Civil War that followed. Whatever side they chose, all were changed in some way by the costs of violence. Keane uses the experiences of his ancestral homeland in north Kerry to examine why people will kill for a cause and how the act of killing reverberates through the generations.

The Naturalist's Notebook: An Observation Guide and 5-Year Calendar-Journal for Tracking Changes in the Natural World around You


Nathaniel T. Wheelwright - 2017
    The unique five-year calendar format of The Naturalist’s Notebook helps you create a long-term record and point of comparison for memorable events, such as the first songbird you hear in spring, your first monarch butterfly sighting of summer, or the appearance of the northern lights. Biologist Nathaniel T. Wheelwright and best-selling author Bernd Heinrich teach nature lovers of all ages what to look for outdoors no matter where you live, using Heinrich’s classic illustrations as inspiration. As you jot down one observation a day, year after year, your collected field notes will serve as a valuable record of your piece of the planet. This deluxe book, with a three-piece case, gilt edges, a burgundy ribbon bookmark, and a belly band with gold foil stamping, is a perfect gift for all nature lovers.

Got to Be Something Here: The Rise of the Minneapolis Sound


Andrea Swensson - 2017
    Paul history as longtime music journalist Andrea Swensson takes us through the neighborhoods and venues, and the lives and times, that produced the Minneapolis Sound. Visit the Near North neighborhood where soul artist Wee Willie Walker, recording engineer David Hersk, and the Big Ms first put the Minneapolis Sound on record. Across the Mississippi River in the historic Rondo district of St. Paul, the gospel-meets-R&B groups the Exciters and the Amazers take hold of a community that will soon be all but erased by the construction of I-94. From King Solomon’s Mines to the Flame, from The Way in Near North to the First Avenue stage (then known as Sam’s) where Prince would make a triumphant hometown return in 1981, Swensson traces the journeys of black artists who were hard-pressed to find venues and outlets for their music, struggling to cross the color line as they honed their sound. And through it all, there’s the music: blistering, sweltering, relentless funk, soul, and R&B from artists like Maurice McKinnies, Haze, Prophets of Peace, and The Family, who refused to be categorized and whose boundary-shattering approach set the stage for a young Prince Rogers Nelson and his peers Morris Day, André Cymone, Jimmy Jam, and Terry Lewis to launch their careers, and the Minneapolis Sound, into the stratosphere. A visit to Prince’s Paisley Park and a conversation with the artist provide a rare glimpse into his world and an intimate sense of his relationship to his legacy and the music he and his friends crafted in their youth.

Maximum Harm: The Tsarnaev Brothers, the FBI, and the Road to the Marathon Bombing


