The City by the Sea boasts an ambitious baseball history dating back to the early days of America's favorite pastime. In 1897, the Newport Colts became the first professional baseball team to ever tie in a playoff series. By the 1900s, baseball was being played daily on open fields and diamonds throughout Newport. The city has sported six major ball fields, including Cardines Field, host to the oldest continuously running amateur baseball team in the country. Discover the humble beginnings of players like Newport native Frank Corridon, who allegedly invented the now outlawed spitball, and the legacy of the great Trojans baseball club. Team up with baseball historian Rick Harris and walk through the history of Newport baseball from amateur games to the major leagues and all the strikes, homers and grand slams in between.

Roanoke, Virginia, is one of America's great historic railroad centers. The Norfolk & Western Railway Company, now the Norfolk Southern Corporation, has been in Roanoke for over a century. Since the company has employed many of the city's African Americans, the two histories are intertwined. The lives of Roanoke's black railroad workers span the generations from Jim Crow segregation to the civil rights era to today's diverse corporate workforce. Older generations toiled through labor-intensive jobs such as janitors and track laborers, paving the way for younger African Americans to become engineers, conductors and executives. Join author Sheree Scarborough as she interviews Roanoke's African American railroad workers and chronicles stories that are a powerful testament of personal adversity, struggle and triumph on the rail.

In late July 1910, a shocking number of African Americans in Texas were slaughtered by white mobs in the Slocum area of Anderson County and the Percilla-Augusta region of neighboring Houston County. The number of dead surpassed the casualties of the Rosewood Massacre in Florida and rivaled those of the Tulsa Riots in Oklahoma, but the incident--one of the largest mass murders of blacks in American history--is now largely forgotten. Investigate the facts behind this harrowing act of genocide in E.R. Bills's compelling inquiry into the Slocum Massacre.

The Chattooga River has run through the American consciousness since the movie Deliverance thrust it into the national spotlight. But this National Wild and Scenic River is much more than the make-believe set of a suburbanite nightmare. People travel from all over the country to run its rapids, cast into its current for trout and hike the miles of trails that meander through thousands of acres of woods in the Chattooga watershed. One of the last free-flowing rivers in the Southeast, the river muscles fifty-seven miles through a southern deciduous forest with one of the highest levels of biodiversity in the country and is home to many species of rare wildflowers. Join author Laura Ann Garren as she describes the history and wonder of the real Chattooga River.

The Garden State has made innumerable contributions to our nation's military history, on both battlefield and homefront, but many of those stories remain hidden within the larger national narrative. Perhaps the most crucial one-day battle of the Revolution was fought in Monmouth County, and New Jersey officers engineered the conquest of California in the Mexican War. During the Civil War, a New Jersey unit was instrumental in saving Washington, D.C., from Confederate capture. In World War II, New Jersey women flocked to war production factories and served in the armed forces, and a West Orange girl helped ferry Spitfire fighters in England. War came home to the coast in 1942 with the sinking of the SS "Resor" by a German submarine, but the state's citizens reacted by contributing everything they could to the war effort. Uncover these and other stories from New Jersey's hidden wartime history.

Step across the threshold of a haunted hotel in California's renowned Gold Country and encounter phantom figures of yesteryear. Wispy apparitions of gentleman guests in Victorian coats and ladies in fashionable flapper gowns glide through the walls, while unexplained sobs and choking gasps disturb the night. There's Stan, the Cary House's eternal desk clerk, and bachelor ghost Lyle, who tidies the Groveland Hotel. Flo tosses pots and pans in the National's kitchen, while the once-scorned spirit of Isabella ties the Sierra Nevada House's curtains in knots. From suicidal gamblers to murdered miners, the Mother Lode's one-time boomtowns are crowded with characters of centuries past. Book your stay with author Nancy Williams as she explores the history and haunts of the Gold Country's iconic hotels.

The Global History of Paleopathology is the first comprehensive global compendium on the history of paleopathology, an interdisciplinary scientific discipline that focuses on the study of ancient disease. Offering perspectives from regions that have traditionally had long histories of paleopathology, such as the United States and parts of Europe, this volume also presents important work by an international roster of scholars who are writing their own regional and cultural histories in the field. The book identifies major thinkers and figures who have contributed to paleopathology, as well as significant organizations and courses that have sponsored scientific research and communication, most notably the Paleopathology Association. The volume concludes with an eye towards the future of the discipline, discussing methods and research at the leading edge of paleopathology, particularly those that employ the analysis of ancient DNA and isotopes.

