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During the War for Independence, Fort Ticonderoga’s guns, sited critically between Lakes Champlain and George, dominated north-south communications in upstate New York that were vital to both the British and American war efforts. In the public mind Ticonderoga was the “American Gibraltar” or the “Key to the Continent,” and patriots considered holding the fort essential to the success of the Revolutionary cause. Ticonderoga was a primary target in British Lieutenant General John Burgoyne’s 1777 campaign to crush American resistance in the north and end the rebellion in a decisive stroke. American efforts to defend the fort in June against overwhelming odds entailed political and military intrigue, bungling, heroism, and ultimately a narrow escape for the Continental and provincial forces under Major General Arthur St. Clair. The loss of Ticonderoga stunned patriot morale and ignited one of the greatest political firestorms of the war. But the fortunes of war turned. Two months later, the rebels mounted a sensational—if little known—counter-attack on Ticonderoga that had major implications for Burgoyne’s eventual defeat at Saratoga in October. Yet Saratoga brought no peace, and Ticonderoga would be central to additional military and political maneuverings—many of them known only to specialist historians—that would keep the region on edge until the end of the war in 1783. 

From the home front to the front lines—Alabama’s pivotal role in shaping victory in World War II.

Alabama and its people played a conspicuous role in World War II. Not only were thousands of servicemen trained at military facilities in the state—at Fort McClellan, Camp Rucker, Camp Sibert, Maxwell Air Field, and Tuskegee Army Air Field—but Axis prisoners of war were interned in camps on Alabama soil. The state of Alabama held a significant number of these prisoners, over seventeen thousand in four camps across the state: Camp Aliceville, Camp Opelika, Fort McClellan, and Fort Rucker. This study focuses on Camp Aliceville and Camp Opelika which provide a sample that frames and highlights the national prisoner of war program. Through this example, one can see the lasting legacy of the prisoner of war program and its role in transforming the United States and forever changing the lives of thousands of prisoners, guards, and local citizens. An analysis of the Alabama camps also reveals how memory is constructed and how one narrative can ultimately emerge as the dominant story. In addition, a survey of the landscape reveals the importance of place and its role in the process of remembering and forgetting.
 

When Fred Risser retired from the Wisconsin Senate in 2021, his sixty-four years in state government made him the longest serving legislator in US history. Now, in this candid and illuminating autobiography, Risser shares his singular perspective on events that transformed the state and the nation over the course of his remarkable career. From his role in the “Joe Must Go” drive to recall US Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s to his position as the senior senator among the “Fab Fourteen” Wisconsin Democrats who opposed Governor Scott Walker’s Act 10 legislation against collective bargaining in 2011, Risser was a leader in state politics for decades, always maintaining an unwavering belief that political action can change people’s lives for the better. 

Forward for the People provides a unique peek behind the political curtain from the viewpoint of someone who saw it all. Risser worked with thirteen governors and authored more than 240 bills that became law, championing public health and safety, environmental protection, women’s and reproductive rights, organized labor, civil rights, and social justice, among many other causes. Risser also recounts interactions with prominent national politicians, including Robert La Follette Jr., Hubert Humphrey, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. More than forty photographs from Risser’s personal collection and the Wisconsin Senate paint a vivid picture of his six-decade journey through Wisconsin politics. 

Forward for the People details Risser’s experiences out of state, from a stint in the Panama Canal Zone as a navy hospital corpsman to his undergraduate debate-team days at Minnesota’s Carleton College to his years studying law at the University of Oregon and his travels to all seven continents. The book also depicts the quirky habits that made Risser a memorable and beloved politician: biking his age in miles every birthday and never taking the elevator in his sixty-four years at the Wisconsin State Capitol. Enhanced with details sourced from correspondence, personal notes, newspaper accounts, and recollections from friends and former colleagues, Risser and coauthor Doug Moe have crafted an engaging account of an extraordinary life in public service.

