Local History

The untold history of slavery and resistance in California, from the Spanish missions, indentured Native American ranch hands, Indian boarding schools, Black miners, kidnapped Chinese prostitutes, and convict laborers to victims of modern trafficking

"In The Age of the Borderlands, acclaimed historian Andrew C. Isenberg offers a new history of manifest destiny that breaks from triumphalist narratives of US territorial expansion. Isenberg takes readers to the contested borders of Spanish Florida, Missouri, New Mexico, California, Texas, and Minnesota at critical moments in the early to mid-nineteenth century, demonstrating that the architects of American expansion faced significant challenges from the diverse groups of people inhabiting each region. In other words, while the manifest destiny paradigm begins with an assumption of US strength, the government and the agents it dispatched to settle and control the frontier had only a weak presence. Tracing the interconnected histories of Indians, slaves, antislavery reformers, missionaries, federal agents, and physicians, Isenberg shows that the United States was repeatedly forced to accommodate the presence of other colonial empires and powerful Indigenous societies. Anti-expansionists in the borderlands welcomed the precarity of the government's power: The land on which they dwelled was a grand laboratory where they could experiment with their alternative visions for American society. Examining the borderlands offers an understanding not just about frontier spaces but about the nature of the early American state-ambitiously expansionist but challenged by its native and imperial competitors"--

A walking tour of Oxford and Cambridge, showing the main Reformation sites. Includes a Timeline, helpful introduction, and Appendices. It is a unique publication, giving users a good grasp of one of the most pivotal periods in English history.

By challenging the rules of enslavement and, later, pushing the boundaries of free citizenship in North Carolina, Lunsford Lane (1803-79) became a folk hero to many enslaved Southerners, as well as a generation of abolitionists. Author of a unique "slave narrative" and a speaking partner with some of the era's greatest orators, including William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Highland Garnett, William Wells Brown, and Frederick Douglass, Lane became a celebrity who watched as the persona he created gradually faltered and failed him and his family. Yet even as his influence waned, it was still powerful enough to cause many to see him in light of their own purposes: as a fugitive from slavery, an entrepreneur, a Christian minister, and even an abolitionist (an identity he rejected). Lane's enemies also continued their efforts to silence him--a white mob determined to tar and feather him, reformers who saw his contributions to abolition as a threat to their causes, and a neighbor who attempted to set fire to the Lane home while Lunsford and his family slept within.In the first biography of Lunsford Lane based on original and extensive research, Craig Thompson Friend portrays a man who dreamed beyond his enslavement, delivered himself and his family from bondage, and spun a story of his life that brought him lasting freedom and fleeting fame. Friend casts light on Lane's family origins as well as his complex relationships with his wife, parents, children, enslavers, fellow abolitionists, and nation. Lane's story is a biography for our times: a man searching to define life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in a changing American society scarred by contentious politics, economic challenges, class tensions, loss of political rights, and racial violence.

"In the remote community of Elko, Nevada, the Altube brothers and the Garats started fabled ranches in the early 1870s. These hardy citizens created the foundation of a community that still exists today, rooted in the traditions and cultures of American Basque families. Joxe K. Mallea-Olaetxe presents a modern study focused on the post-1970s, when the retired Basque sheepherders and their families became the dominant Americanized minority in the area"--

"Through illustrating the life of Mayor George Moscone, author Lincoln A. Mitchell explores how today's San Francisco came into being. Moscone-through his work in the State Senate, victory in the very divisive 1975 mayor's race, and brief tenure as mayor-was a key figure in the city's evolution. The politics surrounding Moscone's election as mayor, governance of the city, and tragic death are still relevant issues. Moscone was a groundbreaking politician whose life was cut short, but his influence on San Francisco can still be felt today"--

Currently, George Ohr is celebrated as a solitary genius who foreshadowed modern art movements. While an intriguing narrative, this view offers a narrow understanding of the man and his work that has hindered serious consideration. Ellen J. Lippert, in her expansive study of Ohr and his Gilded Age context, counters this fable.