Michele R. McPhee - 2017
    McPhee unravels the complex story behind the public facts of the Boston Marathon bombing. She examines the bombers' roots in Dagestan and Chechnya, their struggle to assimilate in America, and their growing hatred of the United States—a deepening antagonism that would prompt federal prosecutors to dub Dzhokhar Tsarnaev “America's worst nightmare.” The difficulties faced by the Tsarnaev family of Cambridge, Massachusetts, are part of the public record. Circumstances less widely known are the FBI's recruitment of the older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, as a “mosque crawler” to inform on radical separatists here and in Chechnya; the tracking down and killing of radical Islamic separatists during the six months he spent in Russia—travel that raised eyebrows, since he was on several terrorist watchlists; the FBI's botched deals and broken promises with regard to his immigration; and the disenchantment, rage, and growing radicalization of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar, along with their mother, sisters, and Tamerlan's wife, Katherine.Maximum Harm is also a compelling examination of the Tsarnaev brothers' movements in the days leading up to the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15, 2013, the subsequent investigation, the Tsarnaevs' murder of MIT police officer Sean Collier, the high-speed chase and shootout that killed Tamerlan, and the manhunt in which the authorities finally captured Dzhokhar, hiding in a Watertown backyard. McPhee untangles the many threads of circumstance, coincidence, collusion, motive, and opportunity that resulted in the deadliest attack on the city of Boston to date.“McPhee nails it. Happiness, fear, tragedy, anger, heroism, and hope are all on display in this riveting new book about terror in Boston. A must-read, so we never forget, and learn from, the lessons of that historic day.”—Scott Brown, former United States senator and author of Against All Odds: My Life of Hardship, Fast Breaks, and Second Chances“Maximum Harm is a riveting, eye-opening page-turner that takes you into the real world of international terrorism and the difficulties for local, state, and federal law enforcement. . . . It raises the question: Are we prepared?”—Bernard B. Kerik, New York City police commissioner (retired)“No single reporter has covered the Boston bombing as thoroughly as Michele McPhee. She knows Boston—its streets, its cops, and its corridors of power. Maximum Harm is riveting—a tribute to the first responders, and, startlingly, a troubling exposé of the FBI’s botched handling of the Tsarnaev brothers. You may think you know this story, but until you read this book, you don’t.”—T. J. English, New York Times–bestselling author of Where the Bodies Were Buried and The Westies“In Maximum Harm, Michele McPhee uncovers shocking new truths about the Boston Marathon bombers and those in government, law enforcement, and their own community who gave them free rein to plot and execute one of the most vicious terror attacks ever carried out on American soil. This book will grab you, shake you, and will not let you go!”—Casey Sherman, New York Times–bestselling author of The Finest Hours and Boston Strong<

A Firefighter's Journal: Thirty-Seven Years on the Firegrounds and in the Firehouses of Philadelphia


Robert John Marchisello - 2017
    

Haunted Rockford, Illinois (Haunted America)


Kathi Kresol - 2017
    The city�s troubled and turbulent past left scars that still resonate today. Geraldine Bourbon�s final struggle still echoes throughout the farmhouse where her estranged husband pursued her with a pistol from room to room before gently laying her corpse on the bed. The sobs of society darling Carrie Spafford still keep vigil over the family plot of the cemetery where she sowed the heartbreak of her twilight years. From the vengeance of Chief Big Thunder to the Witch of McGregor Road, author Kathi Kresol shares the legends and lore of Rockford�s haunted history.

The Witch and Jet Splinters: Part 1: A Bustle In The Hedgerow


Elijah Barns - 2017
    Jet Splinters, a handsome, black cat has been sent by his master to deal with the good and beautiful Witch Jinny Lane. His master requires the land that Jinny’s two hundred year old house stands on, for nefarious reasons. Jet befriends Jinny and her closest friends and fellow Witches, Lou Dallion and Riz La Croix, together with their familiars, Spike and Stripes - a quirky quartet who only came to stay for the week. Just twenty minutes away, the Faeries that dwell in the hedgerow need Jinny’s help to prevent the despicable Russell Crook from developing a golf course on their domain. Crook is abetted by a corrupt Town Planner, Isobel Mortem, who, unknown to him, is also a Witch. And so begins a tale that visits many a dark alleyway with sometimes comedic results … and sometimes the opposite. A tale that also involves an evil, dark hearted magician, a magical carrot, a misguided Faerie Queen, a rare Indian Black Eagle, an insane local radio station, a lovely Locksmith, a deaf Pixie, a broom called Batilda, a cottage built on Hell and a trip to meet up with Lapland’s best loved celebrity, amongst other unlikely occurences.

Lost Treasures of St. Louis


Cameron Collins - 2017
    Louisans. Lost Treasures celebrates dancing to Ike and Tina at the Club Imperial, Bowling for Dollars at the Arena, taking in movies at Ronnie's Drive-In, and myriad other pastimes enjoyed through the years. Rarely seen photos and artifacts revive eateries like Miss Hulling's Cafeteria and the Crystal Palace, entertainment and sports attractions like the Goldenrod Showboat and Sportsman's Park, retail stores like Famous-Barr and Scruggs, Vandervoot and Barney, community establishments like Cleveland High School and St. Bridget of Erin Church, and locally manufactured products like Mavrakos Candy and Falstaff Beer. Gone but not forgotten, all of the subjects featured elicit nostalgia and also reveal how the past has shaped our city.

