On the Gulf edge of Texas between land and sea stands Galveston Island. Shaped continually by wind and water, it is one of earth's ongoing creations—time is forever new. Here, on the shoreline, embraced by the waves, a person can still feel the heartbeat of nature. And yet, for all the idyllic possibilities, Galveston's history has been anything but tranquil. Across Galveston's sands have walked Indians, pirates, revolutionaries, the richest men of nineteenth-century Texas, soldiers, sailors, bootleggers, gamblers, prostitutes, physicians, entertainers, engineers, and preservationists. Major events in the island's past include hurricanes, yellow fever, smuggling, vice, the Civil War, the building of a medical school and port, raids by the Texas Rangers, and, always, the struggle to live in a precarious location.
Galveston: A History is at the forefront of a trend in writing urban biographies emphasizing technology as the dynamic force in urban development. David McComb explores this often contradictory relationship between technology and the city, and provides a guide to both Galveston history and the dynamics of urban development.
Runner-up, Spur Award for Best Western Nonfiction—Contemporary, Western Writers Of America, 2001
The Galveston storm of 1900 reduced a cosmopolitan and economically vibrant city to a wreckage-strewn wasteland where survivors struggled without shelter, power, potable water, or even the means to summon help. At least 6,000 of the city's 38,000 residents died in the hurricane. Many observers predicted that Galveston would never recover and urged that the island be abandoned. Instead, the citizens of Galveston seized the opportunity, not just to rebuild, but to reinvent the city in a thoughtful, intentional way that reformed its government, gave women a larger role in its public life, and made it less vulnerable to future storms and flooding.
This extensively illustrated history tells the full story of the 1900 Storm and its long-term effects. The authors draw on survivors' accounts to vividly recreate the storm and its aftermath. They describe the work of local relief agencies, aided by Clara Barton and the American Red Cross, and show how their short-term efforts grew into lasting reforms. At the same time, the authors reveal that not all Galvestonians benefited from the city's rebirth, as African Americans found themselves increasingly shut out from civic participation by Jim Crow segregation laws. As the centennial of the 1900 Storm prompts remembrance and reassessment, this complete account will be essential and fascinating reading for all who seek to understand Galveston's destruction and rebirth.
The "Queen City" of Texas they called her—or the "Octopus of the Gulf." Galveston from 1845 to 1860 was the center of culture in Texas—or the monster with an economic strangle hold on all Texas trade. It was a gracious city with wide paved streets, impressive buildings, and neat gardens; yet it was also a pestilence-ridden place where no sanitary code was ever enforced and where one in every two children died before reaching maturity. Its citizens, avid for culture and knowledge, attended concerts and plays in great numbers and exhibited an eager interest in science and history; yet they could not be brought to support the school system. Galveston was a city where no person in need was ever left uncared for, where the sick and needy—strangers or friends—were succoured; yet no free Negro was safe from legalized abduction and forced enslavement, and the city served as a center for the revived African slave trade.
Earl Fornell makes the charming, colorful, cosmopolitan, contradictory city of Galveston the focal point of his study of the Texas Gulf Coast on the eve of the Civil War. The years 1845-1860 were crucial for this area; during that period the economy became more and more dependent upon slave labor, and thus the stage was set for secession.
Dr. Fornell describes with clarity the interrelated events, the decisions, and the conflicts that went into the development of Galveston and the Texas Gulf Coast during these years. He portrays the people and their way of life. He introduces us to some of the notables who helped to shape the destiny of Texas: Sam Houston, the old general; Lorenzo Sherwood, the golden-tongued propounder of radical economic doctrines; Willard Richardson, Hamilton Stuart, Ferdinand Flake, and Edward Cushing, the newspapermen whose writing both reflected and guided the thought of their fellow citizens; Arthur Lynn, the British consul whose observing and compassionate nature brought him onto the stage of Galveston history with striking frequency and whose voluminous letters provide a rich source for historical details; and William Ballinger, a minor player on the stage but one whose conscience and interests mirrored those of many other thoughtful Galvestonians.
Always present, affecting and affected by virtually every aspect of life on the Coast, the slave-labor problem grew ever more acute as the expanding railroad system laid more and more of the land open for development. Dr. Fornell shows with keen insight how it eventually forced Texans into a position where conflict with the federal government was unavoidable and the decision to secede from the Union inevitable.
The late Earl W. Fornell, a native of Wisconsin, held B.A. and M.A. degrees in political science from the New School for Social Research, the M.A. degree in political history from Columbia University, and the Ph.D. degree in political history from Rice University. He taught at Columbia, Amarillo College, Rice, and Lamar State College of Technology.
On the last Sunday of the year 1839, Francis Sheridan, an elegant young Irishman in the British diplomatic service, sailed from Barbados for the Republic of Texas. His mission in the new nation was to contribute the opinion of an eyewitness to the deliberations going on in London concerning proposed recognition of Texas.
This jounal contains some of the material that Sheridan used for his official report and much colorful detail that he did not use. First published by the University of Texas Press in 1956, it is the travel diary of a sophisticated and discerning student of human nature.
An engaging, well-illustrated natural and cultural history of the oldest living organism—the bristlecone pine. Since Edmund Schulman discovered in 1958 that individual bristlecones live nearly 5,000 years, the trees have been investigated primarily for the elaborate record their rings contain. The trees have been "read' closely, with major consequences for natural and human history. Historians have read local and global environmental change. Archaeologists have rewritten the history of civilization. Writers have transformed them into figures pertinent to the human dilemmas of time and eternity. A Garden of Bristlecones investigates professional and popular conceptions as a set of narratives drawn from the outside and inside of the trees. It reveals the premises of the investigators, the nature of their inquiry, and the extent of their knowledge, while also revealing the Great Basin bristlecone itself. Illustrations by Valerie Cohen.
Ellen Bowie Holland grew up in a house at Weatherford, Texas, that had the "motherly look of a large and gallant hen hovering over too many chicks" and that was inhabited by a "lively, warm-hearted family." This book is her record of the "whole world of little things which enriched young lives" in her small town.
Blessed with a discerning and sympathetic eye, she had much happiness to remember and record, and she employs a charming combination of nostalgia and comedy as she brings to life again these bygone days. Her childhood experiences are illuminated by the wisdom of maturity, and the whole is infused with a deft humor, developed through her skilled use of fantasy and through her ability to laugh at the pretensions of the Victorian life she saw.
Holland's book also is memorable as a record of her unforgettable parents:
"Mother was born on Columbus Day, and she and Columbus had a lot in common. She liked to discover things for herself and nothing pleased her more than to nicely finish off a job that she had been told could not be done" . . . "She wasn't geared for solitary musing. Like a salmon at spawning time she liked to swim upstream against rushing waters and bash into boulders" . . . "Mother's pattern of neatness reached out in all directions" . . . "Mother, sheathed like an armadillo" . . .
"Father, silk-hatted, or swallow-tailed, distinguished almost beyond belief" . . . "I never heard him raise his voice or laugh aloud" . . . "Father was not witty but he had an absolutely delightful sense of nonsense. His humor came smoothly upon the scene" . . .
Throughout the book the reader shares the author's consciousness of the vast distance between her own childhood and that of the grandchildren to whom the book is dedicated—a distance created by rapid technological change.
