A single farm outside of Frohna, Missouri, affords the opportunity to examine in detail the broad historical roots of one immigrant group-German-and the unique family trees of two representative families-Kaempfe and Koenig-through their ancestors' journeys from Europe to the United States; their acclimation to the New World in St. Louis, southeastern Missouri, and the farmlands of eastern Illinois; their expansion across the land and throughout the decades; and their slow but steady assimilation and loss of Old World ethnic identity. Biographies of the generation born from 1900 to 1930, the...

Two photographers were in the right place at the right time. While Denali National Park is often smothered with clouds and drenched with rain in August, a climatological anomaly placed a narrow ridge of dry warm air across the state of Alaska, bringing clear, mist-free air to the mountains. On a flight-seeing tour of a lifetime, Mary Linda Miller and Carmelo Monti captured in an hour sunlit views that might otherwise require numerous trips to see. From the Talkeetna River to Mount McKinley, with two cameras facing in opposite directions, their images reveal vast expanses of boreal forest,...

Monte Etna, an active volcano laying at the heart of Sicily, dominates the island's landscape and culture. Cities and villages sprung up along its coastline where rocky slopes met the Mediterranean Sea, and most people who lived there eked out hardscrabble lives as farmers or fishermen. By the early twentieth century, while King Victor Emmanuel III ruled Italy, young men often found work as sailors in the king's navy as an alternative. Two of them - Eligio Monte (later Monti) an orphan from Catania and Carmelo Gianino from Augusta - followed that path and eventually emigrated from the island,...