The 1967 Belvidere Tornado


Mike Doyle - 2017
    More than five hundred people suffered injuries. New interviews and fascinating archival history underscore the horrific drama, as well as the split-second decisions of victims and survivors that saved their families and neighbors. Since the tragedy, three more devastating tornadoes have further defined Boone County’s resilience: Poplar Grove in 2008, Caledonia in 2010 and Fairdale in 2015.

Cityscapes of New Orleans


Richard Campanella - 2017
    In Cityscapes of New Orleans, Campanella--a historical geographer and professor at Tulane University--reveals the why behind the where, delving into the historical and cultural forces that have shaped the spaces of New Orleans for over three centuries.For Campanella, every bewildering street grid and linguistic quirk has a story to tell about the landscape of Louisiana and the geography of its bestknown city. Cityscapes of New Orleans starts with an examination of neighborhoods, from the origins of faubourgs and wards to the impact of the slave trade on patterns of residence. Campanella explains how fragments of New Orleans streets continue to elude Google Maps and why humble Creole cottages sit alongside massive Greek Revival mansions. He considers the roles of modern urban planning, environmentalism, and preservation, all of which continue to influence the layout of the city and its suburbs. In the book's final section, Campanella explores the impact of natural disasters as well-known as Hurricane Katrina and as unfamiliar as "Sauve's Crevasse," an 1849 levee break that flooded over two hundred city blocks.Cityscapes of New Orleans offers a wealth of perspectives for uninitiated visitors and transplanted citizens still confounded by terms like "neutral ground," as well as native-born New Orleanians trying to understand the Canal Street Sinkhole. Campanella shows us a vibrant metropolis with stories around every corner.

Open Season: True Stories of the Maine Warden Service


Daren Worcester - 2017
    Altogether, their cumulative experiences account for more than 300 years of warden experience. Before reality TV cameras, GPS devices, and dashboard computers, these wardens presided over a coming of age era for the Maine Warden Service. It was a time when a compass, map, and their wits were what mattered most in the field. Every day offered the potential for an exciting new adventure, many of which endangered the wardens themselves. This book recreates the full warden experience. In addition to hair-raising, life-and-death scenarios, the collection covers moments such as a child innocently outing his parents as looking for deer at night, the doldrums of a stakeout, and the grief of tragedy. The stories have been written in a third person, narrative format to ensure consistency in style and to help readers feel the excitement of a twig snapped in the dark, the frustration of second guessing yourself when lives are at stake, and the duty to do what s right, even if it means breaking the law."

Beyond Control: The Mississippi River's New Channel to the Gulf of Mexico


James F. Barnett - 2017
    During the great flood of 1973, the current scoured a hole beneath the main structure near Baton Rouge and enlarged a pre-existing football-field-size crater. That night the Mississippi River nearly changed its course for a shorter and steeper path to the sea. Such a map-changing reconfiguration of the country's largest river would bear national significance as well as disastrous consequences for New Orleans and towns like Morgan City, at the mouth of the Atchafalaya River. Since 1973, the US Army Corps of Engineers Control Complex at Old River has kept the Mississippi from jumping out of its historic channel and plunging through the Atchafalaya Basin to the Gulf of Mexico.Beyond Control traces the history of this phenomenon, beginning with a major channel shift around 3,000 years ago. By the time European colonists began to explore the Lower Mississippi Valley, a unique confluence of waterways had formed where the Red River joined the Mississippi, and the Atchafalaya River flowed out into the Atchafalaya Basin. A series of human alterations to this potentially volatile web of rivers, starting with a bend cutoff in 1831 by Captain Henry Miller Shreve, set the forces in motion for the Mississippi's move into the Atchafalaya Basin.Told against the backdrop of the Lower Mississippi River's impending diversion, the book's chapters chronicle historic floods, rising flood crests, a changing strategy for flood protection, and competing interests in the management of the Old River outlet. Beyond Control is both a history and a close look at an inexorable, living process happening now in the twenty-first century.

