In Hollywood Left and Right, Steven J. Ross tells a story that has escaped public attention: the emergence of Hollywood as a vital center of political life and the important role that movie stars have played in shaping the course of American politics.
Ever since the film industry relocated to Hollywood early in the twentieth century, it has had an outsized influence on American politics. Through compelling larger-than-life figures in American cinema--Charlie Chaplin, Louis B. Mayer, Edward G. Robinson, George Murphy, Ronald Reagan, Harry Belafonte, Jane Fonda, Charlton Heston, Warren Beatty, and Arnold Schwarzenegger--Hollywood Left and Right reveals how the film industry's engagement in politics has been longer, deeper, and more varied than most people would imagine. As shown in alternating chapters, the Left and the Right each gained ascendancy in Tinseltown at different times. From Chaplin, whose movies almost always displayed his leftist convictions, to Schwarzenegger's nearly seamless transition from action blockbusters to the California governor's mansion, Steven J. Ross traces the intersection of Hollywood and political activism from the early twentieth century to the present.
Hollywood Left and Right challenges the commonly held belief that Hollywood has always been a bastion of liberalism. The real story, as Ross shows in this passionate and entertaining work, is far more complicated. First, Hollywood has a longer history of conservatism than liberalism. Second, and most surprising, while the Hollywood Left was usually more vocal and visible, the Right had a greater impact on American political life, capturing a senate seat (Murphy), a governorship (Schwarzenegger), and the ultimate achievement, the Presidency (Reagan).

Historian Mike Cox has been writing about Texas history for four decades, sharing tales that have been overlooked or forgotten through the years. Travel to El Paso during the "Big Blow" of 1895, brave the frontier with Elizabeth Russell Baker, and stare down the infamous killer known as Old Three Toe. From frontier stories and ghost towns to famous folks and accounts of everyday life, this collection of West Texas Tales has it all.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the main thoroughfare between New York City and the state capitol in Albany was called the Albany Post Road. It saw a host of interesting events and colorful characters, such as Samuel Morse, who lived in Poughkeepsie, and Franklin Roosevelt of Hyde Park. Revolutionary War spies marched this path, and Underground Railroad safe-houses in towns like Rhinebeck and Fishkill sheltered slaves seeking freedom in Canada. Anti-rent wars rocked Columbia County, and Frank Teal's Dutchess County murder remains unsolved. With illustrations by Tatiana Rhinevault, local historian Carney Rhinevault presents these and other stories from the Albany Post Road in New York's mid-Hudson Valley.

Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is one of the best-known works of American literature. But what other myths lie hidden behind the landscape of New York's Hudson Valley? Imps cause mischief on the Hudson River; a white lady haunts Raven Rock; Major Andre's ghost seeks redemption; and real headless hessians search for their severed skulls. Local folklorist Jonathan Kruk tells these and other tales of the lore of the Hudson Valley the stories that have created an atmosphere of mystery that helped inspire Irving's legend.

Family Money explores the histories of formerly enslaved women who tried to claim inheritances left to them by deceased owners, the household traumas of mixed-race slaves, post-Emancipation calls for reparations, and the economic fallout from anti-miscegenation marriage laws. Authors ranging from Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frank Webb, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Chesnutt, to Lydia Maria Child recognized that intimate interracial relationships took myriad forms, often simultaneously-sexual, marital, coercive, familial, pleasurable, and painful. Their fiction confirms that the consequences of these relationships for nineteenth-century Americans meant thinking about more than the legal structure of racial identity. Who could count as family (and when), who could own property (and when), and how racial difference was imagined (and why) were emphatically bound together. Demonstrating that notions of race were entwined with economics well beyond the direct issue of slavery, Family Money reveals interracial sexuality to be a volatile mixture of emotion, economics, and law that had dramatic, long-term financial consequences.

Teasing out the history of a place celebrated for timelessness where the waters have cleaned the slate of countless paddle strokes requires a sure and attentive hand. Stephen Wilbers's account reaches back to the glaciers that first carved out the Boundary Waters and the pioneers who discovered them. He does so without losing the personal relationship built through a lifetime of pilgrimages (anchored by almost three decades of trips with his father). This story captures the untold broader narrative of the region as well as a thousand different details sure to be recognized by fellow pilgrims, like the grinding rhythm of a long portage or the loon call that slips into that last moment before sleep.

