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Books > Humanities > History > American history > General
When the Beatles launched into fame in 1963, they inspired a
generation to pick up an instrument and start a band. Rock and roll
took the world by storm, but one small town in particular seemed to
pump out prominent musicians and popular bands at factory pace.
Many American college towns have their own story to tell when it
comes to their rock and roll roots, but Gainesville's story is
unique: dozens of resident musicians launched into national
prominence, eight inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and
a steady stream of major acts rolling through on a regular basis.
Marty Jourard-himself a member of the chart-topping Motels-looks at
Gainesville through the mid-1960s and 1970s, delving into
individual stories of the musicians, businesses, and promoters that
helped foster innovative, professional music in a small north
Florida town. From Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers to Stephen
Stills and the Eagles' Don Felder and Bernie Leadon, Gainesville
cultivated some of the most celebrated musicians and songwriters of
the time. Music Everywhere brings to light a key chapter in the
history of American rock and roll-a time when music was a way of
life and bands popped up by the dozen, some falling by the wayside,
but others indelibly changing the face of rock and roll. Here is
the story of the people, the town, and a culture that nurtured a
wellspring of talent.
Explore the history of brewing and beer culture in Louisville,
Kentucky.
Discover a wide range of fascinating and bizarre tales from
Wilmington and the surrounding region of North Carolina.
In 1859, the legendary Frank Jones Brewery was founded in
Portsmouth, paving the way for the booming craft beer scene of
today. The surge of budding breweries is bringing exciting styles
and flavors to thirsty local palates and neighborhood bars from the
White Mountains to the seacoast. Join beer scholars and adventurers
Brian Aldrich and Michael Meredith as they explore all of the
tastes New Hampshire beer has to offer. They've scoured the taps at
Martha's Exchange, peeked around the brew house at Smuttynose and
gotten personal with the brewers behind Flying Goose and Moat
Mountain. Discover, pint for pint, the craft and trade of the
state's unique breweries, from the up-and-comers like Earth Eagle
and Schilling to old stalwarts like Elm City and Portsmouth
Brewery.
Perhaps no other area of Utah reflects the state's expansive
diversity as clearly as the Wasatch Front. "Utah Reflections:
Stories from the Wasatch Front" captures the heritage and identity
of this self-defining part of the state. These personal stories are
grounded in the mountains, waters, deserts and cities of a
distinctive geography, from Cache Valley to Salt Lake City to
Provo. Contributors include Lance Larson, Katharine Coles, Phyllis
Barber, Sylvia Torti, Chadd VanZanten, Pam Houston and Terry
Tempest Williams, as well as other exciting established and new
voices. Each piece was thoughtfully selected as part of a sweeping
panorama of cultural history and the traditions of a people bound
to the region to show what makes the Wasatch Front unique,
prosperous and beloved.
Wyoming might be known as the least populous state, but this land
of mountains and prairies is home to enough history to provide an
entertaining footnote for each day of the year. On September 6,
1870, Wyoming was the first state to give women the right to vote,
and on March 1, 1872, Yellowstone became the world's first National
Park. JCPenney opened its doors in Kemmerer on April 14, 1902,
while May 1, 1883, marks Buffalo Bill Cody's very first Wild West
Show. Join Pat Holscher on a day-by-day look at some of the
Equality State's most fascinating factoids.
The Forgotten True Story of America's Daring First Exploration
of the Pacific
Just four years after the Revolutionary War and more than a
decade before Lewis and Clark's expedition, a remarkable--but now
forgotten--plan was hatched along the docks of Boston Harbor. Two
ships carrying the flag of the newly formed United States would be
dispatched in 1787 on a landmark adventure around South America's
Cape Horn and into the largely uncharted waters of the Pacific
Ocean, far past the western edge of the continent. The man chosen
to lead the expedition was Captain John Kendrick, a master
navigator who had made his name as a charismatic privateer during
the Revolution. On the harrowing seven-year voyage that followed,
Kendrick would establish the first American outpost in the remote
Pacific Northwest, sail into a deadly cauldron of intertribal war
in the Hawaiian Islands, wage a single-ship campaign to hold off
advances of the British and Spanish empires, and narrowly escape
capture by samurai in Japan before meeting his own violent and
tragic end thousands of miles from home. Brilliantly brought to
life by historian Scott Ridley, Morning of Fire is a startling
rediscovery of a thrilling lost chapter of American history.
Scratching the Surface: Adventures in Storytelling is a deeply
personal and intimate memoir told through the lens of Harvey
Ovshinsky's lifetime of adventures as an urban enthusiast. He was
only seventeen when he started The Fifth Estate, one of the
country's oldest underground newspapers. Five years later, he
became one of the country's youngest news directors in commercial
radio at WABX-FM, Detroit's notorious progressive rock station.
Both jobs placed Ovshinsky directly in the bullseye of the nation's
tumultuous counterculture of the 1960s and 70s. When he became a
documentary director, Ovshinsky's dispatches from his hometown were
awarded broadcasting's highest honors, including a national Emmy, a
Peabody, and the American Film Institute's Robert M. Bennett Award
for Excellence. But this memoir is more than a boastful trip down
memory lane. It also doubles as a survival guide and an instruction
manual that speaks not only to the nature of and need for
storytelling but also and equally important, the pivotal role the
twin powers of endurance and resilience play in the creative
process. You don't have to be a writer, an artist, or even
especially creative to take the plunge, Ovshinsky reminds his
readers. ""You just have to feel strongly about something or have
something you need to get off your chest. And then find the courage
to scratch your own surface and share your good stuff with
others."" Above all, Ovshinsky is an educator, known for his
passionate support of and commitment to mentoring the next
generation of urban storytellers. When he wasn't teaching
screenwriting and documentary production in his popular workshops
and support groups, he taught undergraduate and graduate students
at Detroit's College for Creative Studies, Wayne State University,
Madonna University, and Washtenaw Community College. ""The thing
about Harvey,"" a colleague recalls in Scratching the Surface, ""is
that he treats his students like professionals and not like newbies
at all. His approach is to, in a very supportive and
non-threatening way, combine both introductory and advanced
storytelling in one fell swoop.