Stark Mad Abolitionists: Lawrence, Kansas, and the Battle over Slavery in the Civil War Era


Robert K. Sutton - 2017
    A judge, bound by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, had just ordered a young African American man who had escaped from slavery in Virginia and settled in Boston to be returned to bondage in the South. An estimated 50,000 citizen rioted in protest. Observing the scene was Amos Adams Lawrence, a wealthy Bostonian, who “waked up a stark mad Abolitionist.” As quickly as Lawrence waked up, he combined his fortune and his energy with others to create the New England Emigrant Aid Company to encourage abolitionists to emigrate to Kansas to ensure that it would be a free state.The town that came to bear Lawrence’s name became the battleground for the soul of America, with abolitionists battling pro-slavery Missourians who were determined to make Kansas a slave state. The onset of the Civil War only escalated the violence, leading to the infamous raid of William Clarke Quantrill when he led a band of vicious Confederates (including Frank James, whose brother Jesse would soon join them) into town and killed two hundred men and boys.Stark Mad Abolitionists shows how John Brown, Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, Sam Houston, and Abraham Lincoln all figure into the story of Lawrence and “Bleeding Kansas.” The story of Amos Lawrence’s eponymous town is part of a bigger story of people who were willing to risk their lives and their fortunes in the ongoing struggle for freedom and equality.

Down Inside: Thirty Years in Canada's Prison Service


Robert Clark - 2017
    He worked with some of Canada's most dangerous and notorious prisoners, including Paul Bernardo and Tyrone Conn. He dealt with escapes, lockdowns, prisoner murders, prisoner suicides, and a riot. But he also arranged ice-hockey games in a maximum-security institution, sat in a darkened gym watching movies with three hundred inmates, took parolees sightseeing, and consoled victims of violent crimes. He has managed cellblocks, been a parole officer, and investigated staff corruption.Clark takes readers down inside a range of prisons, from the minimum-security Pittsburgh Institution to the Kingston Regional Treatment Centre for mentally ill prisoners and the notorious (and now closed) maximum-security Kingston Penitentiary. In Down Inside, he challenges head-on the popular belief that a "tough-on-crime" approach makes prisons and communities safer, arguing instead for humane treatment and rehabilitation. Wading into the controversy about long-term solitary confinement, Clark draws from his own experience managing solitary-confinement units to continue the discussion begun by the headline-making Ashley Smith case and to join the chorus of voices calling for an end to the abuse of solitary confinement in Canadian prisons.

Boston in the American Revolution: A Town versus an Empire (History & Guide)


Brooke Barbier - 2017
    When Great Britain levied the Sugar Act on its American colonies, Parliament was not prepared for Boston’s backlash. For the next decade, Loyalists and rebels harried one another as both sides revolted and betrayed, punished and murdered. But the rebel leaders were not quite the heroes we consider them today. Samuel Adams and John Hancock were reluctant allies. Paul Revere couldn’t recognize a traitor in his own inner circle. And George Washington dismissed the efforts of the Massachusetts rebels as unimportant. With a helpful guide to the very sites where the events unfolded, historian Brooke Barbier seeks the truth behind the myths. Barbier tells the story of how a city radicalized itself against the world’s most powerful empire and helped found the United States of America.