At the heart of Fishtown is the final resting place of generations of Kensington and Fishtown residents. Founded prior to 1748, Palmer Cemetery is one of the oldest in Philadelphia. Interred here, and in Hanover Street and West Street Burial Grounds are soldiers from every war fought by colonists and then Americans, from the French and Indian War until Desert Storm. The fishing families that built the neighborhood, victims of the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1793 and the ancestors of the Shibe family are also buried in these plots. Kenneth W. Milano walks the cemetery paths and reveals the secrets the stones keep with Palmer Cemetery and the Historic Burial Grounds of Kensington and Fishtown.

From the shooting of a Secret Service agent in the wilds near Hesperus to the "grave misfortune" of Kid Adams, a not-so-successful highwayman, these tales from the lofty heights of the San Juans are packed with mystery, pathos, and fascinating historical details. Mined from the frontier newspapers of Ouray, San Juan, and La Plata counties, these stories tell of range wars, desperadoes and cattle rustlers, lynchings, ill-tempered ranchers with trigger-fingers, and women fed up with their husbands. There are famous and infamous newsmen, wild stagecoach rides, scapegoats, and stolen lands. Carol Turner's Notorious San Juans offers a rowdy ride through the region's not-so-quiet history.

The Oceanfront's Cottage Line, the music halls of Seaside Park, and dunes so large they dwarfed the old Cape Henry lighthouse are a memory. Gone too are many of the city's iconic landmarks and open spaces, lost to flood, fire, storm and the relentless onslaught of post-World War II development. With a deft hand and rare vintage images, historian Amy Waters Yarsinske recalls a time when the likes of Chuck Berry and Ray Charles played beneath the sizzling lights of the Dome and locals shagged the night away at the Peppermint Beach Club. Join Yarsinske as she takes one final stroll through a Virginia Beach lost to time.

In 1929, it was estimated that every week bootleggers brought twenty-two thousand gallons of whiskey, moonshine and other spirits into Washington, D.C.'s three thousand speakeasies. H.L. Mencken called it the "thirteen awful years," though it was sixteen for the District. Nevertheless, the bathtub gin swilling capital dwellers made the most of Prohibition. Author Garrett Peck crafts a rollicking history brimming with stories of vice, topped off with vintage cocktail recipes and garnished with a walking tour of former speakeasies. Join Peck as he explores an underground city ruled not by organized crime but by amateur bootleggers, where publicly teetotaling congressmen could get a stiff drink behind House office doors and the African American community of U Street was humming with a new sound called jazz.

Famous for being a city of broad shoulders, Chicago has also developed an international reputation for split sides and slapped knees. Watch the "Chicago Style of Comedy" evolve from nineteenth-century vaudeville, through the rebellious comics of the 50's, and into the improvisation and sketch that ushered in a new millennium. Drawing on material both hilarious and profound, Chicago Comedy: A Fairly Serious History touches on what makes Chicago different from other cities and how that difference produced some of the greatest minds comedy will ever know: Amos and Andy, Jack Benny, Lenny Bruce, Del Close, John Belushi, Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert and so many, many more.

The Isle os are not nearly as well-known as the Cajuns or the Creoles or the French, but they have had an undeniable and lasting impact on this state and the south. Adaptable, resourceful, and undeniably proud, they have shaped their destinies against the odds. As their settlements failed, they rebuilt. As the governments changed from Spanish to French to American, they endured. Many campaigned in the American Revolution; they secured victory in the famous Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812; and as they began to understand the surrounding marshes, they learned to make their livings from trapping and fishing and pass on their wisdom and culture through oral tradition. They shaped the development of the state but are too often ignored, even in local history.

Despite its illustrious beginnings as the "Athens of the west," Lexington has always had a darker side lurking just beneath its glossy sheen. It didn't take long for the first intellectual hub west of the Alleghenies to quickly morph into a city with the same scandalous inclinations as neighboring Louisville and Cincinnati. Filled with tales of infamous duels, cheating congressmen, and much more, Wicked Lexington offers the first collection the city's rowdy and ruckus history. From Belle Brezing's infamous brothel of the late 1800s, frequented by some of the city's most prominent businessmen, and once pardoned by the governor, to historic sports scandals of the 1900s, local author Fiona Young-Brown tracks Lexington's penchant for misdeeds from founding to modern times.

