The Olympic Mountains rise up from the sea with moss-draped forests growing right to the water's edge. Glaciers crown steep slopes while alpine meadows and lush valleys teem with elk, deer, cougars, bears, and species known nowhere else on earth. The Olympic National Park was created in 1938 to protect the grandeur of the Olympic Mountains. The rugged coastal area was added in 1953. To further protect this remnant of wild America, Congress designated 95 percent of the park as the Olympic Wilderness in 1988. Today it is recognized as a United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site and one of the most popular wilderness destinations in North America. It is a place that changed the people who would conquer it. Farmers gave up; miners found no riches; loggers reforested. Tourism came early and endures.

The Erie Canal was completed in 1825 and became the backbone of an economic and cultural explosion that defined the image of New York. The canal's development spurred successful industry and a booming economy, sparking massive urban growth in an area that was previously virtually unexplored wilderness. People poured west into this new space, drawn by the ability to ship goods along the canal to the Hudson River, New York City, and the world beyond. Erie Canal is a compilation of 200 vintage images from the Erie Canal Museum's documentary collection of New York's canal system. Vintage postcards depict life and industry along the canal, including not only the Erie itself but also the lateral and feeder canals that completed the state-wide system.

At 7:30 a.m. on June 16, 1944, George Junius Stinney Jr. was escorted by four guards to the death chamber. Wearing socks but no shoes, the 14-year-old Black boy walked with his Bible tucked under his arm. The guards strapped his slight, five-foot-one-inch frame into the electric chair. His small size made it difficult to affix the electrode to his right leg and the face mask, which was clearly too large, fell to the floor when the executioner flipped the switch. That day, George Stinney became, and today remains, the youngest person executed in the United States during the twentieth century.How was it possible, even in Jim Crow South Carolina, for a child to be convicted, sentenced to death, and executed based on circumstantial evidence in a trial that lasted only a few hours? Through extensive archival research and interviews with Stinney's contemporaries-men and women alive today who still carry distinctive memories of the events that rocked the small town of Alcolu and the entire state-Eli Faber pieces together the chain of events that led to this tragic injustice. The first book to fully explore the events leading to Stinney's death, The Child in the Electric Chair offers a compelling narrative with a meticulously researched analysis of the world in which Stinney lived-the era of lynching, segregation, and racist assumptions about Black Americans. Faber explains how a systemically racist system, paired with the personal ambitions of powerful individuals, turned a blind eye to human decency and one of the basic tenets of the American legal system that individuals are innocent until proven guilty. As society continues to grapple with the legacies of racial injustice, the story of George Stinney remains one that can teach us lessons about our collective past and present. By ably placing the Stinney case into a larger context, Faber reveals how this case is not just a travesty of justice locked in the era of the Jim Crow South but rather one that continues to resonate in our own time. A foreword is provided by Carol Berkin, Presidential Professor of History Emerita at Baruch College at the City University of New York and author of several books including Civil War Wives: The Lives and Times of Angelina Grimke Weld, Varina Howell Davis, and Julia Dent Grant.

Washington's storm-ridden outer coast stretches from Cape Disappointment, at the mouth of the Columbia River, to Cape Flattery, at the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, a distance of about 150 miles. Historians have labeled these waters "the Graveyard of the Pacific" and "the Unforgiving Coast." Despite their hazards, sea routes to, from, and along the coast have been busy. Maritime fur traders and explorers, warships, Gold Rush shipping, passenger vessels, lumber carriers, break-bulk freighters, container ships, and tankers have plied these waters. Concurrently, fisheries developed along the coast, adding to the number of vessels at risk. To assist mariners sailing these waters, the United States built its first lighthouse on the Washington coast at Cape Disappointment in 1856. Additional lighthouses, lightships, and lifesaving stations soon followed. With more than 180 images from archives throughout the Pacific Northwest, this collection documents their history.

When the sun slips behind the trees and shadows lengthen near dusk, the mountains and valleys of Highlands and Cashiers whisper with stories of lost loves, deals gone bad and ghosts who walk the night. Learn the stories and firsthand accounts of hauntings and the hard to explain. Is that a whisper winding through the hemlocks, or is it just the wind?