Seven Million: A Cop, a Priest, a Soldier for the IRA, and the Still-Unsolved Rochester Brink's Heist


Gary Craig - 2017
    Suspicion quickly fell on a retired Rochester cop working security for Brinks at the time--as well it might. Officer Tom O'Connor had been previously suspected of everything from robbery to murder to complicity with the IRA. One ex-IRA soldier in particular was indebted to O'Connor for smuggling him and his girlfriend into the United States, and when he was caught in New York City with $2 million in cash from the Brink's heist, prosecutors were certain they finally had enough to nail O'Connor. But they were wrong. In Seven Million, the reporter Gary Craig meticulously unwinds the long skein of leads, half-truths, false starts, and dead ends, taking us from the grim solitary pens of Northern Ireland's Long Kesh prison to the illegal poker rooms of Manhattan to the cold lakeshore on the Canadian border where the body parts began washing up. The story is populated by a colorful cast of characters, including cops and FBI agents, prison snitches, a radical priest of the Melkite order who ran a home for troubled teenagers on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and the IRA rebel who'd spent long years jailed in one of Northern Ireland's most brutal prisons and who was living underground in New York posing as a comics dealer. Finally, Craig investigates the strange, sad fate of Ronnie Gibbons, a down-and-out boxer and muscle-for-hire in illegal New York City card rooms, who was in on the early planning of the heist, and who disappeared one day in 1995 after an ill-advised trip to Rochester to see some men about getting what he felt he was owed. Instead, he got was what was coming to him. Seven Million is a meticulous re-creation of a complicated heist executed by a variegated and unsavory crew, and of its many repercussions. Some of the suspects are now dead, some went to jail; none of them are talking about the robbery or what really happened to Ronnie Gibbons. And the money? Only a fraction was recovered, meaning that most of the $7 million is still out there somewhere.

Antique New England Homes & Barns: History, Restoration, and Reinterpretation


Jim DeStefano - 2017
    Maybe it's their pleasing proportions, maybe they remind us of a simpler time, or maybe we sense that these venerable old survivors that were built when our country was young have seen it all. But how many of us have bothered to listen to the stories they tell or tried to understand what makes them tick? This book reveals the essence of antique New England homes and barns--their history, the people who built them, why they were built that way, and how to restore them, piece by piece, without losing their character. Learn to identify architectural styles from different periods, how to strategize a restoration, and how to approach it systematically, from the timber frame to the floors, walls, and ceilings, windows and doors, wiring, finishes, and landscaping.

Taapoategl & Pallet


Peter J. Clair - 2017
    With Taapoategl & Pallet, Peter Clair adds his voice to this narrative tradition and makes a contribution to Indigenous literature.The Mi’kmaq culture was one of many disrupted by European colonizers. The effect of this disruption and the long path of recovery are at the centre of this book, along with numerous stories from the Mi’kmaq oral tradition.This novel is a work of imagination. It creates the parallel stories of Taapoategl, starting in the mid 18th century, and Pallet, starting in the mid 20th century. Taapoategl’s story is one of incredible faithfulness to culture and family. Pallet’s story is one of a wilderness quest for personal and cultural identity. The stories of Taapoategl and Pallet converge in a dramatic an unforgettable way.

Blood, Sweat and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance, A Pioneer Forensics Investigator


Eve Lazarus - 2017
    Vance was constantly called to crime scenes and to testify in court because of his skills in serology, toxicology, and autopsy.When Vance was first called to a crime scene in 1914, forensics was in its infancy. Vancouver was the first police department in Canada to have a scientist on staff and one of the few police departments in North America to use forensics in investigations. Vance's knowledge of poisons helped solved a sensational death case, while his work in blood analysis allowed him to distinguish human from animal blood―and thereby send a murderer to the gallows. His work in firearms examination was leading-edge, and Vance was able to bring his expertise in trace evidence and explosives to solve dozens of robberies, earning him front-page headlines.Vance's skills and analytic abilities were so effective that in 1934 there were seven attempts on his life, and for a time, he and his family were under constant police guard from criminals afraid to go up against him in court.Blood, Sweat, and Fear delves into some of the most notorious cases in BC's history while giving a sense of what life was like in Vancouver during the first half of the century. At the same time, it reveals the untold story of the personal struggle of John F.C.B. Vance, a scientist who never lost his moral compass in the midst of corruption that reached to the top of the police force and to City Hall.

