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We Shall Independent Be
African American Place-Making and the Struggle to Claim Space in the United States
Angel David Nieves
University Press of Colorado, 2008
With twenty chapters from leading scholars in African American history, urban studies, architecture, women's studies, American studies, and city planning, "We Shall Independent Be " illuminates African Americans' efforts to claim space in American society despite often hostile resistance. As these essays attest, Black self-determination was central to the methods African Americans employed in their quest to establish a sense of permanence and place in the United States.

Contributors define space to include physical, social, and intellectual sites throughout the Northern and Southern regions of the United States, ranging from urban milieus to the suburbs and even to swamps and forests. They explore under-represented locations such as burial grounds, courtrooms, schools, and churches. Moreover, contributors demonstrate how Black consciousness and ideology challenged key concepts of American democracy - such as freedom, justice, citizenship, and equality - establishing African American space in social and intellectual areas.

Ultimately, "We Shall Independent Be " recovers the voices of African American men and women from the antebellum United States through the present and chronicles their quest to assert their right to a place in American society. By identifying, examining, and telling the stories of contested sites, this volume demonstrates the power of African American self-definition and agency in the process of staking a physical and ideological claim to public space

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What Has Passed and What Remains
Oral Histories of Northern Arizona's Changing Landscapes
Edited by Peter Friederici
University of Arizona Press, 2010
Ferrell Secakuku remembers the ancient farming rites of his Hopi people but saw them replaced by a cash economy. Sheep rancher Joe Manterola recalls watching hard scrabble farms on what is now tree-studded grassland on Garland Prairie. Navajo Rose Gishie once saw freshly dug holes fill with clean, drinkable water where none rises today. All over northern Arizona, people have seen the landscapes change, and livelihoods with them. In this remarkable book they share their stories.

Thirteen narratives—from ranchers, foresters, scientists, Native American farmers, and others—tell how northern Arizona landscapes and livelihoods reflect rapid social and environmental change. The twentieth century saw huge changes as Arizona’s human population swelled and vacation-home developments arose in the backcountry. Riparian areas dried up, cattle ranching declined, and some wildlife species vanished while others thrived. The people whose words are preserved here have watched it all happen.

The book is a product of Northern Arizona University’s Ecological Oral Histories project, which has been collecting remembrances of long-time area residents who have observed changes to the land from the 1930s to the present day. It carves a wide swath, from the Arizona Strip to the Mogollon Rim, from valleys near Prescott to the New Mexico line. It takes readers to the Bar Heart Ranch north of Williams and to the Doy Reidhead Ranch southeast of Holbrook, to the forests of Flagstaff and the mesas of Indian country.

Enhanced with more than fifty illustrations, this book brings environmental change down to earth by allowing us to see it through the eyes of those whose lives it has directly touched. What Has Passed and What Remains is a window on the past that carries important lessons for the future.
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The Winter Sailor
Francis R. Stebbins on Florida's Indian River, 1878-1888
Edited by Carolyn Frances Baker Lewis
University of Alabama Press, 2004

A unique guide to Florida's frontier history along Indian River.

The Winter Sailor is a historical adventure that details the yearly winter travels of Francis R. Stebbins to Florida's Indian River. Stebbins, a writer from Michigan, visited Florida in March of 1878 and became entranced by its pristine beauty. Subsequently, Stebbins and his traveling companions made annual visits to Indian River—until 1888 when tragedy struck and ended Stebbins' yearly journeys.

Being an observant traveler, Stebbins began a series of descriptive articles for his hometown newspaper that chronicled his journeys to the Indian River area. Stebbins's articles tell of his own personal experiences during his leisurely visits, which included such activities as hunting and fishing, studying the natural surroundings, and excavating Indian mounds. What Stebbins enjoyed most was sailing down the river interviewing townspeople and examining local attractions as he went. His articles also detail the lifestyle of the region, food, fashion, industry, history, environment, and changes that occurred over time. Stebbins's articles not only entertained and informed but also became a travelogue for his readers. He inspired northern travelers to go south and visit Florida, which contributed to the beginnings of large-scale tourism in the region.

The Winter Sailor combines Stebbins's 49 articles along with three by his companions, to provide an enjoyable, historical guide. Unique among 19th-century travelogues, this fascinating look into Florida's past documents a decade of change to the Indian River wilderness and becomes Stebbins's gift to the present.

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Wisconsin’s Own
Twenty Remarkable Homes
M. Caren Connolly
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2010

Take an intimate journey through the family, history, and architecture of 20 residential treasures in Wisconsin’s Own by M. Caren Connolly and Louis Wasserman. Richly illustrated with the photography of Zane Williams and complemented by historical images and watercolors and line drawings, Wisconsin’s Own profiles the architectural history of state’s most remarkable residences built between 1854 and 1939. The houses are a mix of public and private homes that are representative of varied architectural styles, from an Italianate along the Mississippi River and an interpretation of a sixteenth-century northern Italian villa overlooking Lake Michigan to an Adirondack-style camp in the North Woods and a fourteen-bedroom Georgian Revival mansion on Lake Geneva. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie School is, of course, represented as well with examples by Wright and his mentor Louis Sullivan.
 
