Kategoria BISAC: History >> United States - State & Local - General

From its earliest days, the Virginia landscape has elicited dramatically contradictory descriptions. The sixteenth-century poet Michael Drayton exalted the land as -earth's onely paradise, - while John Smith, in his reports to England, summarized the area around Jamestown as -a miserie, a ruine, a death, a hell.-

Drawing upon both familiar history and lesser-known material from deep geological time through the end of the seventeenth century, Stephen Adams focuses on both the physical changes to the land over time and the changes in the way people viewed Virginia. The Best and Worst...

From its earliest days, the Virginia landscape has elicited dramatically contradictory descriptions. The sixteenth-century poet Michael Drayton exalted the land as -earth's onely paradise, - while John Smith, in his reports to England, summarized the area around Jamestown as -a miserie, a ruine, a death, a hell.-

Drawing upon both familiar history and lesser-known material from deep geological time through the end of the seventeenth century, Stephen Adams focuses on both the physical changes to the land over time and the changes in the way people viewed Virginia. The Best and Worst...

Step off the lush carpet and push through the swinging door of the butler's pantry to enter the bustling realm of domestic workers at Maymont House from 1893 to 1925. In From Morning to Night, Elizabeth O'Leary takes the reader behind the scenes in the opulent mansion of the Richmond multimillionaire James H. Dooley and his wife, Sallie. Drawing upon personal letters, business and government documents, and numerous oral histories of older Richmonders--both black and white--O'Leary examines the parallel and divergent viewpoints of server and served in this Virginia version of...

Located off the coast of Georgia, Cumberland Island was once the retreat of some of America's wealthiest families, most notably the family of Thomas Carnegie, brother of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, and his wife Lucy. The death in 1962 of their last child, Florence Carnegie Perkins, ended the restrictions of a complex family trust arrangement and led to the division of their land among Carnegie descendants. These parties and the other landowners, both old and new, clashed over their conflicting interests in retaining land for personal use, selling to developers, or entrusting parcels to...

In explaining why Lancaster has remained a small but relatively successful community for some twenty decades, Contosta looks at various factors, including location, natural resources, technology, transportation systems, local...

In a nostalgic, yet nimble telling of his boyhood in Flushing, Michigan, Edmund Love notes that he was born into a world that ceased to exist almost as soon as he entered it. "In the first twelve years of my life," he writes, "rural America was swept away as though it has been a picture on a blackboard that had suddenly been erased."

The Situation in Flushing is a humorous portrait of a place and people that have vanished from the American scene. With his unique brand of satire, Love provides sharp and amusing insight into the events and personalities that shaped his...

Michigan's Upper Peninsula was a major destination for Finns during the peak years of migration in the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century. Several Upper Peninsula communities had large Finnish populations and Finnish churches, lodges, cooperative stores, and temperance societies. Ishpeming and Hancock, especially, were important nationally as Finnish cultural centers.

Originally published in Finnish in 1967 by Armas K. E. Holmio, History of the Finns in Michigan, translated into English by Ellen M. Ryynanen, brings the story of the contribution of Finnish...

Metropolitan Detroit is home to one of the largest, most diverse Arab communities outside the Middle East, yet the complex world Arabic-speaking immigrants have created there is barely visible on the landscape of ethnic America. In this volume, Nabeel Abraham and Andrew Shryock bring together the work of twenty-five contributors to create a richly detailed portrait of Arab Detroit. The book goes behind the bulletproof glass in Iraqi Chaldean liquor stores. It explores the role of women in a Sunni mosque and the place of nationalist politics in a Coptic church. It follows the careers of...

The Boys and Girls Republic of Farmington Hills, Michigan, came to life as the Boys Republic during the Progressive Era, when the combined stresses of urbanization, immigration, and poverty left an unprecedented number of children on the streets. It was a time marked both by social change and new thinking about the welfare of children, especially the neglected, delinquent, or abused. Here Gay Zieger tells the story of the remarkable humanitarians and reformers in the Detroit area who offered such children shelter, food, and comfort. Their efforts ultimately evolved into one of the most...

Beyond the Windswept Dunes takes the reader into a world of maritime adventure as it was experienced by the sailors, passengers, rescue workers, shipping magnates, industrialists, and many other people whose livelihoods revolved around Michigan's port city of Muskegon. At one time the leading edge of westward expansion, Muskegon was a place where lumbering and lakers merged and where rails met decks, a place situated midway along the coast of a great and sometimes stormy inland sea. Here Elizabeth Sherman offers both a shipping history and a portrait of the city. The events covered range...

Most information regarding the French Canadians in Michigan concerns those who settled during the French period. However, another significant migration occurred during the industrial period of the nineteenth century, when many French Canadians settled in the Saginaw Valley and on the Keweenaw Peninsula-two regions characteristic of Michigan's economic development in the nineteenth century. The lumber industry of the Saginaw Valley and the copper mines of the Keweenaw Peninsula provided very different challenges to French Canadian settlers as they tried to find ways to adapt to changing...

In 1910, New York City was bursting at the seams as more and more people crowded into a limited supply of housing in the tenement districts of Manhattan and the older areas of Brooklyn. With no outlet for its exploding population, and the burgeoning social problems created by the overwhelming congestion, New York faced a serious crisis which city and state leaders addressed with dramatic measures. In March 1913, public officials and officers of the two existing rapid transit networks shook hands to seal a deal for a greatly expanded subway system which would more than double the size of...

In 1910, New York City was bursting at the seams as more and more people crowded into a limited supply of housing in the tenement districts of Manhattan and the older areas of Brooklyn. With no outlet for its exploding population, and the burgeoning social problems created by the overwhelming congestion, New York faced a serious crisis which city and state leaders addressed with dramatic measures. In March 1913, public officials and officers of the two existing rapid transit networks shook hands to seal a deal for a greatly expanded subway system which would more than double the size of...

New York is the oldest continually occupied city in America, yet its rich history is largely obscured by development. New Yorkers are surrounded by hundreds of place names, from those that survive from Manhattan's earliest days as a Dutch trading post to those that reflect the city's rich colonial, African and immigrant heritage. They provide a veritable encyclopedia of the city's history. Buildings may come and go, but place names are surprisingly durable.

Naming New York is a comprehensive compilation and explanation of the names of Manhattan's streets, alleys, avenues, plazas,...

New York is the oldest continually occupied city in America, yet its rich history is largely obscured by development. New Yorkers are surrounded by hundreds of place names, from those that survive from Manhattan's earliest days as a Dutch trading post to those that reflect the city's rich colonial, African and immigrant heritage. They provide a veritable encyclopedia of the city's history. Buildings may come and go, but place names are surprisingly durable.

Naming New York is a comprehensive compilation and explanation of the names of Manhattan's streets, alleys, avenues, plazas,...

During the Progressive Era, over 150 African American women's clubs flourished in Chicago. Through these clubs, women created a vibrant social world of their own, seeking to achieve social and political uplift by educating themselves and the members of their communities. In politics, they battled legal discrimination, advocated anti-lynching laws, and fought for suffrage. In the tradition of other mothering, in which the the community shares in the care and raising of all its children, the club women established kindergartens, youth clubs, and homes for the elderly.

In Toward a...