Going Down the Ocean, A Brief History of Ocean City, Maryland will chronicle the long and colorful history of Maryland's premier ocean resort. Beginning with the visit of the explorer Giovanni da Verrazano, this book will examine the arrival of Asssateague's famous ponies, visits by Blackbeard and other pirates, the birth of Steven Decatur, and brave soldiers who fought in the Civil War. After Ocean City was founded in the late 19th century, the resort became a mecca for vacationers, who enjoyed the surf and sand along side the pound fishermen who worked their nets a short distance off shore. During the 20th century, Ocean City witnessed the arrival of the automobile, bootleggers, and German submarines. Following the Second World War, Bobby Baker, confidant to Lyndon Johnson, built a motel on the barren dunes to the north and helped ignite the condominium boom that saw Ocean City grow all the way to the Delaware line.

This book provides new and exciting interpretations of Helen Keller's unparalleled life as "the most famous American woman in the world" during her time, celebrating the 141st anniversary of her birth. Helen Keller: A Life in American History explores Keller's life, career as a lobbyist, and experiences as a deaf-blind woman within the context of her relationship with teacher-guardian-promoter Anne Sullivan Macy and overarching social history. The book tells the dual story of a pair struggling with respective disabilities and financial hardship and the oppressive societal expectations set for women during Keller's lifetime. This narrative is perhaps the most comprehensive study of Helen Keller's role in the development of support services specifically related to the deaf-blind, as delineated as different from the blind. Readers will learn about Keller's challenges and choices as well as how her public image often eclipsed her personal desires to live independently. Keller's deaf-blindness and hard-earned but limited speech did not define her as a human being as she explored the world of ideas and wove those ideas into her writing, lobbying for funds for the American Federation for the Blind and working with disabled activists and supporters to bring about practical help during times of tremendous societal change. Presents well-researched, factual material in an easy-to-understand writing style about a complex, iconic American woman, Helen Keller, who inspired generations of people worldwide because of her lifelong quest for knowledge and her ability to communicate ideas despite being deaf-blind Humanizes and demonstrates the diversity of the deaf-blind community, which has historically been the smallest minority in the United States at less than 1% of the population Positions Keller in the panorama of American history, economics, politics, and popular culture, challenging the existing narrative created by her teacher-guardian-promoter Anne Sullivan Macy Re-envisions Keller within the world of ideas where she experienced and expressed individuality through dialogs constructed from her writings and the work of those who informed her thinking Includes 10 images that provide an intimate look into Keller's personal and public life

Founded by a small band of religious freedom seekers in 1639, Newport, Rhode Island, subsequently became a bustling colonial seaport teeming with artists, sailors, prosperous merchants and, perhaps most distinctively, the ultra-rich families of the Gilded Age. Clinging to the lavish coattails of these newly minted millionaires and robber barons was a stream of con artists and hangers-on who attempted to leech off their well-to-do neighbors. From the Vanderbilts to the Dukes, the Astors to the Kennedys, the City by the Sea has served as a sanctuary for the elite--and a hotbed of corruption. Local historian Larry Stanford pulls back the curtain on over 350 years of history, uncovering the real stories behind many of Newport's most enduring mysteries, controversial characters and scintillating scandals.

In the lively neighborhood of Fort Greene in downtown Brooklyn, Native Americans and early Dutch and British settlers were largely agrarian. Over time, the neighborhood sprouted into an energetic enclave in which multiple ethnicities thrive today. From the East River's Wallabout Bay, a navy yard grew into a mass of floating arsenals, including the USS Missouri, aboard which the Japanese surrendered in World War II. Mole holes were dug out beneath Fort Greene to serve as transit ways to greater New York. The 20th century brought a variety of arts, such as the Brooklyn Academy of Music, featuring the likes of Enrico Caruso, Isadora Duncan, Paul Robeson, and Rudolph Nureyev. Popular arts equally flourished as vaudeville merged into cinema and jazz and rock ricocheted out of the Fox and Paramount.

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AN NPR CONCIERGE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR "In her form-shattering and myth-crushing book....Coe examines myths with mirth, and writes history with humor... [You Never Forget Your First] is an accessible look at a president who always finishes in the first ranks of our leaders." -Boston Globe Alexis Coe takes a closer look at our first--and finds he is not quite the man we remember Young George Washington was raised by a struggling single mother, demanded military promotions, caused an international incident, and never backed down--even when his dysentery got so bad he had to ride with a cushion on his saddle. But after he married Martha, everything changed. Washington became the kind of man who named his dog Sweetlips and hated to leave home. He took up arms against the British only when there was no other way, though he lost more battles than he won. After an unlikely victory in the Revolutionary War cast him as the nation's hero, he was desperate to retire, but the founders pressured him into the presidency--twice. When he retired years later, no one talked him out of it. He left the highest office heartbroken over the partisan nightmare his backstabbing cabinet had created. Back on his plantation, the man who fought for liberty must confront his greatest hypocrisy--what to do with the men, women, and children he owns--before he succumbs to death. With irresistible style and warm humor, You Never Forget Your First combines rigorous research and lively storytelling that will have readers--including those who thought presidential biographies were just for dads--inhaling every page.

