Tales of hauntings, strange happenings and other local lore throughout the Sunshine state!

What better locale to consider for spooky happenings than the home of the Salem witch trials? From mysteries at sea to ghosts and unexplained footprints, you'll shiver your way through these mesmerizing tales. Set in the state's historic towns, charming old islands, and sparsely populated backwoods, the stories in this entertaining and compelling collection are great for the whole family.

Conflicts and controversies at home and abroad have led Americans to focus on Islam more than ever before. In addition, more and more of their neighbors, colleagues, and friends are Muslims. While much has been written about contemporary American Islam and pioneering studies have appeared on Muslim slaves in the antebellum period, comparatively little is known about Islam in Victorian America. This biography of Alexander Russell Webb, one of the earliest American Muslims to achieve public renown, seeks to fill this gap.
Webb was a central figure of American Islam during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A native of the Hudson Valley, he was a journalist, editor, and civil servant. Raised a Presbyterian, Webb early on began to cultivate an interest in other religions and became particularly fascinated by Islam. While serving as U.S. consul to the Philippines in 1887, he took a greater interest in the faith and embraced it in 1888, one of the first Americans known to have done so. Within a few years, he began corresponding with important Muslims in India. Webb became an enthusiastic propagator of the faith, founding the first Islamic institution in the United States: the American Mission. He wrote numerous books intended to introduce Islam to Americans, started the first Islamic press in the United States, published a journal entitled The Moslem World, and served as the representative of Islam at the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago. In 1901, he was appointed Honorary Turkish Consul General in New York and was invited to Turkey, where he received two Ottoman medals of merits.
In this first-ever biography of Webb, Umar F. Abd-Allah examines Webb'slife and uses it as a window through which to explore the early history of Islam in America. Except for his adopted faith, every aspect of Webb's life was, as Abd-Allah shows, quintessentially characteristic of his place and time. It was because he was so typically American that he was able to serve as Islam's ambassador to America (and vice versa). As America's Muslim community grows and becomes more visible, Webb's life and the virtues he championed - pluralism, liberalism, universal humanity, and a sense of civic and political responsibility - exemplify what it means to be an American Muslim.

In the 1800s, Tombstone was a rowdy silver-mining camp and the scene of a famous gunfight that enhanced its wicked reputation. When the rich silver mines were tapped out, Tombstone managed to survive and lived up to its motto, "The Town Too Tough to Die." The movie industry enhanced this wild reputation by portraying legendary gunfights at the O.K. Corral--which never actually took place at that location. For many years, the town has used its history to attract visitors by giving them a sense of life in the Old West. This volume includes many of the postcards tourists mailed home depicting romanticized and legendary views of Tombstone.

Dean / The Wine Thief Eloquent Books / Hardcover / 6x9 / 380 pages / $28.95 ISBN: 978-1-60693-325-1 / 1-60693-325-6 Wine, women, and the promises of young dreams fulfilled lure three army buddies on a cross-country excursion from the steps of Washington D.C. to the budding fine wine industry in Napa and Sonoma Valleys. A compelling story detailing the exploits and sexploits of a young American Muslim's journey searching for love, acceptance and self-discovery during the 1960s. "The Wine Thief is an exuberant excursion through the lore and the history of wine in the valleys of Central California...all the intrigue, all the in-fighting and all the romance of families and enemies burn across the pages. The characters sizzle. Ed Dean promises to be an author of note on the American scene for many years." - Rita Cobain Brown, Editor "This book comes at a crucial time in American society. It conveys the true history of the quiet generations of American Muslims that have been here for over a hundred years." Nancy M. Allard, M.A. Language Arts About the Author: Edward Dean grew up in Dearborn and Highland Park, Michigan until being drafted into the army and subsequently into the N.S.A. Having been in sales and marketing for most of his life, Mr. Dean is now semi-retired and spends much of his time writing. His own experiences in the military, traveling throughout the U.S. and Europe, and as a wine enthusiast provided much of the background to his book. Mr. Dean has three books in the works, including a sequel to The Wine Thief.