When Fred Risser retired from the Wisconsin Senate in 2021, his sixty-four years in state government made him the longest serving legislator in US history. Now, in this candid and illuminating autobiography, Risser shares his singular perspective on events that transformed the state and the nation over the course of his remarkable career. From his role in the “Joe Must Go” drive to recall US Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s to his position as the senior senator among the “Fab Fourteen” Wisconsin Democrats who opposed Governor Scott Walker’s Act 10 legislation against collective bargaining in 2011, Risser was a leader in state politics for decades, always maintaining an unwavering belief that political action can change people’s lives for the better. 

Forward for the People provides a unique peek behind the political curtain from the viewpoint of someone who saw it all. Risser worked with thirteen governors and authored more than 240 bills that became law, championing public health and safety, environmental protection, women’s and reproductive rights, organized labor, civil rights, and social justice, among many other causes. Risser also recounts interactions with prominent national politicians, including Robert La Follette Jr., Hubert Humphrey, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton.

Forward for the People details Risser’s experiences out of state, from a stint in the Panama Canal Zone as a navy hospital corpsman to his undergraduate debate-team days at Minnesota’s Carleton College to his years studying law at the University of Oregon and his travels to all seven continents. The book also depicts the quirky habits that made Risser a memorable and beloved politician: biking his age in miles every birthday and never taking the elevator in his sixty-four years at the Wisconsin State Capitol. Enhanced with details sourced from correspondence, personal notes, newspaper accounts, and recollections from friends and former colleagues, Risser and coauthor Doug Moe have crafted an engaging account of an extraordinary life in public service.

With each passing year, the number of family farms in the United States diminishes. Fewer people have the persistence and ingenuity to wrest a livelihood from the land in an era of corporate ownership and mass production. Yet some family farms survive. 

Through words and photographs, this book documents the long lives of five of the oldest farms in Massachusetts. Each has remained in the same family for more than two, sometimes three, centuries and each has a distinctive history. The devotion to the land and family heritage is palpable in the stories these five families tell. 

Stan Sherer’s remarkable photographs depict the activities of the family members as they go about their daily labors, planting crops, feeding animals, applying new technologies to ancient tasks, and coping with the vagaries of weather and state regulations. Michael E. C. Gery’s narrative traces how the farms began, what has sustained them through the generations, and how the families who run them today feel about their past, present, and future. These stories are told largely through the words of the people themselves. 

The result is a complex portrait that moves beyond traditional stereotypes to reveal the realities of family farm life in an increasingly urbanized society. 

A revealing biography of a powerful Southern editor at the center of South Carolina’s post‑Reconstruction political transformation.

In the decades following the Civil War, South Carolina—like much of the South—struggled to redefine its political identity amid the collapse of Reconstruction and the rise of conservative “Redeemer” governments. In Francis Warrington Dawson and the Politics of Restoration, historian E. Culpepper Clark offers a deeply researched and incisive study of this transformation through the life and work of Francis Warrington Dawson, one of the state’s most influential newspaper editors.

Dawson was far more than a chronicler of events. As a powerful voice in South Carolina’s political press, he helped shape public opinion, broker alliances among conservative factions, and articulate the ideological foundations of post‑Reconstruction governance. Clark situates Dawson at the center of the struggles among Redeemers, Straight‑Out Democrats, agrarian reformers, and emerging political leaders such as Ben Tillman, revealing a political landscape marked by rivalry, class conflict, and competing visions of the New South.

Drawing on extensive manuscript collections, newspapers, and political correspondence, Clark explores the close relationship between journalism and power in the late nineteenth century and demonstrates how newspapers functioned as active political actors rather than neutral observers. The result is both a compelling political biography and a broader analysis of how restoration politics operated at the state level.

Francis Warrington Dawson and the Politics of Restoration is an essential work for readers interested in Southern history, Reconstruction and its aftermath, the history of American journalism, and the forces that shaped the political culture of the modern South.

Frank Norris Remembered is a collection of reminiscences by Norris’s contemporaries, friends, and family that illuminate the life of a popular American novelist.