"From my window I look over an air-conditioned city and I see jets streaking across the sky and occasionally I hear one of them breaking the sound barrier" . . . "When I really want to awe myself I think about the fact that only one generation ago Mother saw friendly or marauding Indians roaming these same acres" . . . "Those of my age have come into a span of years where living conditions of all kinds have changed so abruptly, where obsolescence sets in so rapidly, that there is little in common between our infancy and our present."
The story of the blending of diverse cultures in a land rich in resources and beauty is an extraordinary one. In this account, the pioneer hunters, trappers, and traders who roamed the Ozark hills and the boatmen who traded on the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers take their place beside the small coterie of St. Louisans whose wealth and influence enabled them to dominate the region politically and economically. Especially appealing for many readers will be the attention Foley gives to common Missourians, to the status of women and blacks, and to Indian-white relations.
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During the Great Migration, Black Americans sought new lives in midwestern small towns only to confront the pervasive efforts of white residents determined to maintain their area’s preferred cultural and racial identity. Jennifer Sdunzik explores this widespread phenomenon by examining how it played out in one midwestern community. Sdunzik merges state and communal histories, interviews and analyses of population data, and spatial and ethnographic materials to create a rich public history that reclaims Black contributions and history. She also explores the conscious and unconscious white actions that all but erased Black Americans--and the terror and exclusion used against them--from the history of many midwestern communities.
An innovative challenge to myth and perceived wisdom, The Geography of Hate reveals the socioeconomic, political, and cultural forces that prevailed in midwestern towns and helps explain the systemic racism and endemic nativism that remain entrenched in American life.
Conservation and development of natural resources are issues of critical importance throughout the world. These issues have been matters of public concern in Texas since legislators first adopted the state-sponsored geological survey as a means of extending government funds to private citizens who would help develop and advertise the mineral and agricultural wealth of Texas.
Walter Keene Ferguson examines the relation of politics to geological exploration during a critical period in Texas history—the first half-century of statehood. Although Texas shared its frontier experience with many other areas, it could not rely on federal aid in the form of land grants because the state government controlled the destiny of the public domain at all times. Acrimonious debate between farmers and urbanites of East Texas and pioneer ranchers of arid West Texas rendered the disposition of public lands even more difficult.
As tools for developing and advertising resources, the geological and agricultural surveys of 1858 and 1867 fulfilled the demands of expectant capitalism made by politicians, speculators, and railroad entrepreneurs. Reconnaissance geologists publicized the wealth of Texas.
Drought in 1886 and popular agitation against squandering of state land caused the emergence of a new concept of the geological survey as an instrument of land reform and public assistance. Lobbying by reformers and scientific organizations led to the formation of the Dumble Survey in 1888 and the University of Texas Mineral Survey in 1901. Stratigraphic analysis of the “individualities” of Texas geology helped the state realize its full economic potential and led to legislation to protect public mineral land from exploitation.
The youthful oil industry finally removed geological exploration from the political arena. As part of the University, a permanent Bureau of Economic Geology was established in 1909 to extend the benefits of scientific research to private citizens and state organizations on a nonpartisan basis.
Ferguson’s analysis of geological surveys in Texas contributes to an understanding not only of the geology and history of the state but of the urgent problem of evaluating the natural resources of underdeveloped regions.
George W. Brackenridge (1832–1920) was a paradox to his fellow Texans. A Republican in a solidly Democratic state, a financier in a cattleman's country, a Prohibitionist in the goodtime town of San Antonio, he devoted his energies to making a fortune only to give it to philanthropic causes.
Indiana born, Brackenridge came to Texas in 1853, but left the state during the Civil War to serve as U.S. Treasury agent and engage in the wartime cotton trade. Later he settled in San Antonio, where he founded a bank and invested in railroads, utilities, and other enterprises.
Some of Brackenridge's contemporaries never forgave him for his Civil War career, but others knew him as a public-spirited citizen, educator, and advocate of civil rights. He cared little for what others thought of him. Yet, he confided once in a rare interview that his fondest ambition was to leave the world a better place for his having lived in it. To this end, he gave generously of himself and his means.
His best-known benefaction is Brackenridge Park, which he gave to the city of San Antonio, but most of his contributions were in the field of education. As regent of the University of Texas for more than twenty-five years, he gave the institution its first dormitory, a large tract of land in Austin, and innumerable smaller gifts. He also offered to underwrite the expenses of the University when Governor James E. Ferguson vetoed the appropriation bill for 1917–1919.
Other educational institutions to benefit from his largess were the public schools of San Antonio, a Negro college in Seguin, and the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. In addition, he assisted individual students, especially women, through scholarships and loans.
Believing that the betterment of humanity lay in education, Brackenridge arranged for the continuation of his philanthropies. By his will he created the George W. Brackenridge Foundation, the first of its kind in Texas and one of the first in the United States.
Marilyn McAdams Sibley's study of George W. Brackenridge is the first biography of an important and, for his time, unusual Texan. It presents new material concerning the Mexican cotton trade during the Civil War, on the beginnings of banking in Texas, and on higher education in Texas.
Since opening in 1931, the George Washington Bridge, linking New York and New Jersey, has become the busiest bridge in the world, with 103 million vehicles crossing it in 2016. Many people also consider it the most beautiful bridge in the world, yet remarkably little has been written about this majestic structure.
Intimate and engaging, this revised and expanded edition of Michael Rockland's rich narrative presents perspectives on the GWB, as it is often called, that span history, architecture, engineering, transportation, design, the arts, politics, and even post-9/11 mentalities. This new edition brings new insight since its initial publication in 2008, including a new chapter on the infamous “Bridgegate” Chris Christie-era scandal of 2013, when members of the governor's administration shut down access to the bridge, causing a major traffic jam and scandal and subsequently helping undermine Christie’s candidacy for the US presidency.
Stunning photos, from when the bridge was built in the late 1920s through the present, are a powerful complement to the bridge's history. Rockland covers the competition between the GWB and the Brooklyn Bridge that parallels the rivalry between New Jersey and New York City. Readers will learn about the Swiss immigrant Othmar Ammann, an unsung hero who designed and built the GWB, and how a lack of funding during the Depression dictated the iconic, uncovered steel beams of its towers, which we admire today. There are chapters discussing accidents on the bridge, such as an airplane crash landing in the westbound lanes and the sad story of suicides off its span; the appearance of the bridge in media and the arts; and Rockland's personal adventures on the bridge, including scaling its massive towers on a cable.
Movies, television shows, songs, novels, countless images, and even PlayStation 2 games have aided the GWB in becoming a part of the global popular culture. This tribute will captivate residents living in the shadow of the GWB, the millions who walk, jog, bike, skate, or drive across it, as well as tourists and those who will visit it someday.
.George Washington is remembered for leading the Continental Army to victory, presiding over the Constitution, and forging a new nation, but few know the story of his involvement in the establishment of a capital city and how it nearly tore the United States apart.
In George Washington’s Final Battle, Robert P. Watson brings this tale to life, telling how the country's first president tirelessly advocated for a capital on the shores of the Potomac. Washington envisioned and had a direct role in planning many aspects of the city that would house the young republic. In doing so, he created a landmark that gave the fledgling democracy credibility, united a fractious country, and created a sense of American identity.
Although Washington died just months before the federal government's official relocation, his vision and influence live on in the city that bears his name.
This little-known story of founding intrigue throws George Washington’s political acumen into sharp relief and provides a historical lesson in leadership and consensus-building that remains relevant today. This book will fascinate anyone interested in the founding period, the American presidency, and the history of Washington, DC.
