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Suburban Steel chronicles the rise and fall of the Lustron Corporation, once the largest and most completely industrialized housing company in U.S. history. Beginning in 1947, Lustron manufactured porcelain-enameled steel houses in a one-million-square-foot plant in Columbus, Ohio. With forty million dollars in federal funds and support from the highest levels of the Truman administration, the company planned to produce one hundred houses per day, each neatly arranged on specially designed tractor-trailers for delivery throughout the country. Lustron’s unprecedented size and scope of operations attracted intense scrutiny. The efficiencies of uninterrupted production, integrated manufacturing, and economies of scale promised to lead the American housing industry away from its decentralized, undercapitalized, and inefficient past toward a level of rationalization and organization found in other sectors of the industrial economy.

The company’s failure marked a watershed in the history of the American housing industry. Although people did not quit talking about industrialized housing, enthusiasm for its role in the transformation of the housing industry at large markedly waned. Suburban Steel considers Lustron’s magnificent failure in the context of historical approaches to the nation’s perpetual shortage of affordable housing, arguing that had Lustron’s path not been interrupted, affordable and desirable housing for America’s masses would be far more prevalent today.

Winner, Dan and Marilyn Laney Prize, Austin Civil War Round Table, 2005

In an 1882 speech, former Confederate president Jefferson Davis made an exuberant claim: "That battle at Sabine Pass was more remarkable than the battle at Thermopylae." Indeed, Sabine Pass was the site of one of the most decisive Civil War battles fought in Texas. But unlike the Spartans, who succumbed to overwhelming Persian forces at Thermopylae more than two thousand years before, the Confederate underdogs triumphed in a battle that over time has become steeped in hyperbole. Providing a meticulously researched, scholarly account of this remarkable victory, Sabine Pass at last separates the legends from the evidence.

In arresting prose, Edward T. Cotham, Jr., recounts the momentous hours of September 8, 1863, during which a handful of Texans—almost all of Irish descent—under the leadership of Houston saloonkeeper Richard W. Dowling, prevented a Union military force of more than 5,000 men, 22 transport vessels, and 4 gunboats from occupying Sabine Pass, the starting place for a large invasion that would soon have given the Union control of Texas.

Sabine Pass sheds new light on previously overlooked details, such as the design and construction of the fort (Fort Griffin) that Dowling and his men defended, and includes the battle report prepared by Dowling himself. The result is a portrait of a mythic event that is even more provocative when stripped of embellishment.

The Northwestern Shoshone knew as home the northern Great Salt Lake, Bear River, Cache, and Bear Lake valleys of northern Utah. Sagwitch was born at a time when his people traded with the mountain men. In the late 1850s, wagons brought Mormon farmers to settle in Cache Valley, the Northwestern Shoshone heartland. Emigrants and settlers reduced Shoshone access to traditional village sites and food resources. Relationships with the Mormons were mostly good but often strained, and the Shoshone treatment of migrants, who now traveled north and south as well as west and east through the area, was increasingly opportunistic. It only took a few violent incidents for a zealous army colonel to seek severe punishment of the Northwestern Shoshone on a winter morning in 1863. The Bear River Massacre was among the bloodiest engagements of America's Indian wars. Hundreds of Shoshone, including Sagwitch's wife and two sons, died; Sagwitch was wounded but escaped. The band was shattered, other chiefs dead.

The following years were very hard for the survivors. The federal government negotiated a treaty with them but failed to get Sagwitch's signature when, en route to the sessions, he was arrested and then wounded by a white assassin. With the world around him changed, Sagwitch sought accommodation with the most immediate threat to his people's traditional way of survival—the Mormons occupying the Shoshone's valleys.

This, then, is also the story of the conversion of Sagwitch and his band to the Mormon Church. Though not without problems, that conversion was long lasting and thorough. Sagwitch and other Shoshone would demonstrate in important ways their new religious devotion. With the assistance of Mormon leaders, they established the Washakie community in northern Utah. Though efforts to secure a land base had an uneven history, they partly succeeded, and the story of these Shoshone's attempts at rural farming diverged significantly from what happened on government reservations. When Sagwitch died, his death went almost unnoticed outside of Washakie, but his children and grandchildren continued to be important voices among a people who, after experiencing near annihilation, survived in the new world into which Sagwitch led them.

In this remarkable and deeply felt book, Virginia Kerns uncovers the singular and forgotten life of a young Indian woman who was captured in 1847 in what was then Mexican territory. Sold to a settler, a son-in-law of Brigham Young, the woman spent the next thirty years as a servant to Young’s family. Sally, as they called her, lived in the shadows, largely unseen. She was later remembered as a “wild” woman made “tame” who happily shed her past to enter a new and better life in civilization. 

Drawing from a broad range of primary sources, Kerns retrieves Sally from obscurity and reconstructs her complex life before, during, and after captivity. This true story from the American past resonates deeply in the current moment, attentive as it is to killing epidemics and racial injustices. In telling Sally’s story, Kerns presents a new narrative of the American West. 

