A candid, courageous portrait of the South as told by a writer unafraid to confront its heat, its history, and its humanity.Clarence Cason belonged to that restless generation of southern intellectuals who, between the world wars, questioned the South's stubborn traditionalism, even as they tried to explain and defend its distinctiveness. From his professorial perch at The University of Alabama, Cason wrote polished essays for leading national publications...

Forget Doris Day singing on the stagecoach. Forget Robin Weigert’s gritty portrayal on HBO’s Deadwood. The real Calamity Jane was someone the likes of whom you’ve never encountered. That is, until now.This book is a definitive biography of Martha Canary, the woman popularly known as Calamity Jane. Written by one of today’s foremost authorities on this notorious character, it is a meticulously researched account of how an alcoholic prostitute was transformed into a Wild Wes...

More than five decades have passed since Jane Jacobs wrote her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and since a front page headline in the New York Times read, "Cars Choking Cities as 'Urban Sprawl' Takes Over." Yet sprawl persists, and not by mistake. It happens for a reason. As an activist and a scholar, Benjamin Ross is uniquely placed to diagnose why this is so. Dead End traces how the ideal of a safe, green, orderly retreat where hardworking ...

What did New York look like four centuries ago? An extraordinary reconstruction of a wild island from the forests of Times Square to the wetlands downtown.Named a Best Book of the Year by Library Journal , New York Magazine , and San Francisco ChronicleOn September 12, 1609, Henry Hudson first set foot on the land that would become Manhattan. Today, it's difficult to imagine what he saw, but for more than a decade, landscape ecolo...

     Richard Dillon, one of California’s premier historians, tells the compelling story of San Francisco’s exotic pre-1906 Chinatown when vicious hoodlum gangs held sway. Chinatown, as demonstrated by Dillon’s fast-paced narrative, became a cauldron of chaos teeming with thugs, prostitutes, gamblers, and warlords preying on scores of helpless victims. .      As the Tong Wars ripped through San Francisco’s Chinatown, the Chinese inhabitants li...

     The robberies on the road to Yosemite during the early 1900s were unique for several reasons. Despite the lack of money involved, the number of coaches and passengers robbed at one time, coupled with the fact that the bandits were never apprehended, were reason enough to be remembered.        Even more important, however, was the fact that one of the holdups was actually photographed. This singular event was perhaps a fittin...

How - and why - did one of the world's greatest cities come to be teetering on the edge of bankruptcy? Ken Auletta, writer for THE NEW YORKER and columnist for THE DAILY NEWS, shows how the decline of New York City was partly inevitable --- the result of shifting migration patterns and rapidl technological innovations --- and partly caused by anarchic political and economic factions, each angling for its own advantage. His lucid examination also pinpoints the core of New Y...

This short piece is a look inside working and some of the inmates of the Work-House on Blackwell's Island in New York City during the Mid 19th century. The work-house was filled with the poor and the petty criminals. The Penitentiary was filled with the big time criminals.

Topics Include:HistorySedona SchneblyGeologyClimateOak Creek CanyonIndian InvolvementArts and CultureMetaphysical CommunitySedona's Famous VortexesUFOs Over SedonaNative Trees and PlantsNative Wild Animals and BirdsFlowersRock ClimbingHikingCampingBackcountry ToursClubs and ChurchesRestaurants, Mote...

From woolly mammoths, through wolves and mountain lions, to the largest elk herd in the East. It begins in the heat of the tropics and continues through Ice Age Pennsylvania, from "King Coal" to Marcellus Shale. It is a story of Native Americans, pioneers and immigrants struggling for survival. Warriors, patriots, murderers and terrorists are all part of the history of a small town in Northcentral Pennsylvania. It is a unique story of men and women carving a home out of the wilderness, yet...

Across the Plains to Colorado and A Stage Ride to Colorado, two first person accounts, showcase the beauty and troubles of travel across the American continent in the mid 19th century.

Winner, Texas Reference Source Award, Reference Round Table, Texas Library Association, 2003T.R. Fehrenbach Award, Texas Historical Commission, 2004Since the early 1700s, women of Spanish/Mexican origin or descent have played a central, if often unacknowledged, role in Texas history. Tejanas have been community builders, political and religious leaders, founders of organizations, committed trade unionists, innovative educators, astute businesswomen, experien...