In this book, seventeen faculty members and administrators attempted (in 1989) to answer the fundamental question: How does a university like Georgetown maintain and develop its Catholic and Jesuit identity while actively engaging in the often conflicting political, social, and religious debates that America must urgently conduct today?
An invaluable primary resource for understanding nineteenth-century America.
As a Georgetown resident for nearly a century, Britannia Wellington Peter Kennon (1815 – 1911) was close to the key political events of her time. Born into the prominent Peter family, Kennon came into contact with the many notable historical figures of the day who often visited Tudor Place, her home for over ninety years. Now published for the first time, the record of her experiences offers a unique insight into nineteenth-century American history.
Housed in the Tudor Place archives, "The Reminiscences of Britannia Wellington Peter Kennon" is a collection of Kennon’s memories solicited and recorded by her grandchildren in the 1890s. The text includes Kennon’s memories of her mother Martha Custis Peter and spending time at Mount Vernon with her grandparents George and Martha Washington. It also includes her recollections of childhood in Georgetown, life during the Civil War, the people enslaved at Tudor Place, and daily life in Washington, DC.
Edited by Grant Quertermous, this richly illustrated and annotated edition gives readers a greater appreciation of life in early Georgetown. It includes a guide to the city's streets then and now, a detailed family tree, and an appendix of the many people Britannia encountered—a who's who of the period. Readers will also find Britannia's narrative an essential companion to the incredible collection of objects preserved at Tudor Place. Notable for both its breadth and level of detail, A Georgetown Life brings a new dimension to the study of nineteenth-century America.
Observations on the new American republic by an early president of Georgetown University
Father Giovanni Antonio Grassi was the ninth president of Georgetown University and pioneered its transition into a modern institution, earning him the moniker Georgetown’s Second Founder. Originally published in Italian in 1818 and translated here into English for the first time, his News on the Present Condition of the Republic of the United States of North America records his rich observations of life in the young republic and the Catholic experience within it.
When Grassi assumed his post as president in 1812, he found the university, known then as Georgetown College, to be in a “miserable state.” He immediately set out to enlarge and improve the institution, increasing the number of non-Catholics in the school, adding to the library’s holdings, and winning authority from Congress to confer degrees. Upon his return to Italy, Grassi published his News, which introduced Italians to the promise and contradictions of the American experiment in self-governance and offered perspectives on the social reality for Catholics in America.
This book is a fascinating work for historians of Catholicism and of the Jesuits in particular.
A Dan Josselyn Memorial Publication
This facsimile edition of Moore's Georgia and South Carolina expeditions includes an extensive new introduction from Georgia's senior archaeologist.
This compilation of Clarence Bloomfield Moore's investigations along the rich coastal and river drainages of Georgia and South Carolina makes
available in a single volume valuable works published a century ago. By modern standards Moore's excavation techniques were crude, but his results were nothing less than spectacular. He recorded data with care, and much information can be learned from his works. In some cases his publications are the only documentation extant for sites that have since been destroyed. In one case, relic collectors had destroyed six mounds at Mason's Plantation—the largest Mississippian center in the Savannah River valley—by the time Moore visited the site in 1897.
Moore also documented prehistoric urn burials, a ritual widely practiced in eastern North America but more frequently on the Gulf Coastal Plain
of Alabama and coastal sites in Georgia and South Carolina. In the introduction, Lewis Larson discusses Moore's investigations within the framework of the current understanding of Georgia and South Carolina coastal archaeological chronology.
Almost from the time of Georgia’s settlement by Oglethorpe in 1733, both Georgians and Carolinians had made periodic unsuccessful attempts to conquer the Spanish Castillo San Marcos in St. Augustine; and during the American Revolution (in 1776, 1777, and 1778) the rebels tried without success to take the fortification, which was then a British stronghold. Each of the three expeditions was less successful than the preceding one, and between the formal campaigns vicious partisan warfare between loyalists and rebels devastated much of the area between the Altamaha and St. Johns rivers.
This book presents a detailed history of the three Georgia-Florida campaigns. Indecisive and lacking the glamour of either the contemporary campaigns in the North, or the later campaigns in the South, they appeared isolated from the mainstream of the revolutionary struggle. The rebels were handicapped by divided command, personal quarrels, difficult terrain, and miserable weather. While Searcy emphasizes the military aspects of the period, she also treats the conflict between civil and military authorities, the effects of war on the civilian populace, and the interaction of economic matters with military affairs. Her work clarifies the importance of these military activities in the subsequent British strategy in the occupation of Georgia and the Carolinas.
German immigrants came to America for two main reasons: to seek opportunities in the New World, and to avoid political and economic problems in Europe. In German Settlement in Missouri, Robyn Burnett and Ken Luebbering demonstrate the crucial role that the German immigrants and their descendants played in the settlement and development of Missouri's architectural, political, religious, economic, and social landscape. Relying heavily on unpublished memoirs, letters, diaries, and official records, the authors provide important new narratives and firsthand commentary from the immigrants themselves.
Between 1800 and 1919, more than 7 million people came to the United States from German-speaking lands. The German immigrants established towns as they moved up the Missouri River into the frontier, resuming their traditional ways as they settled. As a result, the culture of the frontier changed dramatically. The Germans farmed differently from their American neighbors. They started vineyards and wineries, published German-language newspapers, and entered Missouri politics.
The decades following the Civil War brought the golden age of German culture in the state. The populations of many small towns were entirely German, and traditions from the homeland thrived. German-language schools, publications, and church services were common. As the German businesses in St. Louis and other towns flourished, the immigrants and their descendants prospered. The loyalty of the Missouri Germans was tested in World War I, and the anti-immigrant sentiment during the war and the period of prohibition after it dealt serious blows to their culture. However, German traditions had already found their way into mainstream American life.
Informative and clearly written, German Settlement in Missouri will be of interest to all readers, especially those interested in ethnic history.
Germans are the largest ancestral group in Michigan, representing over 2.6 million descendants or 22% of the state’s population. Yet, unlike other immigrant groups, Germans have not retained their linguistic and cultural traditions as part of a distinct ethnic identity. The Bavarian villages of Frankenmuth and Gaylord stand as testaments to the once proud and vigorous German communities that dotted both rural and urban Michigan landscapes. Jeremy W. Kilar explores the social forces that transformed Germans from inward-looking immigrants to citizens in the cultural mainstream. Germans in Michigan is a story of assimilation and renewal and as such reveals the complexities of Americanization and immigration as social forces.
Between 1820 and 1910, nearly five and a half million German-speaking immigrants came to the United States in search of new homes, new opportunities, and freedom from European tyrannies. Most settled in the Midwest, and many came to Wisconsin, whose rich farmlands and rising cities attracted three major waves of immigrants. By 1900, German farmers, merchants, manufacturers, editors, and educators—to say nothing of German churches (both Catholic and Lutheran), cultural institutions, food, and folkways—had all set their mark upon Wisconsin. In the most recent census (1990), more than 53 percent of the state's residents considered themselves "German"—the highest of any state in the Union.
In this best-selling book, now with updated text and additional historical photographs, Richard H. Zeitlin describes the values and ideas the Germans brought with them from the Old Country; highlights their achievements on the farm, in the workplace, and in the academy over the course of 150 years; and explains why their impact has been so profound and pervasive.