One highly visible example of French influence on the city of Philadelphia is the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, modeled on the Champs-Élysées. In Salut!, Lynn Miller and Therese Dolan trace the fruitful, three-centuries-long relationship between the City of Brotherly Love and France. This detailed volume illustrates the effect of Huguenots settling in Philadelphia and 18-year-old William Penn visiting Paris, all the way up through more recent cultural offerings that have helped make the city the distinctive urban center it is today. 

Salut! provides a magnifique history of Philadelphia seen through a particular cultural lens. The authors chronicle the French influence during colonial and revolutionary times. They highlight the contributions of nineteenth-century French philanthropists, such as Stephen Girard and the Dupont family. And they showcase the city’s vibrant visual arts community featuring works from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Rodin Museum, the Barnes Foundation, and the Joan of Arc sculpture, as well as studies of artists Thomas Eakins, Mary Cassatt, and Henry Ossawa Tanner. There is also a profile of renowned Le Bec-Fin chef Georges Perrier, who made Philadelphia a renowned culinary destination in the twentieth century.

With lavish illustrations and enthusiastic text, Salut!celebrates a potpourri of all things French in the Philadelphia region.

When Sam Houston crossed the Red River for the first time in 1832, he termed Texas the "finest portion of the Globe that has ever blessed my vision." He soon made it his "abiding place" and became a lifelong traveller in his adopted country. By carriage and muleback his diplomatic, military, political, and personal activities took him over what is now the eastern half of the state—and he fell in love with every foot of it. With panoramic vision and broad descriptive power, he expressed his lasting affection for the country in everything he said and wrote.

Sue Flanagan, having read every available word by and about Houston and having followed the trail of every trip he made in Texas, here presents the Texas which Houston knew—through his picturesque language and through the camera's carefully focused lens. Her story provides continuity for Houston's activities and perspective for her photographs; it also provides an expression of Houston's views in his own forthright and emphatic manner.

But the essence of this book is its 113 photographs. The face of Texas east of San Antonio is pictured in all its varied features. With great patience and discernment, Sue Flanagan brought to bear all the skills of her artistic photography to capture the landscapes, buildings, and objects in the most revealing light and in the best atmospheric conditions for catching the appropriate mood. These spots in nature which Houston saw, these objects which he knew, these houses where he was entertained and where he lived—all are tangible reminders of "this colorful, cagey, and controversial man," this Texas hero whose life was a tragedy in divided loyalties.

This biography of Sam Houston goes beyond the romantic frontier life of the "buckskin hero from Tennessee" to examine seriously his role as an American statesman.

Founded in 1919, the Communist Party (CP) in San Francisco survived an ineffectual early period to become a force in the trade union heyday of the 1930s. Robert Cherny uses the lives and careers of more than fifty members to tell the story of the city’s CP from its founding through 1958.

Cherny draws on FBI files, the records of the CP at the Russian State Archive for Social and Political History, interviews, and memoirs to follow male and female party and union leaders, rank-and-file members, and others. His history reveals why people joined the CP while charting the frequent changes in policy, constant member turnover, and disruptive factionalism that limited party aims and successes. Cherny also follows his subjects through their resignations, expulsions, or other reasons for departure and looks at the CP’s influence on their lives in subsequent years.

Vivid and exhaustively researched, San Francisco Reds is a long view account of the personal motivations and activism of an Old Left generation in a West Coast city.

Now back in print with a new introduction by the author, this is the classic study of America's most admired instant city, from its days as a sleepy Mexican village, through the Gold Rush and into its establishment as a major international port. Roger Lotchin examines the urbanizing influences in San Francisco and compares these to other urban centers, doing so against a colorful backdrop of opium dens and other sinful institutions.

Winner, Presidio La Bahia Award, Sons of the Republic of Texas, 1978

In their efforts to assert dominion over vast reaches of the (now U.S.) Southwest in the seventeenth century, the Spanish built a series of far-flung missions and presidios at strategic locations. One of the most important of these was San Juan Bautista del Río Grande, located at the present-day site of Guerrero in Coahuila, Mexico.

Despite its significance as the main entry point into Spanish Texas during the colonial period, San Juan Bautista was generally forgotten until the first publication of this book in 1968. Weddle's narrative is a fascinating chronicle of the many religious, military, colonial, and commerical expeditions that passed through San Juan and a valuable addition to knowledge of the Spanish borderlands. It won the Texas Institute of Letters Amon G. Carter Award for Best Southwest History in 1969.

How do people acquire political consciousness, and how does that consciousness transform their behavior? This question launched the scholarly career of David Montejano, whose masterful explorations of the Mexican American experience produced the award-winning books Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836–1986, a sweeping outline of the changing relations between the two peoples, and Quixote’s Soldiers: A Local History of the Chicano Movement, 1966–1981, a concentrated look at how a social movement “from below” began to sweep away the last vestiges of the segregated social-political order in San Antonio and South Texas. Now in Sancho’s Journal, Montejano revisits the experience that set him on his scholarly quest—“hanging out” as a participant-observer with the South Side Berets of San Antonio as the chapter formed in 1974.

