Receive our Memories is a rare study of an epistolary relationship for individuals whose migration from Mexico has been looked at en masse, but not from such a personal and human angle. The heart of the book consists of eighty translated and edited versions of letters from Luz Moreno, a poor, uneducated Mexican sharecropper, to his daughter, a recent emigre to California, in the 1950s. These are contextualized and framed in light of immigration and labor history, the histories of Mexico and the United States in this period, and family history. Although Moreno's letters include many of the affective concerns and quotidian subject matter that are the heart and soul of most immigrant correspondence, they also reveal his deep attachment to a wider world that he has never seen. They include extensive discussions on the political events of his day (the Cold War, the Korean War, the atomic bomb, the conflict between Truman and MacArthur), ruminations on culture and religion (the role of Catholicism in the modern world, the dangers of Protestantism to Mexican immigrants to the United States), and extensive deliberations on the philosophical questions that would naturally preoccupy the mind of an elderly and sick man: Is life worth living? What is death? Will I be rewarded or punished in death? What does it mean to live a moral life? The thoughtfulness of Moreno's meditations and quantity of letters he penned, provide historians with the rare privilege of reading a part of the Mexican national narrative that, as Mexican author Elena Poniatowska notes, is usually "written daily, and daily erased."

For twenty-six straight seasons from 1978 to 2003 Mount Saint Charles Academy captured the hearts of its fans and the state s high school hockey championship. Attributing the streak to a near-mystical force called Mount Pride, beloved coach Bill Belisle and his team have built the most successful hockey program in Rhode Island. In the thrilling 2013 season, they recaptured the Mount glory as state champions. Yet the high school hockey team is much more than its wins and losses it s a culture and a family. Beginning with the earliest days when Rhode Island s four-team league took to the frozen ponds with tree branches serving as rudimentary hockey sticks, author Bryan Ethier chronicles the history of the MSC Flying Frenchmen. Join Ethier as he takes to the ice with the great games, the star players and the unforgettable moments to tell the remarkable story of Mount Saint Charles Hockey.

In the 1840s, land west of the Missouri River was a new frontier for courage, adventure, freedom and true grit. During this era and the decades that followed, Utah became the focal point for many brave settlers yearning for a new way of life. While Utah's proud Mormon legacy is well documented, there are lesser-known stories that contribute to the state's fascinating history. Join public historian, author and history columnist Eileen Hallet Stone for a look into the state's forgotten past as she presents a revelatory collection of tales culled from her popular "Salt Lake Tribune" "Living History" column. From newly freed slaves, early suffragists, desert farmers and union men to railroad kings, cattle barons, influential statesmen and more, this is "Hidden History of Utah."

Roger Williams purchased the fertile Aquidneck Island from the Narragansett tribe in 1637. It was here that Anne Hutchinson, along with William Coddington and other colonists who had been banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, found shelter from persecution. The intrepid dissenters of Rhode Island Colony saw their community flourish with the founding of Portsmouth and Newport townships. The Battle of Rhode Island was the only clash between American colonials and the British on Rhode Island soil during the Revolutionary War. From the mercantile success of the Atlantic triangle trade routes to the establishment of the United States Navy, noted historian Richard V. Simpson brings these and other stories from the Ocean State to life. Join Simpson as he explores the landmarks and architecture of the period to discover the remnants of Rhode Island's colonial past.

Route 66 is no longer the main thoroughfare between Chicago and St. Louis, but if local lore is to be believed, ghostly traffic along the Mother Road continues unabated. Janice Tremeear chases down accounts of a man executed for witchcraft, the demon baby of Hull House and the secrets of H.H. Holmes's "Murder Castle." Native American legends place the piasa bird in the skies above the highway's southern stretch with the same insistence that characterize contemporary UFO sightings in the north. In between, spirits such as Resurrection Mary join the throng of hapless souls wandering the roadside of the Prairie State's most famous byway.

Long before the era of the foodie, the little coal-mining town of Krebs set the standard for celebrating food in Oklahoma. Its reputation as the Sooner State's Little Italy began in the mid-1870s when Italian immigrants chased the coal boom to Pittsburg County, deep in the heart of the Choctaw Nation. After 150 years, Italians and Choctaw neighbors are now bound by pasta, homemade cheeses and sausages and native beer once brewed illegally in basement bathtubs and delivered by children from door to door. Stop by for a steak at GiaComo's, a Choc at Pete's Place, lamb fries at the Isle of Capri, gnocchi at Roseanna's or a gourd of caciocavallo at Lovera's--venues that have proven impervious to time and hardship. Join Food Dude Dave Cathey on a tour through this colorful and delicious history.

