Local History

The Spanish word cimarron, meaning "wild" or "untamed," refers to a region in the southern Rocky Mountains where control of timber, gold, coal, and grazing lands long bred violent struggle. After the United States occupation following the 1846-1848 war with Mexico, this tract of nearly two million acres came to be known as the Maxwell Land Grant. When Cimarron Meant Wild presents a new history of the collision that occurred over the region's resources between 1870 and 1900.

11. september 2001 forsvandt tvillingetårnene i New York sammen med verden, som vi kendte den. En ny global tidsalder begyndte: krigen mod terror. Siden da har Danmark og resten af Vesten jagtet jihadister på tværs af kloden – fra Tora Bora i Afghanistan til Brabrand i Østjylland.

Wyoming attorney John W. Davis retells the story of the West's most notorious range war. Having delved more deeply than previous writers into land and census records, newspapers, and trial transcripts, Davis has produced an all-new interpretation. He looks at the conflict from the perspective of Johnson County residents - those whose home territory was invaded and many of whom the invaders targeted for murder - and finds that, contrary to the received explanation, these people were not thieves and rustlers but legitimate citizens.

Northeast Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley was truly a dark and bloody ground, the site of murders, massacres, and pitched battles. The valley's turbulent history was the product of a bitter contest over property and power known as the Wyoming controversy.

On April 14, 1860, the day Fort Sumter fell to Confederate forces, Washington, D.C. - surrounded by slave states and minimally defended - was ripe for invasion. In The Siege of Washington, John and Charles Lockwood offer a heart-pounding, minute-by-minute account of the first twelve days of the Civil War, when the fate of the Union hung in the balance. The fall of Washington would have been a disaster: it would have crippled the federal government, left the remaining Northern states in disarray, and almost certainly triggered the secession of Maryland.

Lone Star Nation is the gripping story of Texas' precarious journey to statehood, from its early colonization in the 1820s to the shocking massacres of Texas loyalists at the Alamo and Goliad by the Mexican army, from its rough-and-tumble years as a land overrun by the Comanches to its day of liberation as an upstart republic.

In Washington, award-winning author Fergus M. Bordewich turns his eye to the backroom deal making and shifting alliances among our Founding Fathers and in so doing pulls back the curtain on the lives of the slaves who actually built the city.

Hollywood and Christianity often seem to be at war. Indeed, there is a long list of movies that have attracted religious condemnation, from Gone with the Wind with its notorious "damn," to The Life of Brian and The Last Temptation of Christ. But the reality, writes William Romanowski, has been far more complicated - and remarkable. In Reforming Hollywood, Romanowski, a leading historian of popular culture, explores the long and varied efforts of Protestants to influence the film industry.

The Lone Star state has been a subject of pride and admiration for generations of writers. Forever Texas features the works of some of the most memorable men and women who ever lived in Texas. With essays by President George W. Bush, H. Ross Perot, Sam Houston, David Crockett, Stephen F. Austin, Lyndon Baines Johnson and many more.

The gentrification of Brooklyn has been one of the most striking developments in recent urban history. Considered one of the city's most notorious industrial slums in the 1940s and 1950s, Brownstone Brooklyn by the 1980s had become a post-industrial landscape of hip bars, yoga studios, and beautifully renovated, wildly expensive townhouses. In The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn, Suleiman Osman offers a groundbreaking history of this unexpected transformation.

St. Louis, despite its status as an inland river city frequently relegated to the backwaters of national significance, has stood at the crossroads of international matters for much of its history. From its 18th-century French fur trade origins to post-Cold War business dealings with Latin America and Asia, the city has never neglected nor been ignored by the world outside its borders.

Mark Clague brilliantly weaves together the stories of the song and the nation it represents. Examining the origins of both text and music, alternate lyrics and translations, and the song’s use in sports, at times of war, and for political protest, he argues that the anthem’s meaning reflects—and is reflected by—the nation’s quest to become a more perfect union. From victory song to hymn of sacrifice and vehicle for protest, the story of Key’s song is the story of America itself.

Freedom, Land & Community: A History of McLean County Illinois, 1730-1900 tells the story of the diverse peoples and events of this county. Using sources contemporary with the events described, it relates the struggles to build communities and secure freedom - or a freedom as each community defined it. Native peoples, women and men, African Americans, Irish and German immigrants all sought and contested for their freedom. People whose voices have not been heard in previous works about central Illinois are included here.

In 1980, Exxon U.S.A., the world's largest corporation, began development of a five-billion-dollar oil shale industry in the pristine Colorado River Valley. Within eighteen months, Exxon had canceled its elaborate Colony project and 2,100 workers were immediately laid off. Boomtown Blues chronicles the social, environmental, and economic havoc created by one of the most expensive boom and bust cycles in the history of the American West.

Decades of cuts to local government amidst rising concentrations of poverty have wreaked havoc on communities left behind by the modern economy. Forty years after the anti-tax revolution began protecting wealthy taxpayers and their cities, our high-poverty cities and counties have run out of services to cut, properties to sell, bills to defer, and risky loans to take. In The Fight to Save the Town, urban law expert and author Michelle Wilde Anderson offers unsparing, humanistic portraits of the hardships left behind in four such places.

This book tells the story of a time when society was divided and Harvard was becoming what it is today. It is not an exhaustive biography, but it has family information which puts things in perspective, and tells how he and Mather, who were about the same age, lived through the Salem witch trials. Leverett was busy writing logic textbooks in Latin at the time, but didn't dare speak out against the leader of the colony.

This book includes new heartbreaking stories, such as the seven canyoneers in 2015 who all died in a flash flood in Keyhole Canyon, two separate BASE jumping deaths, rock climbing, and flash flood deaths in the Narrows. Zion National Park is home to majestic and wondrous canyons, cliffs, crags, mesas, rivers, and slot canyons. World travelers remain in awe as they drive, walk, hike, and climb into such a unique place that is filled with vibrant, sacred, and mystical energy.

San Francisco today is the poster child for everything that is wrong with America. It’s filthy, narcotics-infested and dangerous. It didn’t used to be this way. In fact, this is the first time that it has been this way. This book reveals exactly how San Francisco has become ruined. It has everything to do with a fundamentally corrupt political machine and underlying philosophy.

A lifetime of moments from the Maine coast to Boston to Capitol Hill. A series of vignettes about saving swimmer's lives, encounters with sharks, John Wayne, cows for tyrants, the FBI/CIA, the KGB, circus clowns, and dental records chicken.

In January 1975, President Gerald Ford signed into law HR 17045 of the Health and Human Services, which gave birth to the Child Support Enforcement Program. This is a federal-state program whose purpose was to help strengthen families by securing financial support for children from their noncustodial parents....