Inside the Combat Zone: The Stripped Down Story of Boston's Most Notorious Neighborhood


Stephanie Schorow - 2017
    So how did this great New England city become home to one of the largest and most notorious adult entertainment districts in the nation? In this expertly crafted history, veteran reporter Stephanie Schorow teases out the issues that created this controversial neighborhood, giving voice to the players who sought to tame or profit from the sleaze snaking its way through Boston. At turns comic and tragic, Schorow introduces us to the politicians, exotic dancers, and wise guys, and residents brought together by the adult entertainment district--a five-acre neighborhood the city engineered to contain the very porno plague it wanted to eliminate. (Meet the nun-turned-attorney who advocated for the First Amendment rights of adult bookstores, a dancer called "the thinking man's stripper," and Boston's unofficial city censor.) For these people and thousands of others, the Combat Zone is more than a memory--it was a life-altering adventure.

Highlights from Welsh History: Opening Some Windows to Our Past


Emrys Roberts - 2017
    Black & white photos.

You Had a Job for Life: Story of a Company Town


Jamie Sayen - 2017
    Single-minded concern for the bottom line. Friction between workers and management. Hostile takeovers at the hands of avaricious and unaccountable multinational interests. The story of America’s industrial decline is all too familiar—and yet, somehow, still hard to fathom. Jamie Sayen spent years interviewing residents of Groveton, New Hampshire, about the century-long saga of their company town. The community’s paper mill had been its economic engine since the early twentieth century. Purchased and revived by local owners in the postwar decades, the mill merged with Diamond International in 1968. It fell victim to Anglo-French financier James Goldsmith’s hostile takeover in 1982, then suffered through a series of owners with no roots in the community until its eventual demise in 2007. Drawing on conversations with scores of former mill workers, Sayen reconstructs the mill’s human history: the smells of pulp and wood, the injuries and deaths, the struggles of women for equal pay and fair treatment, and the devastating impact of global capitalism on a small New England town. This is a heartbreaking story of the decimation of industrial America.

Latino City: Immigration and Urban Crisis in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1945-2000


Llana Barber - 2017
    Like many industrial cities, Lawrence entered a downward economic spiral in the decades after World War II due to deindustrialization and suburbanization. The arrival of tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in the late twentieth century brought new life to the struggling city, but settling in Lawrence was fraught with challenges. Facing hostility from their neighbors, exclusion from local governance, inadequate city services, and limited job prospects, Latinos fought and organized for the right to make a home in the city. In this book, Llana Barber interweaves the histories of urban crisis in U.S. cities and imperial migration from Latin America. Pushed to migrate by political and economic circumstances shaped by the long history of U.S. intervention in Latin America, poor and working-class Latinos then had to reckon with the segregation, joblessness, disinvestment, and profound stigma that plagued U.S. cities during the crisis era, particularly in the Rust Belt. For many Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, there was no -American Dream- awaiting them in Lawrence; instead, Latinos struggled to build lives for themselves in the ruins of industrial America.

Mary and William Dyer: Quaker Light and Puritan Ambition in Early New England


Johan Winsser - 2017
    When she returned to Boston in 1660, after having been banished twice from Massachusetts, she committed an act of deliberate civil disobedience that cost her her life, led to the downfall of the puritan government, and advanced the fundamental principles of freedom of conscience and expression. More than three-and-a-half centuries later, the state continues to exercise its mandate to preserve the peace and social order, while also protecting the constitutional exercise of free speech and self-expression. The challenge, always, has been to identify and then enforce the balance between the rights of individuals or groups to practice their beliefs, and the rights of others to likewise enjoy their liberties. The story of the Dyers—especially Mary’s story—is how that challenge played out between the New England puritans and the Quakers, and how her life and death shaped the outcome of that conflict. “An authoritative and careful biography of Mary Dyer and her husband, William, which breaks new ground, dispels common beliefs, and balances both the Quaker and puritan sides of the story.” —H. Larry Ingle, author of First Among Friends: George Fox and the Creation of Quakerism “A well-researched and balanced work that makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the people and issues of the seventeenth-century Atlantic world.” —Francis Bremer, author of John Winthrop: American’s Forgotten Founding Father