Andre Laurendeau was the most widely respected French-Canadian nationalist of his generation. The story of his life is to a striking degree also the story of French-Canadian nationalism from the 1930s to the 1960s, that period of massive societal change when Quebec evolved from a traditional to a modern society. The most insightful intellectual voice of the nationalist movement, he was at the tumultuous centre of events as a young separatist in the 1930s; an anti-conscription activist and reform-minded provincial politician in the 1940s; and an influential journalist, editor of the Montreal daily Le Devoir, in the 1950s. At the same time he played an important role in Quebec's cultural life both as a novelist and playwright and as a well-known radio and television personality. In tracing his life story, this biography sheds indispensable light not only on the development of Laurendeau's own nationalist thought, but on his people's continuing struggle to preserve the national values that make them distinct.

Unitarians established a church in the nation's capital in 1821, and the first Universalist sermon in Washington was presented at city hall in 1827. Since these beginnings, Washington-area Unitarians and Universalists have created congregations that affirm ideals of religious liberalism: a commitment to religious freedom, a reasoned approach to faith, a hopeful view of human capacities to create a better world, and the belief that God is most authentically known as love. Images of America: Unitarians and Universalists of Washington, D.C. features prominent figures such as Robert Little, an English Unitarian who fled his native land and became minister of First Unitarian Church of Washington; political rivals John Quincy Adams and John C. Calhoun, both founding members of the congregation; and Clara Barton, who organized the American Red Cross after her experiences on the battlefields during the Civil War. In 1961, Unitarians and Universalists joined together, and the story continues as Unitarian Universalists interpret the values of religious liberalism for each new generation.

Following World War II, Puerto Ricans moved to New York in record numbers and joined a community of compatriots who had emigrated decades before or were born in diaspora. In a series of vivid images, Pioneros II: Puerto Ricans in New York City 1948-1998 brings to life their stories and struggles, culture and values, entrepreneurship, and civic, political, and educational gains. The Puerto Rican community's long history and achievements opened pathways for the city's newer Latino immigrant communities.

South Carolina's Indian-American governor Nikki Haley recently dismissed one of her principal advisors when his membership to the ultra-conservative Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) came to light. Among the CCC's many concerns is intermarriage and race mixing. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, in 2001 the CCC website included a message that read "God is the one who divided mankind into different races.... Mixing the races is rebelliousness against God. " Beyond the irony of a CCC member working for an Indian-American, the episode reveals America's continuing struggle with race, racial integration, and race mixing. The Color Factor shows that the emergent twenty-first-century recognition of race mixing and the relative advantages of light-skinned, mixed-race people represents a "back to the future " moment--a re-emergence of one salient feature of race in America that dates to its founding. Each chapter addresses from a historical perspective a topic in the current literature on mixed-race and color. The approach is economic and empirical, but the text is accessible to social scientists more generally. The historical evidence concludes that we will not really understand race until we understand how American attitudes toward race were shaped by race mixing.

The nineteenth-century middle-class ideal of the married woman was of a chaste and diligent wife focused on being a loving mother, with few needs or rights of her own. The modern woman, by contrast, was partner to a new model of marriage, one in which she and her husband formed a relationship based on greater sexual and psychological equality. In Making Marriage Modern, Christina Simmons narrates the development of this new companionate marriage ideal, which took hold in the early twentieth century and prevailed in American society by the 1940s.
The first challenges to public reticence to discuss sexual relations between husbands and wives came from social hygiene reformers, who advocated for a scientific but conservative sex education to combat prostitution and venereal disease. A more radical group of feminists, anarchists, and bohemians opposed the Victorian model of marriage and even the institution of marriage. Birth control advocates such as Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger openly championed women's rights to acquire and use effective contraception. The "companionate marriage" emerged from these efforts. This marital ideal was characterized by greater emotional and sexuality intimacy for both men and women, use of birth control to create smaller families, and destigmatization of divorce in cases of failed unions. Simmons examines what she calls the "flapper" marriage, in which free-spirited young wives enjoyed the early years of marriage, postponing children and domesticity. She looks at the feminist marriage in which women imagined greater equality between the sexes in domestic and paid work and sex. And she explores the African American "partnership marriage," which often included wives' employment and drew more heavily on the involvement of the community and extended family. Finally, she traces how these modern ideals of marriage were promoted in sexual advice literature and marriage manuals of the period.
Though male dominance persisted in companionate marriages, Christina Simmons shows how they called for greater independence and satisfaction for women and a new female heterosexuality. By raising women's expectations of marriage, the companionate ideal also contained within it the seeds of second-wave feminists' demands for transforming the institution into one of true equality between the sexes.