Getting Around Brown is both the first history of school desegregation in Columbus, Ohio, and the first case study to explore the interplay of desegregation, business, and urban development in America.
Drawing on a broad range of sources, including over sixty interviews, the book details the causes and consequences of Penick v. Columbus Board of Education (1977). Gregory S. Jacobs argues that school desegregation in Columbus failed to produce equal educational opportunity, not because it was inherently detrimental to learning, but because it was incompatible with urban development. As a consequence, the long-term health of the city school district was sacrificed to preserve the growth of the city itself. The resulting middle-class abandonment of urban education in Columbus produced an increasingly poor, African-American city school system and a powerful form of defensive activism within the overwhelmingly white suburban systems.
The title of the book refers not only to the elaborate tools used to circumvent the spirit of the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision but also to the need to move beyond the flawed dichotomies and failed policies that have come to define desegregation. The book calls for a reconsideration of the complicated relationship race, class, and housing patterns have with city school reform efforts, a relationship obscured by this country’s vitriolic and occasionally violent battle over busing. Jacobs concludes his study with a “modest proposal,” in which he recommends the abolition of the Columbus Public School District, the dispersal of its students throughout surrounding suburban systems, and the creation of a choice-based “experimental education zone” within the old city school district boundaries.
Readable and relevant, Getting around Brownis essential reading for scholars of recent American history, urban studies, civil rights and race relations, and educational policy, as well as anyone interested in public education and politics.
The story of the American mining frontier can be traced through the ghost towns that dot the western landscape to this day, from the camps of California’s forty-niners to the twentieth-century ruins in the Nevada desert. These abandoned towns mark an epoch of high adventure, of quick wealth and quicker poverty, of gambling and gunslinging and hell-raising. Those who have seen the Old West movies sometimes think that the legends of the Wild West were invented by screenwriters. The ghost towns remain, and their battered ruins testify that the legends are true. Behind the tall tales is a history where a fortune could be made in a week and lost over the course of an evening.
With a historian’s attention to fact and a novelist’s gift for dramatic storytelling, celebrated science fiction author Robert Silverberg brings these adventures back to life in the rowdy splendor of their heyday in Ghost Towns of the American West. History and travelers’ tales are woven together with clarity and wit to create a lively account of a fascinating era in our history. Lorence Bjorklund’s illustrations, rich in detail, portray the ghost towns in their glory and in their dusty decline.
The story of the American mining frontier can be traced through the ghost towns that dot the western landscape to this day, from the camps of California’s forty-niners to the twentieth-century ruins in the Nevada desert. These abandoned towns mark an epoch of high adventure, of quick wealth and quicker poverty, of gambling and gunslinging and hell-raising. Those who have seen the Old West movies sometimes think that the legends of the Wild West were invented by screenwriters. The ghost towns remain, and their battered ruins testify that the legends are true. Behind the tall tales is a history where a fortune could be made in a week and lost over the course of an evening.
With a historian’s attention to fact and a novelist’s gift for dramatic storytelling, celebrated science fiction author Robert Silverberg brings these adventures back to life in the rowdy splendor of their heyday in Ghost Towns of the American West. History and travelers’ tales are woven together with clarity and wit to create a lively account of a fascinating era in our history. Lorence Bjorklund’s illustrations, rich in detail, portray the ghost towns in their glory and in their dusty decline.
In this illustrated examination of the Lindbergh kidnapping case, Jim Fisher seeks to set the record straight regarding Bruno Hauptmann's guilt in "the crime of the century."
In February 1935, following a sensational, six-week trial, a jury in Flemington, New Jersey, found German carpenter Hauptmann guilty of kidnapping and murdering the twenty-month-old son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh. Although circumstantial, the evidence against Hauptmann—the handwriting on the ransom notes, the homemade kidnapping ladder, Colonel Lindbergh's money found in his garage, his matching the description of the man who accepted the ransom payoff in the Bronx cemetery, his inability to prove an alibi, and his incredible explanation of his possession of the ransom money—was overwhelming, leaving few to doubt his guilt. After a series of appeals and stays, Hauptmann died fourteen months later in the electric chair. A confession would have spared him the death sentence, but Hauptmann chose to die maintaining his innocence.
It was not until the mid-1970s that revisionists began to challenge the conventional wisdom in the case: that Hauptmann was the lone killer. Revisionist books and articles appeared, as did plays, TV shows, and a movie, all portraying Hauptmann as the victim of a massive police and prosecution frame-up.
At this point, the focus shifted from the evidence to the conduct of the police. By the 1980s, most people familiar with the case were convinced of Hauptmann's complete innocence. Many denied the murder, believing that the Lindbergh baby remained alive. Several men claimed to be the firstborn son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh, one of whom sued to claim his share of the Lindbergh estate after Charles Lindbergh's death in 1974.
Another group held that the kidnapping was an elaborate hoax to cover up the murder of the baby by his parents. Anna Hauptmann¹s series of federal lawsuits against New Jersey and others in the mid-1980s fueled further interest in the case. Although Hauptmann's widow lost all of her lawsuits, she had won the hearts and minds of the American people before her death at the age of ninety-four.
Former FBI agent Fisher discusses the hard evidence, such as the ransom notes and the wood of the kidnapping ladder. He analyzes and debunks the various revisionist theories and presents new evidence that, coupled with the undisputed facts, prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Hauptmann was guilty as charged: he kidnapped and murdered the infant son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh.
Since the second quarter of the nineteenth century, changing conditions have built and emptied small and large towns across the Colorado plain. At the time when Denver was little more than an overpopulated campsite along Cherry Creek there were numerous other settlements to the east and south, each with its own dreams of growth, gold or silver strikes, railroad connections, and rising influence over the surrounding territory. In Ghosts of the Colorado Plains, Eberhart traces some 150 of these ill-fated settlements, providing accounts of their birth, peak activity, and ultimate demise.
As early trapping, mining, cattle, farming, and transportation industries brought successive waves of “easterners” into the territory, they created some of the most colorful communities of their time. The trail towns Boston and Trail City were reputed to be two of the roughest towns in the entire west. Real estate schemers and promoters offered dreams of civilization and respectability in the “cow towns.” Elsewhere, the stage stations, side of the road settlements, and farm centers arose out of the basic necessities of commerce and from a simple desire of far-flung settlers, trappers, and others for a place to congregate, celebrate, trade, brawl, and receive news from the east. Though the personalities and events which animated these communities are all but forgotten, the towns themselves are the legacy of the competing forces that opened and developed the Colorado territory.
Readers of Guide to Colorado Ghost Towns and Mining Camps will welcome Ghosts of the Colorado Plains as an extension of Eberhart’s colorful blend of history and on-site information to a larger and much neglected area of the state. Through historical records, vignettes of personalities, and over 250 photos and 80 maps, Eberhart provides ready access to the towns and settlment sites of eastern Colorado’s past. For travelers, Ghosts of the Colorado Plains offers numerous pleasant excursions and investigations; for those less inclined to take to the field in search of artifacts and sites, the book offers fascinating glimpses of Colorado’s disappearing past.
Many recognize Giant City State Park as one of the premier recreation spots in southern Illinois, with its unspoiled forests, glorious rock formations, and famous sandstone lodge. But few know the park’s history or are aware of the remarkable men who struggled to build it. Giant City State Park and the Civilian Conservation Corps: A History in Words and Pictures provides the first in-depth portrait of the park’s creation, drawing on rarely seen photos, local and national archival research, and interviews to present an intriguing chapter in Illinois history.