Many Americans are familiar with Thomas Edison's "invention factory" in Menlo Park, where he patented the phonograph, the light bulb and more than one thousand other items. Yet many other ideas have grown in the Garden State, too--New Jerseyans brought sound and music to movies and built the very first drive-in theater. In addition to the first cultivated blueberry, tasty treats like ice cream cones and M&Ms are also Jersey natives. Iconic aspects of American life, like the batting cage, catcher's mask and even professional baseball itself, started in New Jersey. Life would be a lot harder without the vacuum cleaner, plastic and Band-Aids, and many important advances in medicine and surgery were also developed here. Join author Linda Barth as she explores groundbreaking, useful, fun and even silly inventions and their New Jersey roots.

If there's any place in Chicago that's been all things to all men, it has to be the corner of the city that is occupied by Edgewater and Uptown. Babe Ruth and Mahatma Gandhi found a place of refuge at the Edgewater Beach Hotel, but the locale has also been a sanctuary for Appalachian coal miners and Japanese Americans released from internment camps. Al Capone reportedly moved booze through a secret tunnel connecting the Green Mill and the Aragon Ballroom, "Burglar Cops" moonlit out of the Summerdale police station and a "Kitchen Revolt" by some not-very-ordinary housewives sent once-invulnerable machine ward boss Marty Tuchow on his way to Club Fed. Ferret out the hidden history of Uptown and Edgewater with veteran beat reporter Patrick Butler in this curio shop of forgotten people and places.

Cape May began as Cape May Island, where families journeyed to enjoy wide white beaches and gentle surf during the early nineteenth century. With the advent of steamships and railroads, the quiet village soon became America's first seaside resort town. Despite its charm and elegance, visitors slowed in the 1880s, as a series of mysterious fires claimed some of its most beloved structures. As the twentieth century dawned, Cape May's failure to modernize ultimately became its salvation. By the 1960s, visitors were once again flocking to this seaside destination to enjoy its quaint Victorian charm. Experience the elegant Chalfonte Hotel, stately Congress Hall and the classic Cape May Boardwalk with local historian Emil Salvini.

The DeAutremont brothers were looking for a big score. They brought dynamite, guns and a getaway car. On October 11, 1923, at the summit of the Siskiyou Mountains in southern Oregon, the three young men held up a passenger train, with disastrous consequences. Their rash actions resulted in the tragic deaths of three Southern Pacific trainmen and one U.S. Mail clerk, unleashing a public outcry that still rings through Oregon's history. In this riveting account, rail historian Scott Mangold draws on interviews, in-depth research and previously unpublished maps and photographs to document the events at Tunnel 13. Join Mangold as he chronicles the resulting four-year manhunt and eventual conviction of the DeAutremonts and provides insight into the lives derailed by the robbery's bitter legacy.

It is the most famous speech Lincoln ever gave, and one of the most important orations in the history of the nation. Delivered on November 19, 1863, among the freshly dug graves of the Union dead, the Gettysburg Address defined the central meaning of the Civil War and gave cause for the nation's incredible suffering. The poetic language and moral sentiment inspired listeners at the time, and have continued to resonate powerfully with groups and individuals up to the present day. What gives this speech its enduring significance? This collection of essays, from some of the best-known scholars in the field, answers that question. Placing the Address in complete historical and cultural context and approaching it from a number of fresh perspectives, the volume first identifies how Lincoln was influenced by great thinkers on his own path toward literary and oratory genius. Among others, Nicholas P. Cole draws parallels between the Address and classical texts of Antiquity and John Stauffer considers Lincoln's knowledge of the King James Bible and Shakespeare. The second half of the collection then examines the many ways in which the Gettysburg Address has been interpreted, perceived, and utilized in the past 150 years. Since 1863, African Americans, immigrants, women, gay rights activists, and international figures have invoked the speech's language and righteous sentiments on their respective paths toward freedom and equality. Essays include Louis P. Masur on the role the Address played in eventual emancipation; Jean H. Baker on the speech's importance to the women's rights movement; and Don H. Doyle on the Address's international legacy. Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg in a defining moment for America, but as the essays in this collection attest, his message is universal and timeless. This work brings together the foremost experts in the field to illuminate the many ways in which that message continues to endure.

