BiblioVault - Books about They Came

They Came to Bowl

How Milwaukee Became America’s Tenpin Capital

Doug Schmidt

Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2007

A frozen rope. A urethane split on the drives. Chicken tracks on the telescore.* Do you know your bowling lingo? You will along with much more when you read They Came to Bowl: How Milwaukee Became America's Tenpin Capital. From the thrill of the perfect strike to the agony of a ball gone astray, anyone who has rolled a ball down the lanes will find themselves or someone they know in the people, places and stories covered in this book.

In this authoritative and lively book, Doug Schmidt traces bowling's roots from a German religious rite centuries ago to the sport that made Milwaukee famous. From the taverns and saloons that housed recreational games to the sell-out crowds and million-dollar beer sponsorships of televised tournaments, this well-illustrated book covers both sport and city, charting the changing face of bowling over the century. Packed with memorable showdowns and improbable heroes, They Came to Bowl will take you back to the changing lanes of bowling in Milwaukee — and the sport as a whole.

* frozen rope=a ball rolled with excessive speed almost straight to the pocket; urethane split=2-8-10 or 3-7-9 split caused by sharp breaking point of reactive resin balls; drives=alleys; chicken tracks=string of strikes

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They Came to Japan

An Anthology of European Reports on Japan, 1543-1640

Michael Cooper, Editor

University of Michigan Press, 1995

The Japan accidentally discovered by the Europeans in 1543 was a country torn by internecene wars waged by independent barons who recognised no effective central government and were free to appropriate as many neighbouring fiefs as force of arms and treachery would permit. The Japan which deported the Europeans a century later was a stable, highly centralised bureaucracy under the firm control of a usurping family which was to continue to rule the country until well into the Victorian age. Europeans living in Japan at the time have not only recorded the events of this fascinating period but also provided a picture of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Japanese life. Apart from a few lacunae, a remarkably full description of the country in this century—its history, people, traditions, culture, and religion—can be pieced together.

They Came to Japan collects and translates excerpts from more than thirty early European accounts of Japan, many previously unpublished and extremely rare. Arranged into thematic chapters on aspects of Japanese society, these commentaries are most interesting not for what they say about the Japan but about the European writers themselves. Their attitude towards the newly discovered country and its inhabitants is clearly reflected in their letters and reports, especially when implicit comparisons are made between Japan and Europe. During the course of their discovery of the East, the Europeans had generally adopted the role of representatives of a superior race. They had taken for granted that Europe was synonymous with the civilised world, and thus the discovery of the highly developed Japanese culture and civilisation, which had grown up quite independently of Europe, came as a salutary shock. Because they could not aggressively assert themselves by force of arms in such a remote place, as was their norm, this was to be the first confrontation between East and West on equal terms.

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They Came to Play

A Photographic History of Colorado Baseball

Duane A. Smith

University Press of Colorado, 2012

Over one hundred and thirty years ago, pioneers arriving in Colorado during the Civil War era brought the game of baseball to the high and dry Rocky Mountains frontier. From the days of games in pastures with no gloves to the high drama of Coors Field and the Colorado Rockies, baseball and Coloradans have had a love affair that has continued to flourish over the decades.

In They Came To Play: A Photographic History of Colorado Baseball, historians and avid baseball fans Duane Smith and Mark Foster have collected the finest historic baseball photographs of teams, players, and games from around the state. They are all here, the town teams, company teams, early professional clubs, and the ethnic teams that made baseball an integral part of the life and times in Colorado's mountain towns, prairie hamlets, and bustling frontier cities. Combined with the wonderful photographs and captions is an essay that brings baseball's rich heritage in Colorado to life for the reader.

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They Came to Toil

Newspaper Representations of Mexicans and Immigrants in the Great Depression

By Melita M. Garza

University of Texas Press, 2018

As the Great Depression gripped the United States in the early 1930s, the Hoover administration sought to preserve jobs for Anglo-Americans by targeting Mexicans, including long-time residents and even US citizens, for deportation. Mexicans comprised more than 46 percent of all people deported between 1930 and 1939, despite being only 1 percent of the US population. In all, about half a million people of Mexican descent were deported to Mexico, a “homeland” many of them had never seen, or returned voluntarily in fear of deportation.

They Came to Toil investigates how the news reporting of this episode in immigration history created frames for representing Mexicans and immigrants that persist to the present. Melita M. Garza sets the story in San Antonio, a city central to the formation of Mexican American identity, and contrasts how the city’s three daily newspapers covered the forced deportations of Mexicans. She shows that the Spanish-language La Prensa not surprisingly provided the fullest and most sympathetic coverage of immigration issues, while the locally owned San Antonio Express and the Hearst chain-owned San Antonio Light varied between supporting Mexican labor and demonizing it. Garza analyzes how these media narratives, particularly in the English-language press, contributed to the racial “othering” of Mexicans and Mexican Americans. Adding an important new chapter to the history of the Long Civil Rights Movement, They Came to Toil brings needed historical context to immigration issues that dominate today’s headlines.

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They Came to Wisconsin

Julia Pferdehirt

Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2002

They Came to Wisconsin presents three themes of the state’s immigrant history: leaving the homeland, making the journey, and enduring the first year of settlement. Journal and diary entries and letters from European groups and oral histories from African American, Latino, Hmong, and Amish sources make this book dynamic and wholly inclusive. They Came to Wisconsin breaks fresh ground in presenting document-centered Wisconsin history to a young audience. More important, these firsthand stories add a real human dimension to history, helping students to compare the experiences of the varied groups who came to Wisconsin in the last two hundred years.

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They Came to Wisconsin

Teacher's Guide and Student Materials

Harriet Brown

Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2002

The companion teacher’s guide to They Came from Wisconsin offers educators in every setting—classroom, library, and at home—vocabulary lists, objectives, skills, strategies, standards-based activities, and dozens of blackline masters for worksheets and handouts. Engages students in hands-on exploration of the immigration theme.

Distributed for the Wisconsin Historical Society Press.

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