Kay Rippelmeyer traces the geological history of the park, exploring the circumstances that led to the breathtaking scenery for which Giant City is so well known, and providing insightful background on and cultural history of the area surrounding the park. Rippelmeyer then outlines the effects of the Great Depression and the New Deal on southern Illinois, including relief efforts by the Civilian Conservation Corps, which began setting up camps at Giant City in 1933. The men of the CCC, most of them natives of southern and central Illinois, are brought to life through vividly detailed, descriptive prose and hundreds of black-and-white photographs that lavishly illustrate life in the two camps at the park. This fascinating book not only documents the men’s hard work—from the clearing of the first roads and building of stone bridges, park shelters, cabins, and hiking and bridle trails, to quarry work and the raising of the lodge’s famous columns—it also reveals the more personal side of life in the two camps at the park, covering topics ranging from education, sports, and recreation, to camp newspapers, and even misbehavior and discipline.
Supplementing the photographs and narrative are engaging conversations with alumni and family members of the CCC, which give readers a rich oral history of life at Giant City in the 1930s. The book is further enhanced by maps, rosters of enrollees and officers, and a list of CCC camps in southern Illinois. The culmination of three decades of research, Giant City State Park and the Civilian Conservation Corps provides the most intimate history ever of the park and its people, honoring one of Illinois’s most unforgettable places and the men who built it.
Philanthropy has long been associated with images of industrial titans and wealthy families. In Pittsburgh, long a center for industry, the shadows of Carnegie, Mellon, Frick, and others loom especially large, while the stories of working-class citizens who uplifted their neighbors remain untold. For the first time, these two portraits of Pittsburgh philanthropy converge in a rich historic tapestry. The Gift of Belief reveals how Pittsburghers from every strata, creed, and circumstance organized their private resources for the public good. The industrialists and their foundations are here but stand alongside lesser known philanthropists equally involved in institution building, civic reform, and community empowerment.
Beginning with sectarian philanthropy in the nineteenth century, moving to scientific philanthropy in the early twentieth century and Pittsburgh Renaissance-era institution-building, and concluding with modern entrepreneurship, twelve authors trace how Pittsburgh aligned with, led, or lagged behind the national philanthropic story and explore how ideals of charity and philanthropy entwined to produce distinctive forms of engagement that has defined Pittsburgh’s civic life.
Robert H. Schuller’s ministry—including the architectural wonder of the Crystal Cathedral and the polished television broadcast of Hour of Power—cast a broad shadow over American Christianity. Pastors flocked to Southern California to learn Schuller’s techniques. The President of United States invited him sit prominently next to the First Lady at the State of the Union Address. Muhammad Ali asked for the pastor’s autograph. It seemed as if Schuller may have started a second Reformation. And then it all went away. As Schuller’s ministry wrestled with internal turmoil and bankruptcy, his emulators—including Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, and Joel Osteen— nurtured megachurches that seemed to sweep away the Crystal Cathedral as a relic of the twentieth century. How did it come to this?
Certainly, all churches depend on a mix of constituents, charisma, and capital, yet the size and ambition of large churches like Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral exert enormous organizational pressures to continue the flow of people committed to the congregation, to reinforce the spark of charismatic excitement generated by high-profile pastors, and to develop fresh flows of capital funding for maintenance of old projects and launching new initiatives. The constant attention to expand constituencies, boost charisma, and stimulate capital among megachurches produces an especially burdensome strain on their leaders. By orienting an approach to the collapse of the Crystal Cathedral on these three core elements—constituency, charisma, and capital—The Glass Church demonstrates how congregational fragility is greatly accentuated in larger churches, a notion we label megachurch strain, such that the threat of implosion is significantly accentuated by any failures to properly calibrate the inter-relationship among these elements.
In 1956, Congress passed legislation that provided authorization and funds for emergency research to be conducted in Glen Canyon in response to the threat of losses posted by the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam in northern Arizona. For eight years, scientists worked against the clock to record the archaeology, geology, history, and paleontology of the region before the waters of Lake Powell covered the area.
In this highly interpretive summary, Jesse Jennings preserves the achievements of the salvage team and explains how the finds affected previous conclusions. Maps and photographs capture archaeological artifacts as well as the landscape of the area. This book also highlights the larger consequences of the massive salvage project — among them the stimulation of additional Southwest research, the applications of techniques made in response to emergency situations, and a valuable perspective on the Pueblo culture. Because this area is becoming increasingly controversial, with a raging debate over whether Lake Powell should be drained, Glen Canyon: An Archaeological Summary stands as more than a model of salvage archaeology. It is also a record and testament of the rich history of Glen Canyon.
This happy combination of literary essay and exceptionally well-written history, providing insights into a past still important in the twentieth century, will quickly take an honored place on the shelves of Harvardiana.
Bernard Bailyn writes on the origins of Harvard and the foundations of Harvard’s persistent character, structure, and style of governance, and contributes another chapter on the unhappy ending to the administration of the beloved President Kirkland, who presided over but could not control a period of profound change. Oscar Handlin describes the shifting relationships and power struggles among faculty, administration, and students over the years (“Making Men of the Boys”) and Harvard’s evolution from an ingrown community of teachers and students into a large, complex institution with worldwide prestige. Donald Fleming has chapters on the presidency of Charles William Eliot (“the greatest man in the history of Harvard”) and the colorful personalities of Harvard (not only “Copey” and Santayana and Charles Eliot Norton, but also “Old Sophy,” who kept a pet chicken in his room in Holworthy). Stephan Thernstrom examines the growing diversity of the student body as to finances, geography, religion, and racial background from the eighteenth century to the 1980s.
The subjects are of continuing interest not only to members of the Harvard community, who will treasure this memento of Harvard’s 350th anniversary, but also to historians of higher education and ordinary readers, who will enjoy the new information, original personalities, and thoughtful perspectives the book offers.
The racial and ethnic composition of Philadelphia continues to diversify as a new wave of immigrants—largely from Asia and Latin America—reshape the city’s demographic landscape. Moreover, in a globalized economy, immigration is the key to a city’s survival and competitiveness. The contributors to Global Philadelphia examine how Philadelphia has affected its immigrants’ lives, and how these immigrants, in turn, have shaped Philadelphia.
Providing a detailed historical, ethnographic, and sociological look at Philadelphia’s immigrant communities, this volume examines the social and economic dynamics of various ethnic populations. Significantly, the contributors make comparisons to and connections between the traditional immigrant groups—Germans, Italians, the Irish, Jews, Puerto Ricans, and Chinese—and newer arrivals, such as Cambodians, Haitians, Indians, Mexicans, and African immigrants of various nationalities.
While their experiences vary, Global Philadelphia focuses on some of the critical features that face all immigrant groups—intra-group diversity, the role of institutions, and ties to the homeland. Taken together, these essays provide a richer understanding of the processes and implications of contemporary immigration to the area.
The life of Patrick Edward Connor serves as a half-century slice of western American history. After leaving New York City, where he had arrived at the age of twelve as a poor Irish immigrant, the nineteen-year-old youth joined the U.S. Army in 1839. He fought in the war with Mexico and then joined the gold rush in California until marrying and settling down in Stockton in 1854.