In this cultural and intellectual history, David Burns contends that the influence of biblical criticism in America was more widespread than previously thought. Burns proves this point by uncovering the hidden history of the radical historical Jesus, a construct created and sustained by freethinkers, feminists, socialists and anarchists during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. The result of this exploration is a new narrative revealing that Cyrenus Osborne Ward, Caroline Bartlett, George Herron, Bouck White, and other radical religionists had an impact on the history of religion in America rivaling that of recognized religious intellectuals such as Shailer Mathews, Charles Briggs, Francis Peabody, and Walter Rauschenbusch. The methods and approaches utilized by radical religionists were different from those employed by elite liberal divines, however, and part of a larger struggle over the relationship between religion and civilization. There were numerous reasons for this conflict, but, as Burns argues, the primary one was that radicals used Ernest Renan's The Life of Jesus to create an imaginative brand of biblical criticism that struck a balance between the demands of reason and the doctrines of religion. Thus, while radical religionists like Robert Ingersoll, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Eugene Debs were secular-minded thinkers who sought to purge Christianity of its supernatural dimensions, they believed the religious imagination that enabled modern day radicals to make common cause with an ancient peasant from Galilee was something wonderful. This provocative blend of reason and religion produced a vibrant countercultural movement that spanned communities, classes, and creeds and makes The Life and Death of the Radical Historical Jesus a book that deserves a wide readership in an era when public intellectuals and politicians on both the left and right draw rigid lines between the secular and the sacred.

University Park is one of Los Angeles's most diverse and historic neighborhoods. Beginning with the founding of the University of Southern California in 1880, the area has hosted two Olympic Games and numerous presidents and been featured as a backdrop for dozens of movies, along with countless other events of cultural and historical significance. Few areas in Southern California boast such a wide variety of historic buildings--residential, educational and commercial--dating to LA's earliest days. With USC as its anchor, University Park thrives as a microcosm of LA's culture, architecture and development from an outpost accumulating settlers into one of the world's great cosmopolitan metropolises. Join author Charles Epting on this historical inventory of University Park's significant moments and lasting legacy.

Named for the famous Spanish explorer who was said to have discovered the Fountain of Youth, Atlanta's Ponce de Leon Avenue began as a simple country road that conveyed visitors to the healing springs that once bubbled along it. Now, as one of Atlanta's major commuter thoroughfares, few motorists realize that the Avenue was a prestigious residential street in Victorian Atlanta, home to mayors and millionaires. An economic turn in the twentieth century transformed the Avenue into a crime-ridden commercial corridor, but in recent years, Atlantans have rediscovered the street's venerable architecture and storied history. Join local historian Sharon Foster Jones on a vivid tour of the Avenue-- from picnics by the springs in hoopskirts, to the Fox Theatre and Atlanta Crackers baseball, and the days when Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable lodged in the esteemed hotels lining this magnificent Avenue.

Winner of an Award of Merit in the Christianity Today Book Awards, History/Biography category
On January 17, 1776, one week after Thomas Paine published his incendiary pamphlet Common Sense, Connecticut minister Samuel Sherwood preached an equally patriotic sermon. "God Almighty, with all the powers of heaven, are on our side," Sherwood said, voicing a sacred justification for war that Americans would invoke repeatedly throughout the struggle for independence.
In Sacred Scripture, Sacred War, James Byrd offers the first comprehensive analysis of how American revolutionaries defended their patriotic convictions through scripture. Byrd shows that the Bible was a key text of the American Revolution. Indeed, many colonists saw the Bible as primarily a book about war. They viewed God as not merely sanctioning violence but actively participating in combat, playing a decisive role on the battlefield. When war came, preachers and patriots alike turned to scripture not only for solace but for exhortations to fight. Such scripture helped amateur soldiers overcome their natural aversion to killing, conferred on those who died for the Revolution the halo of martyrdom, and gave Americans a sense of the divine providence of their cause. Many histories of the Revolution have noted the connection between religion and war, but Sacred Scripture, Sacred War is the first to provide a detailed analysis of specific biblical texts and how they were used, especially in making the patriotic case for war. Combing through more than 500 wartime sources, which include more than 17,000 biblical citations, Byrd shows precisely how the Bible shaped American war, and how war in turn shaped Americans' view of the Bible.
Brilliantly researched and cogently argued, Sacred Scripture, Sacred War sheds new light on the American Revolution.