Surrogate Suburbs: Black Upward Mobility and Neighborhood Change in Cleveland, 1900-1980


Todd M Michney - 2017
    Yet much of this scholarship has downplayed black agency and tended to portray African Americans as victims of structural forces beyond their control. In this history of Cleveland's black middle class, Todd Michney uncovers the creative ways that members of this nascent community established footholds in areas outside the overcrowded, inner-city neighborhoods to which most African Americans were consigned. In asserting their right to these outer-city spaces, African Americans appealed to city officials, allied with politically progressive whites (notably Jewish activists), and relied upon both black and white developers and real estate agents to expand these "surrogate suburbs" and maintain their livability until the bona fide suburbs became more accessible.By tracking the trajectories of those who, in spite of racism, were able to succeed, Michney offers a valuable counterweight to histories that have focused on racial conflict and black poverty and tells the neglected story of the black middle class in America's cities prior to the 1960s.

Maurice River Township


Julie Ann Rumbold - 2017
    The Maurice River became important for many industries, including oystering, commercial fishing, and crabbing. Dorchester and Leesburg, especially the Delaware Bay Shipbuilding Company, were well known for shipbuilding, and the area was very active during World War II. The township has been long recognized for agriculture due to its wonderful sandy ground. The soil has played an important role in the glass industry since the late 1800s, with the silica/sand utilized in a thriving glass-manufacturing business, initially in Port Elizabeth. The railroads were first built to ship oysters to large cities in the late 1800s to mid-1900s but were also employed to transport sand for the glass business and wood for the lumber industry. Many of the enterprises from earlier days have vanished in time, and along with them, some villages have entirely disappeared.

The Homing Place: Indigenous and Settler Literary Legacies of the Atlantic


Rachel Bryant - 2017
    In doing so, Bryant performs this process herself, creating a model for listening and incorporating Indigenous stories, and deferring to Indigenous knowledge structures to demonstrate how those structures can transform settler understandings of history and place.The study addresses two closely related questions: (1) How and why did settlers and their descendants assume a semblance of indigeneity on territories that already had Indigenous populations? and (2) How can this phenomenon of assumed indigeneity be challenged and ultimately transcended, at least in an intellectual sense, by settler descendants?In each chapter, Bryant foregrounds the active ways in which we engage with literature and communities, producing greater awareness of the effects of our activities as readers and writers, as Indigenous peoples and settlers, and as those who make policy and those on whom it has the greatest impact. Elucidating the effects of failure to engage with Indigenous historical, social, and cultural contexts and frameworks, Bryant shows how such failure limits meaningful understanding of Indigenous and settler literatures and history in North America as a whole, and prevents a nuanced understanding of contemporary policy and the vital issues that First Nations are currently raising, concerning not only Indigenous rights, lives, and land but also the effects colonization continues to have on the global community.

A Crowded Hour: Milwaukee during the Great War, 1917–1918


Kevin Abing - 2017
    Pro-war patriots considered Milwaukee's loyalties doubly suspect because of its large German-American population and strong Socialist Party. Consequently, Milwaukeeans endured intense efforts, some bordering on the paranoid or absurd, to enforce 100 percent Americanism and redeem the city's reputation. But the hand-wringing was unnecessary, as city residents exceeded every government wartime demand.Other developments heightened the intensity of this "crowded hour." Simmering ethnic tensions, skyrocketing inflation, as well as loftier questions regarding the meaning of American citizenship or the impact of a growing government bureaucracy affected every aspect of people's lives. Patriotic women stepped into male-dominated occupations to meet labor demands; at war's end, many reluctantly returned to traditional gender roles. Furthermore, the war advanced three long-debated social crusades: women's suffrage, prohibition, and anti-prostitution/venereal disease efforts. Capping things off, the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic killed more than 1,100 Milwaukeeans and 50 million people world-wide.