Local History

The story of craft is the story of who we are.Britain has always been a craft land. For generations what we made with our hands defined our families, communities and regions. Craftland brings to life the vanishing skills, traditions and trades that shaped the fabric and governed the rhythms of everyday life in Britain for hundreds of years.Through the stories of often humble-seeming objects of exquisite beauty, precision, utility and meaning, it shows how craft connects us to the land, emerging from local natural materials, and is the material expression of our regional identities and cultures. And through encounters with some of the last remaining master craftspeople at work today - weavers and wheelwrights, coopers and coppice-workers, boat-builders and bell-founders, silversmiths and watch-makers - we glimpse not only our past but another way of life, one that is not yet lost and whose wisdom could yet shape our future.For as long as there are humans, there will be craft, ever evolving in response to changing technologies, environments and communities. Craftland is a celebration of that deeply necessary connection between our creative instincts and the material world we inhabit, revealing a richer and more connected way of living.

The lively story of Reading's music scene in the late 70s and early 80s following the explosion of punk and its DIY attitude. Local bands, venues, record labels, recording studios, technicians, promoters, fanzines, radio and more.

Christina MacDonald MacQueen was born on St Kilda and grew up there at the close of the 19th century. Before the islands' evacuations, she wrote a series of passionate articles about her childhood and the history of the islands. These writings offer a personal and uniquely female perspective on the island's story and its imminent abandonment.

This work is a chronological history of Ayrshire from prehistoric times to the 21st century, including maps of the region. The region was inhabited from earliest times, and many duns, cairns and barrows remain, in some of which important Mesolithic and Iron Age artefacts have been found.

"In the early 1930s, Charlie May Simon, who would come to be known as an author of children's books, moved to the Arkansas Ozarks from New York City to wait out the Great Depression. Straw in the Sun, first published in 1945, is her back-to-the-lander's memoir of homesteading in the hill community where her grandparents had once lived. This memoir not only offers a window into rural life during the Depression but also poignantly hints at the losses that ensued in the war years that followed. This engaging reissue, edited by Aleshia O'Neal, includes a new introduction and an earlier account from Simon about life on the homestead"--

The lost history of Argyll

As a world heritage site and one of the most visited cities in the world, Edinburgh boasts a huge range of building from all periods and in many different styles. In this book, architectural writer Robin Ward introduces 200 of the city's most fascinating places.

This volume reveals how an ordinary American couple, Cimbaline and Henry Fike, wrote their way through struggles that challenged the survival of both their nation and marriage. Drawing on hundreds of letters exchanged between 1862 and 1865, A Union Tested details the lives of an Illinois homemaker and a quartermaster in the Union army and reveals how Civil War correspondence sustained relationships disrupted by war. In his research Jeremy Neely found that such letters became an epistolary bridge that sustained families--wives and husbands, parents and children, brothers and sisters--across the years and miles that stretched between them during the tumult of war. The Fikes' years-long correspondence shows how a fully formed marriage reconstituted itself within the handwritten lines the couple cast across hundreds of miles. Amid the extraordinary circumstances of wartime, writing to one another prompted a remarkable degree of self-reflection and provided for each the space to learn anew about their partners, their country, and themselves.

This volume reveals how an ordinary American couple, Cimbaline and Henry Fike, wrote their way through struggles that challenged the survival of both their nation and marriage. Drawing on hundreds of letters exchanged between 1862 and 1865, A Union Tested details the lives of an Illinois homemaker and a quartermaster in the Union army and reveals how Civil War correspondence sustained relationships disrupted by war. In his research Jeremy Neely found that such letters became an epistolary bridge that sustained families--wives and husbands, parents and children, brothers and sisters--across the years and miles that stretched between them during the tumult of war. The Fikes' years-long correspondence shows how a fully formed marriage reconstituted itself within the handwritten lines the couple cast across hundreds of miles. Amid the extraordinary circumstances of wartime, writing to one another prompted a remarkable degree of self-reflection and provided for each the space to learn anew about their partners, their country, and themselves.

Written by well-known aviation historians Guy Warner and the late Ernie Cromie, this is the first book to reveal the full story of Nutts Corner. It shares the history of the airfield, involving the RAF, RN and USAAF and many early, long-gone airlines such as BEA, Silver City and BKS.

Discusses how Nevada's history has shaped its political culture, and how its government operates today. The Sagebrush State serves as a highly readable and accessible text for the study of Nevada's political history and constitution. This fifth edition is updated to 2017 and includes the full text of the state constitution.

In this high-speed glide through Florida surf culture, Dan Reiter chronicles stories of the sport in a region that has produced some of the world's finest surf champions, Pipe masters, and surfboard builders.

"Voices and Visions: Essays on New Orleans's Literary History examines a rich combination of writers and texts, from antebellum works like Martin R. Delany's novel, Blake, and the poetry of Les Cenelles to Patricia Smith's recent collection of poems, Blood Dazzler. The thirteen essays in Voices and Visions treat two hundred years of literature and include discussions on canonical, contemporary, and experimental writers. Authors often associated with New Orleans such as Kate Chopin, George Washington Cable, and Walker Percy are treated in new ways, as are well-known writers who are not often thought of in relation to the city: Charles Chesnutt, Eudora Welty, Zora Neale Hurston, and Joy Harjo. Examining this wide array of voices demonstrates the myriad ways New Orleans's storied past has affected its present. Scholars find enduring themes-race, gender, religion, disease, art-but do so in the context of emerging conversations. Essayists in the volume address such topics as New Orleans as part of the global South and the Black diaspora, the transformation of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and the recovery of previously lost voices, including those of Native Americans and immigrants. They also discuss the legacy of pandemics and racial violence that in more recent years has been manifest in the COVID-19 outbreak and the Black Lives Matter movement"--

"Voices and Visions: Essays on New Orleans's Literary History examines a rich combination of writers and texts, from antebellum works like Martin R. Delany's novel, Blake, and the poetry of Les Cenelles to Patricia Smith's recent collection of poems, Blood Dazzler. The thirteen essays in Voices and Visions treat two hundred years of literature and include discussions on canonical, contemporary, and experimental writers. Authors often associated with New Orleans such as Kate Chopin, George Washington Cable, and Walker Percy are treated in new ways, as are well-known writers who are not often thought of in relation to the city: Charles Chesnutt, Eudora Welty, Zora Neale Hurston, and Joy Harjo. Examining this wide array of voices demonstrates the myriad ways New Orleans's storied past has affected its present. Scholars find enduring themes-race, gender, religion, disease, art-but do so in the context of emerging conversations. Essayists in the volume address such topics as New Orleans as part of the global South and the Black diaspora, the transformation of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and the recovery of previously lost voices, including those of Native Americans and immigrants. They also discuss the legacy of pandemics and racial violence that in more recent years has been manifest in the COVID-19 outbreak and the Black Lives Matter movement"--