The Civil War found him volunteering again, this time as colonel of California troops sent to the Utah Territory to protect the mail lines from Indian attacks. Bitterly anti-Mormon, Connor spent the war years alternately engaging in a war of words with Brigham Young or in fighting Indians in northern Utah and present-day Wyoming. After the Civil War, ex-Major General Connor began mining operations in Utah and Nevada, ventures that went from boom to bust. He spent his final years in straitened financial circumstances.
Patrick Edward Connor was a “Man of the West,” possessing both its prejudices and its democratic, independent spirit. His greatest success lay as a military leader, and he would have agreed that he was made for war, not peace. He left an imprint on the history of the American West, remembered as the founder of Fort Douglas, as the “first gentile in Utah,” the “father of Utah mining,” and the “father of the Liberal Party in Utah.”
Strang was considered the prophetic successor to Joseph Smith for the Mormons of the Midwest who later formed the nucleus for the membership of what is now the Community of Christ. Today, 150 years after Strang’s death, about 100 faithful followers in the United States still await the emergence of another prophet to succeed Strang. In the prophetic tradition of Joseph Smith, Strang similarly excavated ancient metallic plates and translated them into the Book of the Law of the Lord and the Rajah Manchou of Vorito. Like Joseph Smith, Strang instigated polygamy, secret ceremonies, baptism for the dead, and communal living. He also introduced a bloomer-like fashion for women, as well as other innovations. Like Joseph Smith, he had himself crowned king of the world.
Where previous treatments of Strang have relied either on inside or outside sources to show either a prophet or charlatan, Speek utilizes all sources, updates the record, corrects previous errors, and shows diverse perspectives. She recounts the turbulent and dramatic events of the 1840s-50s, including the plot to murder Strang and the heartbreaking exile of the Saints from Beaver Island. She traces the dispersion of this once formidable colony of Mormons to the forests of northwest Wisconsin, the far-flung outposts of southwest New Mexico, the hills of Lamoni, Iowa, and to Salt Lake City, Utah.
A master historian traces the flourishing of organized religion in Manhattan between the 1880s and the 1960s, revealing how faith adapted and thrived in the supposed capital of American secularism.
In Gilded Age Manhattan, Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant leaders agonized over the fate of traditional religious practice amid chaotic and multiplying pluralism. Massive immigration, the anonymity of urban life, and modernity’s rationalism, bureaucratization, and professionalization seemingly eviscerated the sense of religious community.
Yet fears of religion’s demise were dramatically overblown. Jon Butler finds a spiritual hothouse in the supposed capital of American secularism. By the 1950s Manhattan was full of the sacred. Catholics, Jews, and Protestants peppered the borough with sanctuaries great and small. Manhattan became a center of religious publishing and broadcasting and was home to august spiritual reformers from Reinhold Niebuhr to Abraham Heschel, Dorothy Day, and Norman Vincent Peale. A host of white nontraditional groups met in midtown hotels, while black worshippers gathered in Harlem’s storefront churches. Though denied the ministry almost everywhere, women shaped the lived religion of congregations, founded missionary societies, and, in organizations such as the Zionist Hadassah, fused spirituality and political activism. And after 1945, when Manhattan’s young families rushed to New Jersey and Long Island’s booming suburbs, they recreated the religious institutions that had shaped their youth.
God in Gotham portrays a city where people of faith engaged modernity rather than foundered in it. Far from the world of “disenchantment” that sociologist Max Weber bemoaned, modern Manhattan actually birthed an urban spiritual landscape of unparalleled breadth, suggesting that modernity enabled rather than crippled religion in America well into the 1960s.
“Are you there, God? It’s me, Manhattan…Butler…argues that far from being a Sodom on the Hudson, New York was a center of religious dynamism throughout the 20th century.”
—Wall Street Journal
“What a pleasure it is to take a tour of Manhattan’s sacred past led by one of the nation’s preeminent religious historians.”
—Christianity Today
“A masterwork by a master historian…God in Gotham should be an instant classic.”
—Jonathan D. Sarna, author of American Judaism
In Gilded Age Manhattan, religious leaders agonized over the fate of traditional faith practice amid chaotic and sometimes terrifying change. Massive immigration, urban anonymity, and the bureaucratization of modern life tore at the binding fibers of religious community.
Yet fears of the demise of religion were dramatically overblown. Jon Butler finds a spiritual hothouse in the supposed capital of American secularism as Catholics, Jews, and Protestants peppered the borough with sanctuaries. A center of religious publishing and broadcasting, by the 1950s it was home to Reinhold Niebuhr, Abraham Heschel, Dorothy Day, and Norman Vincent Peale. While white spiritual seekers sometimes met in midtown hotels, black worshippers gathered in Harlem’s storefront churches. Though denied the ministry almost everywhere, women shaped congregations, founded missionary societies, and fused spirituality and political activism. God in Gotham portrays a city where people of faith embraced modernity and thrived.
Puritans did not find a life free from tyranny in the New World—they created it there. Massachusetts emerged a republic as they hammered out a vision of popular participation and limited government in church and state, spurred by Plymouth Pilgrims. Godly Republicanism underscores how pathbreaking yet rooted in puritanism’s history the project was.
Michael Winship takes us first to England, where he uncovers the roots of the puritans’ republican ideals in the aspirations and struggles of Elizabethan Presbyterians. Faced with the twin tyrannies of Catholicism and the crown, Presbyterians turned to the ancient New Testament churches for guidance. What they discovered there—whether it existed or not—was a republican structure that suggested better models for governing than monarchy.
The puritans took their ideals to Massachusetts, but they did not forge their godly republic alone. In this book, for the first time, the separatists’ contentious, creative interaction with the puritans is given its due. Winship looks at the emergence of separatism and puritanism from shared origins in Elizabethan England, considers their split, and narrates the story of their reunion in Massachusetts. Out of the encounter between the separatist Plymouth Pilgrims and the puritans of Massachusetts Bay arose Massachusetts Congregationalism.
God's Country, Uncle Sam's Land analyzes Mormon history from the Utah Expedition and Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857 through subsequent decades of federal legislative and judicial actions aimed at ending polygamy and limiting church power. It also focuses on the Lakota Ghost Dancers and the Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota (1890), and the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas (1993). In sharp contrast to the mythic image of the West as the "Land of the Free," these three tragic episodes reveal the West as a cultural battleground--in the words of one reporter, "a collision of guns, God, and government." Asking important questions about what happens when groups with a deep trust in their differing inner truths meet, Kerstetter exposes the religious motivations behind government policies that worked to alter Mormonism and extinguish Native American beliefs.
More than any other individual, William Bell Riley, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Minneapolis, inspired the resurgence of Protestant fundamentalism in 1930s America. Trollinger explores the development of Riley’s theology and social thought, examining in detail the rise of the Northwestern Bible and Missionary Training School and other similar institutions. He sheds light upon the nature, successes, and failures of fundamentalist crusades and makes it clear that, to understand fundamentalist religion in America, one must focus upon its regional and local roots.