Eerie tales have been part of the city's history from the beginning: Pikes Peak and Cheyenne Mountain are the subjects of several spooky Native American legends, and Anasazi spirits are still seen at the ancient cliff dwellings outside town. In the Old North End neighborhood, the howls of hellhounds ring through the night, and visitors at the Cheyenne Canon Inn have spotted the spirit of Alex Riddle on the grounds for over a century. Henry Harkin has haunted Dead Mans' Canyon since his gruesome murder in 1863, and Poor Bessie Bouton is said to linger on Cutler Mountain, hovering where her body was discovered more than a century ago. Ghost hunter and tour guide Stephanie Waters explores the stories behind "Little London's" oldest and scariest tales.

Chartered by Gov. Benning Wentworth in 1764, Claremont received its name from the English estate of Claremont, home of the Earl of Clare. The town was known in early years for its fertile farmland along the Connecticut River, and mills sprang up along the Sugar River after the War of 1812 and following the formation of the Sunapee Dam Company. Numerous inventions by locals, such as John Tyler's iron turbine waterwheel, an important advance in harnessing waterpower, helped fuel Claremont's evolution from a farming community to a textile mill town. Albert Ball, whose patents included the diamond core drill, revolutionized the mining industry. Once known as the "Shopper's Town," Claremont enjoyed a period of prosperity as the industrial, commercial, and social center of western New Hampshire. Today, still reeling from the loss of industry in recent decades, Claremont is making steps to revitalize itself. The Monadnock Mills Revitalization Project, which brought the Common Man Inn & Restaurant to Claremont, and other projects are helping to once again make the community a travel destination.

Among the most infamous U.S. Supreme Court decisions is Dred Scott v. Sandford. Despite the case's signal importance as a turning point in America's history, the lives of the slave litigants have receded to the margins of the record, as conventional accounts have focused on the case's judges and lawyers. In telling the life of Harriet, Dred's wife and co-litigant in the case, this book provides a compensatory history to the generations of work that missed key sources only recently brought to light. Moreover, it gives insight into the reasons and ways that slaves used the courts to establish their freedom.
A remarkable piece of historical detective work, Mrs. Dred Scott chronicles Harriet's life from her adolescence on the 1830s Minnesota-Wisconsin frontier, to slavery-era St. Louis, through the eleven years of legal wrangling that ended with the high court's notorious decision. The book not only recovers her story, but also reveals that Harriet may well have been the lynchpin in this pivotal episode in American legal history.
Reconstructing Harriet Scott's life through innovative readings of journals, military records, court dockets, and even frontier store ledgers, VanderVelde offers a stunningly detailed account that is at once a rich portrait of slave life, an engrossing legal drama, and a provocative reassessment of a central event in U.S. constitutional history. More than a biography, the book is a deep social history that freshly illuminates some of the major issues confronting antebellum America, including the status of women, slaves, Free Blacks, and Native Americans.

In 1604, when Frenchmen landed on Saint Croix Island, they were far from the first people to walk along its shores. For thousands of years, Etchemins--whose descendants were members of the Wabanaki Confederacy-- had lived, loved and labored in Down East Maine. Bound together with neighboring people, all of whom relied heavily on canoes for transportation, trade and survival, each group still maintained its own unique cultures and customs. After the French arrived, they faced unspeakable hardships, from "the Great Dying," when disease killed up to 90 percent of coastal populations, to centuries of discrimination. They never abandoned Ketakamigwa, their homeland. In this book, anthropologist William Haviland relates the history of hardship and survival endured by the natives of the Down East coast and how they have maintained their way of life over the past four hundred years.

Kemah is the Karankawa Indian word for "wind in the face." In the early 1900s, it was a breezy coastal village where many residents made a living in the fishing or boating industries. From the 1920s to the 1950s, Kemah relied on illegal gambling and bootlegging to survive. After the devastation of Hurricane Carla in 1961, local restaurants rebuilt and became favorites of Houstonians, who enjoyed the seafood and relaxing atmosphere. Because subsidence caused much of Kemah to flood during high tide, a marina was built in 1988 to ease the problem in low-lying areas. Today, the Kemah area has the third largest fleet of recreational boats in America. When older homes were converted into quaint shops, the Kemah Lighthouse Shopping District was formed. In 1997, property on the Clear Creek channel and Kemah bay front was acquired in order to develop the Kemah Boardwalk, one of the top 10 boardwalks in America.