In 1923, Kansas governor Johnathan Davis traveled to Hutchinson to dedicate Emerson Careyas new rock salt mine whose shaft provided access to an ancient salt bed 650 feet under the earthas surface. The Carey Salt Mine, advertised as athe most modern in the world, a served as a companion to Careyas already-existing evaporation plants. Miners used the newest technology to blast and crush the mineral into gravel and haul it to the surface to provide rock salt for livestock, industries, and roads. Throughout the 20th century, thousands visited Careyas mining operations. Ever since the day Governor Davis presided over the opening ceremony, the Carey Salt Mine has served as a landmark for Hutchinson and helped shape its identity as athe Salt City.a

Redwood Cityas slogan, aClimate Best By Government Test, a describes the fair weather at San Mateo Countyas seat, which was established in 1851 as the bayside terminus for the peninsulaas lumber industry. Wharfs located along Redwood Creek formed the basis of the townas commercial district, and in the 20th century, the cityas port expanded with new industries, such as the Pacific-Portland Cement Company, the Morgan Oyster Company, and Leslie Salt. Meanwhile, Redwood Cityas downtown area hosted many civic events, numerous theaters, and the regionas largest retail district. In the 1950s, the city grew along Woodside Road and, soon thereafter, when Redwood Shores was added to its boundaries, expanded north. Today Redwood City has come full circle with a revitalized downtown and a beautifully restored courthouse square.

Before the advent of roads in western Washington, steamboats of the Mosquito Fleet swarmed all over Puget Sound. Sidewheelers, stern-wheelers, and propeller-driven, they ranged from the tiny 40-foot Marie to the huge 282-foot Yosemite, and from the famous Flyer to the unknown Leota. Floating stores like the Vaughn and shrimpers like the Violet sailed the same waters as the elegant Great Lakes lady, the Chippewa, and the homely Willie. A few, like the Bob Irving and Blue Star, died spectacularly or, like Major Tompkins, shipwrecked after a short time, while others began new lives as tugboats or auto ferries; some even survive today as excursion boats like the Virginia V. From 1853 to modern car ferries in the 1920s, this volume chronicles the heyday of steamboating--a unique segment of maritime history--from modest launch to sleek liner.

Located in the far northeastern edge of the city, Deanwood is one of Washington, D.C.'s oldest, consistently African American neighborhoods. Rooted in slave-based agriculture on white-owned land, the community began its transition from rural to urban development with the 1871 arrival of a branch of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad along its western boundary. This period after the Civil War offered blacks the opportunity to become landowners. Since this time, many notable Washingtonians of various ethnicities have been residents and frequent visitors to the area. In the early 1920s, it was home to Suburban Gardens, the only permanent amusement park ever to be housed within the city limits. Many of Deanwood's families have lived in the community for generations, which makes it stable and close-knit.

This engaging pictorial history tells of the tall sailing ships that came to the Pacific Northwest beginning in the mid-1700s. Met by native Salish people, the ships brought Spanish, British, Russian, and American explorers, as well as settlers and entrepreneurs, to the region. Over the next two centuries, during boom and bust periods, these majestic vessels have continued to ply the waters of Puget Sound. Today the proud tall ships operate in a training and education rather than commercial context; however, the commitment to preserving and promoting their heritage remains strong within the region, as well as throughout the United States and around the globe. This groundbreaking book features 180 rare photographs and illustrations that chronicle the colorful history of tall ships on Puget Sound.

Black Print Unbound explores the development of the Christian Recorder during and just after the American Civil War. As a study of the official African Methodist Episcopal Church newspaper (a periodical of national reach and scope among free African Americans), Black Print Unbound is thus at once a massive recovery effort of a publication by African Americans for African Americans, a consideration of the nexus of African Americanist inquiry and print culture studies, and an intervention in the study of literatures of the Civil War, faith communities, and periodicals. The book pairs a longitudinal sense of the Recorder's ideological, political, and aesthetic development with the fullest account available of how the physical paper moved from composition to real, traceable subscribers. It builds from this cultural and material history to recover and analyze diverse and often unknown texts published in the Recorder including letters, poems, and a serialized novel-texts that were crucial to the development of African American literature and culture and that challenge our senses of genre, authorship, and community. In this, Black Print Unbound offers a case study for understanding how African Americans inserted themselves in an often-hostile American print culture in the midst of the most complex conflict the young nation had yet seen, and it thus calls for a significant rewriting of our senses of African American-and so American-literary history.