From Deadwood to Aberdeen, Vermillion to Belle Fourche, the frontier towns of South Dakota were populated by some of the toughest and most dangerous characters in the West. Chief Two Sticks led a starving band of rebels on a desperate path of destruction. Bud Stevens's murder of a cattle king's son rang a death knell for an entire town. And bank robbers Stelle and Bennie Dickinson did their best to become South Dakota's very own Bonnie and Clyde. All these stories and more come to life in Outlaw Tales of South Dakota.

Between 1853 and 1964, on the western shore of what is now the city of Hayward, there existed a small rural community. This pictorial history traces the role that this region, which became known as Russell City, played in the development of the East Bay. Named for Joel Russell, a New England teacher who came to California during the Gold Rush and found success as a judge, political activist, and businessman, Russell City later became a destination point for diverse migrant and immigrant groups including Spaniards, Danes, Germans, Italians, African Americans, and Mexicans. While the economic means of the residents were never great, social riches abounded in the cultural and religious traditions that were practiced. A plan to create an industrial park on Russell City land emerged during the 1950s, and by 1964 the residents and businesses were entirely removed through eminent domain. An annual reunion picnic, begun in 1978, serves as a reminder of the community once built and then tossed to the winds. In the words of the former residents, aThe city may be gone, but the memories live on.a

In The Political Power of Bad Ideas, Mark Schrad uses one of the greatest oddities of modern history--the broad diffusion throughout the Western world of alcohol-control legislation in the early twentieth century--to make a powerful argument about how bad policy ideas achieve international success. His could an idea that was widely recognized by experts as bad before adoption, and which ultimately failed everywhere, come to be adopted throughout the world? To answer the question, Schrad utilizes an institutionalist approach and focuses in particular on the United States, Sweden, and Russia/the USSR.
Conventional wisdom, based largely on the U.S. experience, blames evangelical zealots for the success of the temperance movement. Yet as Schrad shows, ten countries, along with numerous colonial possessions, enacted prohibition laws. In virtually every case, the consequences were disastrous, and in every country the law was ultimately repealed. Schrad concentrates on the dynamic interaction of ideas and political institutions, tracing the process through which concepts of dubious merit gain momentum and achieve credibility as they wend their way through institutional structures. He also shows that national policy and institutional environments count: the policy may have been broadly adopted, but countries dealt with the issue in different ways.
While The Political Power of Bad Ideas focuses on one legendary episode, its argument about how and why bad policies achieve legitimacy applies far more broadly. It also extends beyond the simplistic notion that "ideas matter" to show how they influence institutional contexts and interact with a nation's political actors, institutions, and policy dynamics.

The 2008 presidential election made American history. Yet before Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, there were other "historic firsts": Shirley Chisholm, who ran for president in 1972, and Jesse Jackson, who ran in 1984 and 1988. While unsuccessful, these campaigns were significant, as they rallied American voters across various racial, ethnic, and gender groups. One can also argue that they heightened the electoral prospects of future candidates. Can "historic firsts" bring formerly politically inactive people (those who previously saw no connection between campaigns and their own lives) into the electoral process, making it both relevant and meaningful? In Historic Firsts: How Symbolic Empowerment Changes Politics, Evelyn M. Simien makes the compelling argument that voters from various racial, ethnic, and sex groups take pride in and derive psychic benefit from such historic candidacies. They make linkages between the candidates in question and their own understanding of representation, and these linkages act to mobilize citizens to vote and become actively involved in campaigns. Where conventional approaches to the study of American political elections tend to focus on socioeconomic factors, or to study race or gender as isolated factors, Simien's approach is intersectional, bringing together literature on both race and gender. In particular she compares the campaigns of Jackson, Chisholm, Obama and Clinton, and she draws upon archival material from campaign speeches, advertising, and newspaper articles, to voter turnout reports, exit polls, and national surveys to discover how race and gender determined the electoral context for the campaigns. In the process, she reveals the differences that exist within and between various racial, ethnic and sex groups in the American political process at the presidential level.

Dive into the history and significance of Juneteenth! This national holiday marks an important day in United States history. With this nonfiction book, students will learn how enslaved people fought for freedom and what Juneteenth represents in an easy-to-follow way. The book also includes a short fiction piece related to the topic, a glossary, an index, and other useful features. Teach hard history and show students why celebrating Juneteenth is meaningful with this product.