U-S-A , U-S-A is a familiar refrain heard in every Olympics, but truly it could be Wis-con-sin! Since pioneering hurdler Alvin Kraenzlein got his start here in the 1890s, the Badger State has nurtured, trained, or schooled more than 400 Olympic athletes in a vast array of sports. Wisconsin’s varied landscape and climate accommodate serious athletes whether they compete on ice, on snow, in the water, or on terra firma. We tend to bring a Midwestern work ethic to our endeavors, and our Olympians have often been hailed in the press and in public as being among the most humble and down-to-earth people around. Our state boasts a thriving youth sports culture where many homegrown athletes get their start; others are drawn here by our world-class universities, athletic facilities, and coaching talent. No matter how an athlete comes to Wisconsin, the state becomes part of his or her Olympic story. In Going for Wisconsin Gold, author Jessie Garcia provides insights into the lives of athletes who grew up or spent time in Wisconsin on their journey to the Olympic Games. She shares some of our competitors most captivating tales—from those that have become legend, like Dan Jansen’s heartbreaking falls and subsequent magical gold, to unlikely brushes with glory (do you know which Green Bay Packer was almost an Olympic high jumper?). Featuring the athletes’ personal stories, many of them told here in detail for the first time, plus pictures from their private collections, Going for Wisconsin Gold provides a new and deeper understanding of the sacrifices, joy, pain, heartbreak, and complete dedication it takes to reach the world’s grandest sporting competition.
The gold rush was Herman Francis Reinhart's life for almost twenty years. From the summer of 1851 when, as a boy in his late teens, he traveled the Oregon trail to California, until a January day in 1869 when he climbed aboard an eastbound train at Evanston, Wyoming, he was a part of every gold discovery that stirred the West.
Reinhart dipped his pan in the streams of northern California and western Oregon—in Humbug Creek, Indian Creek, Rogue River, and Sucker Creek. He made the arduous and dangerous overland journey through Indian-occupied western Washington and British Columbia to find the Fraser River gold even more elusive than that farther south. With his teams and wagons he traversed all of the inland mine areas from Walla Walla to Fort Benton, from Boise Basin to South Pass City.
Reinhart's German common sense soon turned him from actual mining to other sources of income, but whatever his labor was, the mines were always the focal point of his activities. When he operated a bakery and saloon it was a business whose customers were miners, whose transactions were more likely to involve gold dust than legal tender, and whose gambling tables saw the exchange of mining fortunes. When he operated a whipsaw mill the timbers cut there were used by miners for sluices and cradles. For a while Reinhart farmed, but planting and harvesting suffered from interruption by frequent expeditions to the mines. And when he prospered as a teamster it was to and from the mining towns that he hauled passengers, supplies, and equipment.
The men who, like Herman Francis Reinhart, hopefully followed the golden frontier were not an articulate group, and the written records of their lives are few and fragmentary. But Reinhart, in his later years, recorded his experiences in five long, narrow, hardback ledgers. Many years after he died his daughter gave the ledgers to a friend in Chanute, Kansas—Nora Cunningham—who read the narrative, became fascinated by it, and typed it for publication.
Reinhart's account, written in a grammar and language all his own, is not a record of the historian's West, but of the West of the individual miner. The pages are filled with the details of day-to-day life of the miners—the subjects that interested them, the problems that plagued them, their fun and feuding, their frustrations and hopes. Edited by an authority of the history of the West, it is a book that will offer exciting reading to casual readers and scholars alike.
Golden Treasures of the San Juan contains fabulous stories of lost mines, bullion, and valuable prospects of one of the most beautiful mountain areas of the United States. Many of the stories are based on the personal adventures of author Cornelius.
When the Indian Mountain Lands (the San Juan) were ceded in 1874, the wild region was thrown open to prospectors seeking its gold and silver riches. Many prospects were valuable discoveries, yet were lost and became legendary mines. Further, the Spanish explorers had been through this area much earlier with their bullion, and their caches added to the legends of gold discovered or to be discovered. The authors of this book trace complete stories about these long-lost hoards.
In essays that combine memoir with biography of place, Kevin Holdsworth creates a public history of the land he calls home: Good Water, Utah. The high desert of south-central Utah is at the heart of the stories he tells here—about the people, the “survivors and casualties” of the small, remote town—and is at the heart of his own story.
Holdsworth also explores history at a personal level: how Native American history is preserved by local park officials; how Mormon settlers adapted to remote, rugged places; how small communities attract and retain those less likely to thrive closer to population centers; and how he became involved in local politics. He confronts the issues of land use and misuse in the West, from the lack of water to greed and corruption over natural resources, but also considers life’s simple pleasures like the value of scenery and the importance of occasionally tossing a horseshoe.
Good Water’s depiction of modern-day Utah and exploration of friendships and bonding on the Western landscape will fascinate and entice readers in the West and beyond.
Henry David Thoreau is best known as a writer, naturalist, and social critic, but he was also a schoolteacher, surveyor, and pencil-maker. In The Gospel According to This Moment, Unitarian minister Barry M. Andrews reveals how an idiosyncratic and unconventional religious faith was central to Thoreau’s many-faceted life—a dimension that has been largely unexamined.
Through close readings of his writings and a focus on his Unitarian upbringing, Harvard education, mentoring by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and immersion in ancient Eastern and Western philosophies, Andrews explores the nature of Thoreau’s spiritual message, what he called the “Gospel according to this moment,” which enables a flourishing and deliberate life. Today, Thoreau is widely recognized as an advocate for simple living, environmental preservation, and civil disobedience. As Andrews uncovers, Thoreau is also a spiritual guide who can teach us an alternative way of being religious in the world.
Sharing enemies like the party boss and corporate lobbyist who undermined honest and responsive government, Progressive leaders were determined to root out selfish political action with public exposure. Labor unions defied bosses and rallied for government protection of workers. Women's clubs appealed to other women as mothers, calling for social welfare, economic justice, and government responsiveness. Protestant church congregations formed a core of support for moral reform. Labor relations experts struggled to prevent the outbreak of violence through mediation between corporate employers and organized labor. Persevering through World War I, Colorado reformers faced their greatest challenge in the 1920s, when leaders of the Ku Klux Klan drew upon the rhetoric of Protestant Progressives and manipulated reform tools to strengthen their own political machine. Once in power, Klan legislators turned on Progressive leaders in the state government.
A story of promising alliances never fully realized, zealous crusaders who resisted compromise, and reforms with unexpected consequences, The Gospel of Progressivism will appeal to those interested in Progressive Era reform, Colorado history, labor relations, and women's activism.
Most Americans are more aware of the workings of the federal government than of their own state governments. But these “laboratories of democracy” constitute perhaps the most creative components of the American political experiment.
This book serves as a guide for students of government and provides a historical context for understanding the forces at work in the state’s political system. Among the states, Tennessee’s unique blend of legislative and executive powers is, in some respects, far more a product of personality than political ideology. This second edition describes these often colorful leaders and the issues they grappled with, including education, health care, corrections, economic development, and other key factors. A full analysis of government institutions embodied in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches is supplemented by added attention to county government and public administration.
Fully up to date, this edition also provides key chapters on the media, political campaigns, and the rising dominance of the Republican Party in recent decades. In addition, it focuses on how a new generation of politicians—among them, Governor Bill Haslam, House Speaker Beth Harwell, and Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero—have emerged to carry on the legacy of state leadership.
Although serious scandal erupted in Illinois Governor Richard Ogilvie’s administration— eight hundred thousand dollars mysteriously appearing in Secretary of State Paul Powell’s shoe boxes and other hiding places, the downfall of two Supreme Court justices for questionable stock dealings, corruption surrounding the Illinois State Fair— Ogilvie’s accomplishments, as Taylor Pensoneau demonstrates, rank him among the best governors in Illinois history.