Stevens County was first inhabited by a Paleo-Indian culture that
occupied Kettle Falls along the Columbia River for 9,000 years. A
gathering place for several Salish Indian tribes, the area called
Shonitkwu, meaning "Falls of Boiling Baskets," was an abundant
resource for fishing--specifically salmon. Traveling downriver from
Kettle Falls to the trading post Spokane House in 1811, Canadian
fur trapper David Thompson described the village as "built of long
sheds of 20 feet in breadth" and noted the tribe's ceremonial
dances worshiping the arrival of salmon. In 1829, Fort Colville was
producing large amounts of food from local crops. And in 1934, work
began on the Columbia Dam to generate a much-needed power source
for irrigation from the Columbia River. Upon its completion in
1940, the native tribes gathered one last time, not to celebrate
the return of the salmon but for a "ceremony of tears" on the
salmon's departure.
In 1941, Greer Garson earned an Academy Award nomination for her
portrayal of Fort Worth's Edna Gladney in "Blossoms in the Dust."
All eyes turned toward the small yet mighty Gladney and her fight
for children's rights and adoption reform. Born in 1886, Edna
Gladney was labeled as "illegitimate" from birth and, as an adult,
lobbied for that label's removal from all birth certificates.
During World War I, when many women left the home to work, Edna
opened an innovative daytime nursery to care for the children of
these workingwomen. What became the Gladney Center for Adoption has
changed the lives of families and children the world over. Author
and Gladney parent Sherrie McLeRoy tells Edna's amazing story
alongside the making of the movie that launched Edna and adoption
reform beyond Fort Worth's borders to national recognition.
In one of the greatest engineering feats of his time, Claudius
Crozet led the completion of Virginia's Blue Ridge Tunnel in 1858.
Two centuries later, the National Historic Civil Engineering
Landmark still proudly stands, but the stories and lives of those
who built it are the true lasting triumph. Irish immigrants fleeing
the Great Hunger poured into America resolute for something to call
their own. They would persevere through life in overcrowded
shanties and years of blasting through rock to see the tunnel to
completion. Prolific author Mary E. Lyons follows three Irish
families in their struggle to build Crozet's famed tunnel and their
American dream.
At the turn of the 20th century, the California dream was a
suburban ideal where life on the farm was exceptional. Agrarian
virtue existed alongside good roads, social clubs, cultural
institutions, and business commerce. The California suburban dream
was the ultimate symbol of progress and modernity. California
Dreaming: Boosterism, Memory, and Rural Suburbs in the Golden State
analyzes the growth, promotion, and agricultural colonization that
fed this dream during the early 1900s. Through this analysis, Paul
J. P. Sandul introduces a newly identified rural-suburban type: the
agriburb, a rural suburb deliberately planned, developed, and
promoted for profit. Sandul reconceptualizes California's growth
during this time period, establishing the agriburb as a suburban
phenomenon that occurred long before the booms of the 1920s and
1950s. Sandul's analysis contributes to a new suburban history that
includes diverse constituencies and geographies and focuses on the
production and construction of place and memory. Boosters
purposefully ""harvested"" suburbs with an eye toward direct profit
and metropolitan growth. State boosters boasted of unsurpassable
idyllic communities while local boosters bragged of communities
that represented the best of the best, both using narratives of
place, class, race, lifestyle, and profit to avow images of the
rural and suburban ideal. This suburban dream attracted people who
desired a family home, nature, health, culture, refinement, and
rural virtue. In the agriburb, a family could live on a small home
grove while enjoying the perks of a progressive city. A home
located within the landscape of natural California with access to
urban amenities provided a good place to live and a way to gain
revenue through farming. To uncover and dissect the agriburb,
Sandul focuses on local histories from California's Central Valley
and the Inland Empire of Southern California, including Ontario
near Los Angeles and Orangevale and Fair Oaks outside Sacramento.
His analysis closely operates between the intersections of history,
anthropology, geography, sociology, and the rural and urban, while
examining a metanarrative that exposes much about the nature and
lasting influence of cultural memory and public history upon
agriburban communities.
The first courts handled crimes like lying, idleness and card
playing with punishments that ranged from fines to public whipping
to death by hanging. Constables kept order until Portsmouth's first
police officer took up the shield in 1800. But no force could keep
all crime at bay. The court sentenced the beautiful, educated Ruth
Blay to hanging on shaky evidence that she might have killed her
baby. Business magnate Frank Jones played corrupt politics,
succumbed to extramarital temptations and helped make Water Street
the red-lighted rum hole destination of the eastern seaboard.
Mischievous sailors came into port looking to spend their money,
finding ample opportunity in Portsmouth's bowery bordellos. Retired
Portsmouth police officer David "Lou" Ferland traces the history of
Portsmouth crime and justice from the first courts to today's
award-winning police department.
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