Wisconsin’s Own tells the story of the considerable contribution that each of these historic homes have made to American residential architecture. It also answers the questions who built the house, what brought them to Wisconsin, why they selected that particular style, and how it is that this historic home still stands—and shines—today.
 

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Words Marked by a Place
Local Histories in Central Oregon
Jarold Ramsey
Oregon State University Press, 2018
Words Marked by a Place is a book of interconnected writings reflecting on the human and natural history of central Oregon. This chronological collection presents the reader with key episodes of central Oregon history, from nineteenth-century exploration to the railroading and homesteading era to the era of community-building and development that followed.

While telling these local stories, Jarold Ramsey explores alternative ways of engaging history in the act of writing, breaking new ground by discovering and exploring primary sources that bear on the region’s colorful but little-known past. Throughout the collection, he interrogates “local history” as a subject. What is local history? How is it related to mainstream academic history? What are legitimate ways of doing it? How do the details of what we call local history inform “history-at-large,” and vice-versa?

From the opening narrative concerning Lieutenant Henry Larcom Abbot’s “Railroad Survey” of the region in 1855 to the concluding account of Lieutenant Robert Cranston’s last months and dramatic death, when his “Airacobra” fighter plane crashed near Madras in 1944, Words Marked by a Place sheds new light on the ongoing story of central Oregon by illuminating forgotten corners of its past. Through both theory and example, it represents an important contribution to the history of the region and the endeavors of local historians, wherever they happen to work.
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Working the Mississippi
Two Centuries of Life on the River
Bonnie Stepenoff
University of Missouri Press, 2015

The Mississippi River occupies a sacred place in American culture and mythology. Often called The Father of Rivers, it winds through American life in equal measure as a symbol and as a topographic feature. To the people who know it best, the river is life and a livelihood. River boatmen working the wide Mississippi are never far from land. Even in the dark, they can smell plants and animals and hear people on the banks and wharves.

Bonnie Stepenoff takes readers on a cruise through history, showing how workers from St. Louis to Memphis changed the river and were in turn changed by it. Each chapter of this fast-moving narrative focuses on representative workers: captains and pilots, gamblers and musicians, cooks and craftsmen. Readers will find workers who are themselves part of the country’s mythology from Mark Twain and anti-slavery crusader William Wells Brown to musicians Fate Marable and Louis Armstrong.

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Writing, Publishing, and Reading Local Gazetteers in Imperial China, 1100-1700
Joseph R. Dennis
Harvard University Press, 2015

This book is the definitive study of imperial Chinese local gazetteers, one of the most important sources for premodern Chinese studies. Methodologically innovative, it represents a major contribution to the history of books, publishing, reading, and society.

By examining how gazetteers were read, Joseph R. Dennis illustrates their significance in local societies and national discourses. His analysis of how gazetteers were initiated and produced reconceptualizes the geography of imperial Chinese publishing. Whereas previous studies argued that publishing, and thus cultural and intellectual power, were concentrated in the southeast, Dennis shows that publishing and book ownership were widely dispersed throughout China and books were found even in isolated locales. Adding a dynamic element to our earlier understanding of the publishing industry, Dennis tracks the movements of manuscripts to printers and print labor to production sites. By reconstructing printer business zones, he demonstrates that publishers operated across long distances in trans-regional markets. He also creates the first substantial data set on publishing costs in early modern China—a foundational breakthrough in understanding the world of Chinese books. Dennis’s work reveals areas for future research on newly-identified regional publishing centers and the economics of book production.

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Wyoming Revisited
Rephotographing the Scenes of Joseph E. Stimson
Michael A. Amundson
University Press of Colorado, 2014
In Wyoming Revisited, Michael A. Amundson uses the power of rephotography to show how landscapes across the state have endured over the last century. Three sets of photographs—the original black-and-white photographs taken by famed Wyoming photographer Joseph E. Stimson more than a century ago, repeat black-and-white images taken by Amundson in the 1980s, and a third view in color taken by the author in 2007–2008—are accompanied by captions explaining the history and importance of each site as well as information on the process of repeat photographic fieldwork.

The 117 locations feature street views of Wyoming towns and cities, as well as views from the state's famous natural landmarks like Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Devil's Tower National Monument, Hot Springs State Park, and Big Horn and Shoshone National Forests. In addition, Amundson provides six in-depth essays that explore the life of Joseph E. Stimson, the rephotographic process and how it has evolved, and how repeat photography can be used to understand history, landscape, historic preservation, and globalization.

Wyoming Revisited highlights the historic evolution of the American West over the past century and showcases the significant changes that have occurred over the past twenty-five years. This book will appeal to photographers, historians of the American West, and anyone interested in Wyoming's history or landscape.

The publication of this book is supported in part by the Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund.


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