Sancho’s Journal presents a rich ethnography of daily life among the “batos locos” (crazy guys) as they joined the Brown Berets and became associated with the greater Chicano movement. Montejano describes the motivations that brought young men into the group and shows how they learned to link their individual troubles with the larger issues of social inequality and discrimination that the movement sought to redress. He also recounts his own journey as a scholar who came to realize that, before he could tell this street-level story, he had to understand the larger history of Mexican Americans and their struggle for a place in U.S. society. Sancho’s Journal completes that epic story.

Silver winner of the 2023 Midwest Book Award for History 

The story of a fascinating fish and the forward-thinking people who saved them in Wisconsin 

For millennia, sturgeon swam the waterways of Wisconsin. Before the 1800s, an estimated eleven million sturgeon lived in Lake Michigan alone. Menominee and Ojibwe people depended on the fish for food and harvested them sustainably. But in the early 1900s, the lake sturgeon was near extinction. Saving Our Sturgeon tells the remarkable story of lake sturgeon in Wisconsin, the conservation efforts to save the species, and what is being done to keep the population healthy and thriving today.  

Readers will learn about the natural history of the lake sturgeon—its anatomy, behavior, and habitat—and the factors that threatened its survival, from overharvesting to the building of dams that prevented sturgeon from reaching spawning areas. The book, written for young readers aged eleven and up, explains how government agencies, conservationists, and citizen groups worked together to save the sturgeon population in Wisconsin. 

Saving Our Sturgeon includes a chapter about the Menominee Nation’s work to revitalize cultural traditions focused on the sturgeon and restore access to the fish on their reservation. The book also highlights how young people can get involved with sturgeon conservation efforts. 

A great resource for classroom use, Saving Our Sturgeon contains maps, photos, and diagrams, plus a glossary of terms, a timeline of events, a Who’s Who list of individuals and groups featured in the book, and a bibliography that highlights kid-friendly sources to learn more. Young readers will learn basic facts about sturgeon biology, what it means for a species to be threatened or endangered, and how scientists use data to support repopulation. This inspiring book shares a conservation success story about one remarkable (and plenty peculiar) species of fish and shows young readers how they, too, can help protect these incredible creatures.

Winner of the 2026 Western Writers of America Spur Award for Best Western Contemporary Nonfiction
Winner of the 2025 Nature and the Environment National Outdoor Book Award 

“The essential purpose of Saving the Big Sky is to inspire the reader to help conserve even more of Montana,” write Bruce Bugbee, Robert Kiesling, and John Wright in this compelling study of how six million acres of biodiverse land were conserved in Montana over the past fifty years. Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge about land stewardship has evolved and since the 1970s tribes, nonprofit organizations, land trusts, and government agencies have conserved land in many creative ways. Beautifully illustrated with more than ninety color photographs and thirty detailed maps, Saving the Big Sky showcases land conservation achievements across eight regions of the state: the Rocky Mountain Front, the Blackfoot Valley, the Greater Yellowstone, the Missoula Region, the Helena Region, Northwest Montana, the Flathead Indian Reservation, and the American Prairie.

Land protection is shown to work best when large, intact, connected landscapes can be conserved, rather than small, fragmented, isolated parcels. Conservationists have found that landowners in Montana more widely accept conservation easements and other voluntary, financially compensating tools that respect private property rights. The brilliant images and striking before-and-after maps featured here celebrate the ranches, farms, wildlife habitats, and scenic open spaces that are forever safeguarded.

In documenting conservation accomplishments and suggesting what more can be done, Saving the Big Sky invites readers to participate in conserving Montana—or whatever cherished landscape they call home.

Visit the project's website at http://scarletandblack.rutgers.edu

 

A captivating firsthand account of Chicago’s groundbreaking, tumultuous Organic Theater Company.

When the founder of the Organic Theater Company died in 2020, the Chicago Tribune asked, “Did one person invent Chicago theater? If so, it was Stuart Gordon.” And yet, this iconic theater group is arguably the most influential Chicago company whose story has never been fully told. 

In its heyday, from 1969 through 1985, the Organic’s high-spirited, gutsy, and close-knit company created more than thirty idiosyncratic works. A springboard for playwright David Mamet and for the television series ER, it also was formative in the careers of many well-known actors, including Joe Mantegna, André De Shields, Meshach Taylor, and Dennis Franz. Scream! Bleed! Take Off Your Clothes! is the story of a young theater company that always pushed boundaries with an anarchic exuberance. Drawing on extensive interviews and archival research, this insiders’ account, assembled by three Organic members and an artistic associate, details those exciting productions and the company’s complicated internal dynamics, while also positioning the group within Chicago’s vibrant theater scene and the larger culture of the time.