Considering his undergraduate education spent studying art at Académie Julian in Paris and creative writing at Harvard and his journalism career reporting from the far reaches of South Africa and Cuba, it is difficult to fathom how Frank Norris also found time to compose seven novels during the course of his brief life. But despite his adventures abroad, Norris turned out novels at a dizzying pace. He published Moran of the Lady Letty in 1898, McTeague early in 1899, Blix later that year, A Man’s Woman in February 1900, and The Octopus, the first in his ultimately unfinished “Epic of the Wheat” trilogy, in 1901. By informing his novels with his own experiences abroad, Norris composed works that were politically charged and culturally relevant and that made considerable contributions to the character of American literature in the twentieth century.

Frank Norris died at the age of thirty-two in 1902 from peritonitis resulting from a burst appendix, leaving behind a wife, a daughter, and an unfinished series of novels (two of which, The Pit and Vandover and the Brute, were published posthumously). The aim of Frank Norris Remembered, edited by Jesse S. Crisler and Joseph R. McElrath Jr., is to re-create the short, spectacular life of this American author through the eyes of those who knew him best. The fifty reminiscences included in this book feature the voices of Frank N. Doubleday; William Dean Howells; Hamlin Garland; Norris’s wife, Jeannette; and many others who were lucky enough to form a relationship with this vital twentieth-century American author, artist, and adventurer.

Freddie Steinmark tells the story of a legendary University of Texas football player whose courage on the field and in battling cancer still inspires the Longhorn nation.

Freddie Steinmark started at safety for the undefeated University of Texas Longhorns in 1969. In the thrilling “Game of the Century,” a come-from-behind victory against Arkansas that ensured Texas the national championship, Steinmark played with pain in his left leg. Two days later, X-rays revealed a bone tumor so large that it seemed a miracle Steinmark could walk, let alone play football. Within a week of the Arkansas game, his leg was amputated.

A gritty, undersized player, Steinmark had quickly become a fan favorite at Texas. What he endured during the Longhorns’ memorable 1969 season, and what he encountered afterward, captivated not only Texans but the country at large. Americans watched closely as Steinmark confronted life’s ultimate challenge, and his openness during his battle against savage odds helped reframe the national conversation surrounding cancer and the ongoing race for a cure.

Written with unfettered access to the Steinmark family and archives, Freddie Steinmark: Faith, Family, Football is the exploration of a brief but full life, one that began humbly but ended on a grand stage. It is a fitting tribute to a legendary Longhorn whose photograph, emblazoned with the word “Heart,” flashes on the Freddie Steinmark Scoreboard’s Jumbotron prior to each home football game in UT’s Darrell K Royal–Texas Memorial Stadium at Joe Jamail Field.

Friends of the Dallas Public Library Award, 2006
Best Book on East Texas, East Texas Historical Association, 2007

In the decades following the Civil War, nearly a quarter of African Americans achieved a remarkable victory—they got their own land. While other ex-slaves and many poor whites became trapped in the exploitative sharecropping system, these independence-seeking individuals settled on pockets of unclaimed land that had been deemed too poor for farming and turned them into successful family farms. In these self-sufficient rural communities, often known as "freedom colonies," African Americans created a refuge from the discrimination and violence that routinely limited the opportunities of blacks in the Jim Crow South.

Freedom Colonies is the first book to tell the story of these independent African American settlements. Thad Sitton and James Conrad focus on communities in Texas, where blacks achieved a higher percentage of land ownership than in any other state of the Deep South. The authors draw on a vast reservoir of ex-slave narratives, oral histories, written memoirs, and public records to describe how the freedom colonies formed and to recreate the lifeways of African Americans who made their living by farming or in skilled trades such as milling and blacksmithing. They also uncover the forces that led to the decline of the communities from the 1930s onward, including economic hard times and the greed of whites who found legal and illegal means of taking black-owned land. And they visit some of the remaining communities to discover how their independent way of life endures into the twenty-first century.