Perhaps the most important of Ogilvie’s accomplishments during his single term in office (1969–1973) was the passage of the state’s first income tax in 1969. Supporting the income tax took political courage on the part of the new governor, but in doing so he saved the financially crippled state from economic disaster. He also looked far into the future; at a time when few politicians expressed concern with the environment, Ogilvie created an exemplary and hard-hitting antipollution program. He was in office during the Illinois Constitutional Convention in 1970 and was instrumental in the widespread restructuring of Illinois government.
Viewing Ogilvie as a pivotal figure in Illinois politics during a time of great social and political turmoil, Pensoneau provides a complete political biography. He sheds light on Ogilvie’s military heroics, his political career, and the Illinois elections of 1968, 1970, and 1972.
From 1909 to 1913, Governor William Glasscock served the state of West Virginia as an ardent progressive and reformer. In his inaugural address he proclaimed government "the machinery invoked and devised by man for his benefit and protection” and good government the guarantor of the happiness, prosperity, success, and welfare of the people. Governor William Glasscock and Progressive Politics in West Virginia recounts the life and work of West Virginia’s thirteenth governor. Born during the Civil War, Glasscock witnessed a country torn by sectional, fratricidal war become a powerful industrial nation by the turn of the twentieth century. Author Gary Jackson Tucker demonstrates how Glasscock, along with others during the Progressive Era, railed against large and powerful political and economic machines to enact legislation protecting free and fair elections, just taxation, regulation of public utilities, and workmen’s compensation laws. Never hesitating to use the power of the state to stand firm against racism and mob rule, and placing his own personal safety in jeopardy, Glasscock won the praise and admiration of average people. Glasscock’s four years in office took his own health and financial security from him, but left behind a better government—a good government—for the people of West Virginia.
In the tumultuous years following the Civil War, violence and lawlessness plagued the state of Texas, often overwhelming the ability of local law enforcement to maintain order. In response, Reconstruction-era governor Edmund J. Davis created a statewide police force that could be mobilized whenever and wherever local authorities were unable or unwilling to control lawlessness. During its three years (1870–1873) of existence, however, the Texas State Police was reviled as an arm of the Radical Republican party and widely condemned for being oppressive, arrogant, staffed with criminals and African Americans, and expensive to maintain, as well as for enforcing the new and unpopular laws that protected the rights of freed slaves.
Drawing extensively on the wealth of previously untouched records in the Texas State Archives, as well as other contemporary sources, Barry A. Crouch and Donaly E. Brice here offer the first major objective assessment of the Texas State Police and its role in maintaining law and order in Reconstruction Texas. Examining the activities of the force throughout its tenure and across the state, the authors find that the Texas State Police actually did much to solve the problem of violence in a largely lawless state. While acknowledging that much of the criticism the agency received was merited, the authors make a convincing case that the state police performed many of the same duties that the Texas Rangers later assumed and fulfilled the same need for a mobile, statewide law enforcement agency.
Rogues, aristocrats, and a future U.S. president. These and other governors are portrayed in this revised and updated edition of the classic reference work on the chief executives of New Jersey. Editors Michael J. Birkner, Donald Linky, and Peter Mickulas present new essays on the governors of the last three decades—Brendan T. Byrne, Thomas Kean, James Florio, Christine Todd Whitman, Donald DiFrancesco, James McGreevey, Richard Codey, and Jon Corzine. The essays included in the original edition are amended, edited, and corrected as necessary in light of new and relevant scholarship.
The authors of each governor’s life story represent a roster of such notable scholars as Larry Gerlach, Stanley Katz, Arthur Link, and Clement Price, as well as many other experts on New Jersey history and politics. As a result, this revised edition is a thorough and current reference work on the New Jersey governorship—one of the strongest in the nation.
Also of Interest:
New Jersey Politics and Government
The Suburbs Come of Age
Fourth Edition
Barbara G. Salmore with Stephen A. Salmore
978-0-8135-6139-4 paper $34.95
A volume in the Rivergate Regionals Collection
Me, Governor?
My Life in the Rough-and-Tumble World of New Jersey Politics
Richard J. Codey
978-0-8135-5045-9 cloth $24.95
The Life and Times of Richard J. Hughes
The Politics of Civility
John B. Wefing
978-0-8135-4641-4 cloth $32.50
Governor Tom Kean
From the New Jersey Statehouse to the 911 Commission
Alvin S. Felzenberg
978-0-8135-3799-3 cloth $29.95
Chosen for the 2024 Illinois Reads Program by the Illinois Reading Council
One of Chicago’s landmark attractions, Graceland Cemetery chronicles the city’s sprawling history through the stories of its people. Local historian and Graceland tour guide Adam Selzer presents ten walking tours covering almost the entirety of the cemetery grounds. While nodding to famous Graceland figures from Marshall Field to Ernie Banks to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Selzer also leads readers past the vaults, obelisks, and other markers that call attention to less recognized Chicagoans like:
Filled with photographs and including detailed maps of each tour route, Graceland Cemetery is an insider's guide to one of Chicago's great outdoor destinations for city lore and history.
Chicago’s reputation for corruption is the basis of local and national folklore and humor. Grafters and Goo Goos: Corruption and Reform in Chicago, 1833–2003 unfolds the city’s notorious history of corruption and the countervailing reform struggles that largely failed to clean it up. More than a regional history of crime in politics, this wide-ranging account of governmental malfeasances traces ongoing public corruption and reform to its nineteenth-century democratic roots. Former Chicago journalist James L. Merriner reveals the battles between corrupt politicos and ardent reformers to be expressions of conflicting class, ethnic, and religious values.
From Chicago’s earliest years in the 1830s, the city welcomed dollar-chasing businessmen and politicians, swiftly followed by reformers who strived to clean up the attendant corruption. Reformers in Chicago were called “goo goos,” a derisive epithet short for “good-government types.” Grafters and Goo Goos contends a certain synergy defined the relationship between corruption and reform. Politicians and reformers often behaved similarly, their separate ambitions merging into a conjoined politics of interdependency wherein the line between heroes and villains grew increasingly faint. The real story, asserts Merriner, has less to do with right against wrong than it does with the ways the cultural backgrounds of politicians and reformers steered their own agendas, animating and defining each other by their opposition.
Drawing on original and archival research, Merriner identifies constants in the struggle between corruption and reform amid a welter of changing social circumstances and customs—decades of alternating war and peace, hardships and prosperity. Three areas of reform and resistance are identified: structural reform of the political system to promote honesty and efficiency, social reform to provide justice to the lower classes, and moral reform to combat vice. “In the matter of corruption and reform, the constants might be stronger than the variables,” writes Merriner in the Preface. “The players, rules, and scorekeepers change, but not the essential game.”
Complemented by eighteen illustrations, Grafters and Goo Goos is rife with shocking and amusing anecdotes and peppered with the personalities of famous muckrakers, bootleggers, mayors, and mobsters. While other studies have profiled infamous Chicago corruption cases and figures such as Al Capone and Richard J. Daley, this is the first to provide an overview appropriate for historians and general readers alike. In examining Chicago’s notorious saga of corruption and reform against a backdrop of social history, Merriner calls attention to our constant problems of both civic and national corruption and contributes to larger discussions about the American experiment of democratic self-government.
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