The Irish have a long and proud history in America, and New Jersey is no exception. Beginning with the first Irish immigrants who settled in every corner of the state, this vital ethnic community has left an indelible mark on all facets of life in the Garden State. New Jersey's Irish natives expressed their own discontent over British oppression by battling alongside colonists in the American Revolution. Brave Fenians fought to preserve their new home in the Civil War. New Jersey's Irish also have become professional athletes, United States Representatives, religious leaders, spies and business trailblazers. Author and Irish heritage researcher Tom Fox relays these and other stories that demonstrate the importance of Ireland to the development of New Jersey and the United States.

Since the day it opened in 1892, Denver's Brown Palace Hotel has been the Mile High City's foremost destination for high-powered business travelers, celebrities, royalty and politicians. In Ladies of the Brown, hotel historian and archivist Debra B. Faulkner introduces readers to some of the hotel's most fascinating and famous female visitors, residents and employees. From Denver's "Unsinkable" Molly Brown and Romania's Queen Marie to Zsa Zsa Gabor, Mamie Eisenhower and many, many more, these intriguing characters play leading roles in true tales of romance, scandal, humor and heartbreak. This collection of stories is integral to the history of the Brown Palace and Denver, offering a glimpse into the lives of generations of women from all walks of life.

Brookside's burgundy- and blue-striped awnings represent both a quaint corner of Kansas City where you can tread the creaky wooden floors of the Dime Store and a pragmatic philosophy that changed the way America planned its cities. Renowned developer J.C. Nichols's "plan for permanence" was built on his conviction that if a community could offer its residents everything they would want and need, build to high standards and plan for future growth, the community would last. The Brookside shopping district has been giving the community everything it could want and need since 1919, helping it weather economic turbulence, natural disasters and dramatic changes.

In 1962, when the Cold War threatened to ignite in the Cuban Missile Crisis, when more nuclear test bombs were detonated than in any other year in history, Rachel Carson released her own bombshell, Silent Spring, to challenge society's use of pesticides. To counter the use of chemicals-and bombs-the naturalist articulated a holistic vision. She wrote about a "web of life" that connected humans to the world around them and argued that actions taken in one place had consequences elsewhere. Pesticides sprayed over croplands seep into ground water and move throughout the ecosystem, harming the environment. Thousands accepted her message, joined environmental groups, flocked to Earth Day celebrations, and lobbied for legislative regulation. Carson was not the only intellectual to offer holistic answers to society's problems. This book uncovers a holistic sensibility in post-World War II American culture that both tested the logic of the Cold War and fed some of the twentieth century's most powerful social movements, from civil rights to environmentalism to the counterculture. The study examines six important leaders and institutions that embraced and put into practice a holistic vision for a peaceful, healthful, and just world: nature writer Rachel Carson; structural engineer R. Buckminster Fuller; civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.; Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin; humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow; and the Esalen Institute and its founders, Michael Murphy and Dick Price. Each looked to whole systems instead of parts and focused on connections, interdependencies, and integration to create a better world. In the 1960s and 1970s, holistic conceptions and practices infused the March on Washington, Earth Day, the human potential movement, New Age spirituality, and alternative medicine. Though dreams of creating a more perfect world were tempered by economic inequalities, political corruption, and deep social divisions, this sensibility influenced American culture in important ways that continue into the twenty-first century.

In 1849, German "Freethinkers" had been dreaming of a communal utopia, free from oppression by church and state. They settled in Texas on the Cibolo Creek, where Native Americans and Spanish explorers had gone before them. The experiment evolved into a frontier outpost, a stage stop, a health spa, a railhead, a small village, a brief chapter in the Civil War, and a farm and ranch community. Boerne is now a tourist destination and a lovely place to live. This collection of pictures and stories explores what has been amazing, unique, and a little odd about this bend in the Cibolo, as well as the history of local conservation efforts. As the little town of Boerne goes through its inevitable growing pains, it is important to remember its special people and places, and what is worth saving.