Before MP3 players, DVDs, and video games, before even TV and radio, American children entertained themselves by reading. Often what they read were popular magazines aimed at the whole family; a weekly newspaper such as The Youth's Companion or a monthly magazine like St. Nicholas were about all a turn-of-the-century family could afford. But what these publications afforded was invaluable, and it is this education in imagination and American life that Adventures in the West revisits. Adventures in the West brings together twenty-six stories from The...

It s only a game, Bill Littlefield s National Public Radio program tells us, trying to keep sports in perspective. And for all the deadly serious perspectives of sports commentators and fans, Littlefield s is perhaps the most realistic. It is certainly the most entertaining. Sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, Littlefield s take on the games people play is as refreshing as it is enlightening. From baseball Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett s untimely death, to pickup soccer games among misfit high-schoolers, to the most obscure nicknames and unusual mascots in college sports, the book collects...

Americana music isn't just a musical form--it's a state of mind. In this book, Monte Dutton charts the coordinates of this state of mind with a series of interviews and intimate portraits from the heart of alternative country, often known to its adherents simply as OKOM: Our Kind of Music. In places such as Austin and Nashville, Las Vegas and Key West, Dutton finds the voices of the genre that the Americana Music Association defines as "American roots music based on the traditions of country." True to the Roots profiles Grammy-nominated performers (such as Brad Paisley and Pat Green) as well...

Lewis and Clark on the Great Plains is an easy-to-use reference on the wildlife that Meriwether Lewis and William Clark encountered during their 1804-6 Corps of Discovery expedition. More than one hundred animals and plants that were first carefully described and in some cases discovered by Lewis and Clark are identified here. More than accounts of the regional flora and fauna, Lewis and Clark on the Great Plains examines the lasting importance of the expedition's discoveries, the significance of the Plains plants and animals to local Native Americans, and the current status of...

From its birth as interdependent towns on the Missouri River frontier to its emergence as a metropolis straddling two states, Omaha Council Bluffs has been one of the great urban construction projects in the nation s history. Upstream Metropolis provides the first comprehensive history of this unique urban region that ranks 60th among the 370 major metropolitan areas in the United States. Drawing on local newspapers and historical archives, the authors deliver an anecdote-rich account of how and why a large metropolitan area developed in this spot. They also explain why it grew so big...

In 1942 German Nazis and Polish collaborators drove nine-year-old Naomi Rosenberg and her family from the town of Goray, Poland, and into hiding. For nearly two years they were forced to take refuge in a crawl space beneath a barn. In this tense and moving memoir, the author tells of her terror and confusion as a child literally buried alive. Her family owed their survival to the reluctant and constantly wavering support of the barn owners, gentiles torn between compassion for Naomi's family and fear of a Nazi death sentence if the family was discovered. Naomi Samson lives in Baltimore....

The gruesome story of the devastation of buffalo herds in the late nineteenth century has become uncomfortably familiar. A less familiar story, but a hopeful one for the future, is Ken Zontek's account of Native peoples' efforts to repopulate the Plains with a healthy, viable bison population. Interspersing scientific hypothesis with Native oral traditions and interviews, Buffalo Nation provides a brief history of bison and human interaction from the Paleolithic era to present preservation efforts. Zontek's history of bison restoration efforts is also a history of North American Native...