A new history of the Patriot movement before the American Revolution, tracing its origins to reform movements in British politics

Covering everything from the Old Well to the Speaker Ban and more, UNC A to Z is a concise, easy-to-read introduction to the nation's first public university, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Servant of Beauty: Landmarks, Love, and the Unimagined Life of an Unsung New York Hero isthe true story of the interplay between the two all-consuming passions of this unheralded civicchampion: his love of beauty in the public realm that would forever change New York City, andhis love for a younger man that would forever change Bard.

Photographs and stories that explore the people and landscapes of small-town Texas

An in-depth look at Iona's economic and social history during the 18th and 19th centuries.

This is the first book about Iona to span the ages, tracing the population from prehistoric times to the present era.

Jake Morris-Campbell sets out on a pilgrimage from Lindisfarne to Durham Cathedral, exploring thirteen-hundred years of social change and asking what stories the North East can tell about itself in the wake of Christianity and coal. -- .

Walk Her Way New York City is a collection of 10 curated walking tours through New York neighborhoods, each celebrating the city's history and the women that have made their mark here. Authors Jana Mader and Kaitlyn Allen have meticulously researched and traced the city blocks, uncovering important landmarks, events and women's stories, both well-known and forgotten, to create a series of fun and eye-opening walks that connect you to the city that surrounds you. Featuring beautiful illustrated maps and portraits by Aja O'Han, each walk covers a different neighborhood, including Brooklyn Heights and Dumbo, Central Park, Chelsea, Chinatown, East Side, Greenwich Village, Harlem, Midtown, Roosevelt Island, and SoHo. The walks can be done individually or paired together for an ultimate walking history lesson. While some stops along the walks are worth an extended visit, such as a museum, others are marked as “on the way.” All include significant landmarks of women's history, some of them not yet memorialized. The stories and events of famous and lesser-known women come alive within the pages of the book and on each street corner, as readers can walk in the steps of this diverse set of creative women.

Lumberjacks: the men, the myth, and the making of an American legend The folk hero Paul Bunyan, burly, bearded, wielding his big ax, stands astride the story of the upper Midwest—a manly symbol of the labor that cleared the vast north woods for the march of industrialization while somehow also maintaining an aura of pristine nature. This idea, celebrated in popular culture with songs and folktales, receives a long overdue and thoroughly revealing correction in Gentlemen of the Woods, a cultural history of the life and lore of the real lumberjack and his true place in American history. Now recalled as heroes of wilderness and masculinity, lumberjacks in their own time were despised as amoral transients. Willa Hammitt Brown shows that nineteenth-century jacks defined their communities of itinerant workers by metrics of manhood that were abhorrent to the residents of the nearby Northwoods boomtowns, valuing risk-taking and skill rather than restraint and control. Reviewing songs, stories, and firsthand accounts from loggers, Brown brings to life the activities and experiences of the lumberjacks as they moved from camp to camp. She contrasts this view with the popular image cultivated by retreating lumber companies that had to sell off utterly barren land. This mythologized image glorified the lumberjack and evoked a kindly, flannel-wearing, naturalist hero. Along with its portrait of lumberjack life and its analysis of the creation of lumberjack myth, Gentlemen of the Woods offers new insight into the intersections of race and social class in the logging enterprise, considering the actual and perceived roles of outsider lumberjacks and Native inhabitants of the northern forests. Anchored in the dual forces of capitalism and colonization, this lively and compulsively readable account offers a new way to understand a myth and history that has long captured our collective imagination.

In 1973, McComb, Mississippi, emerged from a troubled era of the civil rights movement as a small town ready to move past Jim Crow laws and segregation. Young families began to settle in the southwest Mississippi community, including one such family from Oklahoma, Larry and Pat Hicks, and their two young sons, Clark and Matt. Life in the 1970s and 80s in a quaint Southern hamlet became a breeding ground for stories of wit and charm. In the early 1990s, oldest son Clark married his high school sweetheart. The newlyweds moved eighty miles east to Hattiesburg, a thriving mid-size college town where a new generation of Hicks boys were born and raised. The expanded family in the "Hub City" of southeast Mississippi nestled into the fabric of a rapidly changing Southern culture, where tradition and technology created a fertile environment for storytelling reminiscent of an age long ago. Part memoir, part history, the book consists of short story vignettes sure to entertain all readers, particularly those who have connections to the Magnolia State.