Killing Crazy Horse is the latest installment of the multimillion-selling Killing series is a gripping journey through the American West and the historic clashes between Native Americans and settlers. The bloody Battle of Tippecanoe was only the beginning. It's 1811 and President James Madison has ordered the destruction of Shawnee warrior chief Tecumseh's alliance of tribes in the Great Lakes region. But while General William Henry Harrison would win this fight, the armed conflict between Native Americans and the newly formed United States would rage on for decades. Bestselling authors Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard venture through the fraught history of our country's founding on already occupied lands, from General Andrew Jackson's brutal battles with the Creek Nation to President James Monroe's epic "sea to shining sea" policy, to President Martin Van Buren's cruel enforcement of a "treaty" that forced the Cherokee Nation out of their homelands along what would be called the Trail of Tears. O'Reilly and Dugard take readers behind the legends to reveal never-before-told historical moments in the fascinating creation story of America. This fast-paced, wild ride through the American frontier will shock readers and impart unexpected lessons that reverberate to this day.

For students of U.S. history, The Reagan Revolution explores how a Hollywood upstart and eventual conservative leader became one of the most successful and influential presidents in U.S. history-one whose presidency helped to define the end of the Cold War. This book covers Ronald Reagan's long rise to the presidency and the conservative political revolution he brought about in the 1980s. Spurning the moderate values and policies Republicans had previously championed, Reagan's revolution continues to play an outsized role in America's political life. This important reference book gives browsers and readers alike an opportunity to focus on many of the intertwined issues of the 1980s: abortion, gay rights, law and order, the Cold War, tax cuts, de-industrialization, the Religious Right, and the political divisions that made Reagan's legislative victories possible. The book opens with a concise biography covering Reagan's rise from radio personality and actor to governor and president. Subsequent chapters cover politics and policy. Chapters also include an important review of Reagan's legendary public relations operations ("morning in America" and the perfection of the television photo op) and the ways in which 1980s popular culture influenced and was influenced by his presidency. This section portrays Reagan as a product of Hollywood who keenly understood the importance of public opinion and creating a positive image. Explains the making of foreign and public policy, including the political dynamic that shapes it, in an easy-to-understand manner Serves as a rich trove of primary source documents, including policy documents and such presidential and pre-presidential speeches as Reagan's 1964 speech supporting Barry Goldwater and his first California gubernatorial inaugural address Provides an overview of the evolution of presidential power Outlines a chronological narrative of Ronald Reagan's life Includes four narrative chapters on foreign policy, economic policy, social policy, and presidential public relations and popular culture Assesses the legacies of the Reagan Revolution in the conclusion

In 1899, Carrie Chapman Catt, who succeeded Susan B. Anthony as head of the National American Women Suffrage Association, argued that it was the "duty" of U.S. women to help lift the inhabitants of its new island possessions up from "barbarism" to "civilization," a project that would presumably demonstrate the capacity of U.S. women for full citizenship and political rights. Catt, like many suffragists in her day, was well-versed in the language of empire, and infused the cause of suffrage with imperialist zeal in public debate. Unlike their predecessors, who were working for votes for women within the context of slavery and abolition, the next generation of suffragists argued their case against the backdrop of the U.S. expansionism into Indian and Mormon territory at home as well as overseas in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii. In this book, Allison L. Sneider carefully examines these simultaneous political movements--woman suffrage and American imperialism--as inextricably intertwined phenomena, instructively complicating the histories of both.

Ferryboats have been a way of life on Puget Sound since settlers first arrived there. From the wooden Mosquito Fleet to the sleek art deco Kalakala, the ferries of Puget Sound serve as a cultural icon to visitors and locals alike. Running from Point Defiance to Sidney, British Columbia, the Washington State ferry system is the single largest tourist attraction in the state, with 28 routes and 23 million riders annually. Names like Vashon, Kalakala, and Chetzemoka still resonate with fondness and nostalgia long after they have gone, while ships built the year Lindberg flew solo across the Atlantic will soon be pensioned off and pass into the "Ghost Fleet." In this volume, travelers are invited to look back to the past and bid Puget Sound's "ancient mariners" a fond farewell.