Led by the Office of Economic Opportunity, Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty reflected the president's belief that, just as the civil rights movement and federal law tore down legalized segregation, progressive government and grassroots activism could eradicate poverty in the United States. Yet few have attempted to evaluate the relationship between the OEO and the freedom struggles of the 1960s. Focusing on the unique situation presented by Texas, Freedom Is Not Enough examines how the War on Poverty manifested itself in a state marked by racial division and diversity—and by endemic poverty.

Though the War on Poverty did not eradicate destitution in the United States, the history of the effort provides a unique window to examine the politics of race and social justice in the 1960s. William S. Clayson traces the rise and fall of postwar liberalism in the Lone Star State against a backdrop of dissent among Chicano militants and black nationalists who rejected Johnson's brand of liberalism. The conservative backlash that followed is another result of the dramatic political shifts revealed in the history of the OEO, completing this study of a unique facet in Texas's historical identity.

Cotton farming was the only way of life that many Texans knew from the days of Austin's Colony up until World War II. For those who worked the land, it was a dawn-till-dark, "can see to can't," process that required not only a wide range of specialized skills but also a willingness to gamble on forces often beyond a farmer's control—weather, insects, plant diseases, and the cotton market.

This unique book offers an insider's view of Texas cotton farming in the late 1920s. Drawing on the memories of farmers and their descendants, many of whom are quoted here, the authors trace a year in the life of south central Texas cotton farms. From breaking ground to planting, cultivating, and harvesting, they describe the typical tasks of farm families—as well as their houses, food, and clothing; the farm animals they depended on; their communities; and the holidays, activities, and observances that offered the farmers respite from hard work.

Although cotton farming still goes on in Texas, the lifeways described here have nearly vanished as the state has become highly urbanized. Thus, this book preserves a fascinating record of an important part of Texas' rural heritage.

A definitive study of Union naval power and the blockade that reshaped the Civil War.

In From Cape Charles to Cape Fear, acclaimed historian Robert M. Browning, Jr. offers a vivid and authoritative account of the Union Navy’s North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, a critical force in the American Civil War. Charged with enforcing the blockade along the Atlantic coastline from Virginia to North Carolina, the squadron played a decisive role in crippling the Confederacy’s economy and restricting its access to vital supplies.

Browning reveals the blockade as far more than a passive defensive strategy. Through detailed analysis of naval operations, coastal engagements, and strategic planning, he demonstrates how Union forces exerted control over key waterways and ports, including Norfolk and Wilmington. These contested hubs became focal points in a high-stakes struggle involving daring blockade runners, shifting naval tactics, and constant pressure on Southern trade networks.

Blending operational history with compelling narrative, Browning also captures the human dimension of naval warfare. Sailors and officers faced unpredictable weather, dangerous missions, and the relentless demands of maintaining control over an expansive coastline. Their experiences illuminate the challenges and complexities of maritime warfare during one of America’s defining conflicts.

Accessible yet richly researched, this book highlights the central importance of naval power in shaping Civil War outcomes. From Cape Charles to Cape Fear stands as an essential work for readers interested in Civil War history, naval strategy, and the enduring impact of maritime operations on the American past.
 

From Improvement to City Planning emphasizes the ways people in nineteenth-century America managed urban growth. Historian Henry Binford shows how efforts to improve space were entwined with the evolution of urban governance (i.e., regulation)—and also influenced by a small group of advantaged families.

Binford looks specifically at Cincinnati, Ohio, then the largest and most important interior city west of the Appalachian Mountains. He shows that it was not just industrialization, but also beliefs about morality, race, health, poverty, and “slum” environments, that demanded an improvement of urban space. As such, movements for public parks and large-scale sanitary engineering in the 1840s and ’50s initiated the beginning of modern city planning. However, there were limitations and consequences to these efforts..

Many Americans believed that remaking city environments could also remake citizens. From Improvement to City Planning examines how the experiences of city living in the early republic prompted city dwellers to think about and shape urban space.