W. E. B. Du Bois is an improbable candidate for a project in religion. His skepticism of and, even, hostility toward religion is readily established and canonically accepted. Indeed, he spent his career rejecting normative religious commitments to institutions and supernatural beliefs. In this book, Jonathon Kahn offers a fresh and controversial reading of Du Bois that seeks to overturn this view. Kahn contends that the standard treatment of Du Bois turns a deaf ear to his writings. For if we're open to their religious timbre, those writings-from his epoch-making The Souls of Black Folk to his unstudied series of parables that depict the lynching of an African American Christ-reveal a virtual obsession with religion. Du Bois's moral, literary, and political imagination is inhabited by religious rhetoric, concepts and stories. Divine Discontent recovers and introduces readers to the remarkably complex and varied religious world in Du Bois's writings. It's a world of sermons, of religious virtues such as sacrifice and piety, of jeremiads that fight for a black American nation within the larger nation. Unlike other African American religious voices at the time, however, Du Bois's religious orientation is distinctly heterodox--it exists outside the bounds of institutional Christianity. Kahn shows how Du Bois self-consciously marshals religious rhetoric, concepts, typologies, narratives, virtues, and moods in order to challenge traditional Christian worldview in which events function to confirm a divine order. Du Bois's antimetaphysical religious voice, he argues, places him firmly in the American tradition of pragmatic religious naturalism typified by William James. This innovative reading of Du Bois should appeal to scholars of American religion, intellectual history, African American Studies, and philosophy of religion.

A strike gripped Winnipeg from May 15 to June 26, 1919. Some twenty-five thousand workers walked out, demanding better wages and union recognition. Red-fearing opponents insisted labour radicals were attempting to usurp constitutional authority and replace it with Bolshevism. Newspapers like the "Manitoba Free Press" claimed themselves political victims and warned of Soviet infiltration. Supporters of the general sympathetic strike like the "Toronto Daily Star" maintained that strikers were not Reds; they were workers fighting for their fair rights. What was really happening in Winnipeg? In an information age dominated by newspapers and magazines, the public turned to reporters and editors for answers.

On July 11, 1864, some residents cheered and others watched in horror as Confederate troops spread across the fields and orchards of Silver Spring, Maryland. Many fled to the capital while General Jubal Early's troops ransacked their property. The estate of Lincoln's postmaster general, Montgomery Blair, was burned, and his father's home was used by Early as headquarters from which to launch an attack on Washington's defenses. Yet the first Civil War casualty in Silver Spring came well before Early's raid, when Union soldiers killed a prominent local farmer in 1862. This was life in the shadow of the Federal City. Drawing on contemporary accounts and memoirs, Dr. Robert E. Oshel tells the story of Silver Spring over the tumultuous course of the Civil War.

On March 21, 1960, a line of 150 white policemen fired 1344 rounds into a crowd of several thousand people assembled outside a police station, protesting against the Apartheid regime's racist "pass" laws. The gunfire left in its wake sixty-seven dead and one hundred and eighty six wounded. Most of the people who were killed were shot in the back, hit while running away.
The Sharpeville Massacre, as the event has become known, marked the start of armed resistance in South Africa, and prompted worldwide condemnation of South Africa's Apartheid policies. In Sharpeville, Tom Lodge explains how and why the Massacre occurred, looking at the social and political background to the events of March 1960 as well as the long-term consequences of the shootings. Lodge offers a gripping account of the Massacre itself as well as the wider events that accompanied the tragedy, particularly the simultaneous protest in Cape Town which helped prolong the political crisis that developed in the wake of the shootings. Just as important, he sheds light on the long term consequences of these events. He explores how the Sharpeville events affected the perceptions of black and white political leadership in South Africa as well as South Africa's relationship with the rest of the world, and he describes the development of an international "Anti-Apartheid" movement in the wake of the shootings.
In South Africa today, March 21 is a public holiday, Human Rights Day, and for many people, it remains a day of mourning and memorial. This book illuminates this pivotal event in South African history.

First populated by the Huron, Iroquois and Chippewa Nations, Orillia is now a well-loved, year-round recreation destination. Its history is deeply tied to its water. Situated in the narrows where Lake Simcoe flows into Lake Couchiching, Orillia was a gathering place for centuries before Europeans used it to bring furs to market. Sir John Simcoe, first governor of Upper Canada, fostered permanent settlement of the area. A gateway to the Muskoka region, it has been home to lumber, manufacturing, and artistic endeavours. Today, summer cottagers and winter athletes alike enjoy the Sunshine City and its more than twenty annual festivals. Local author Dennis Rizzo tells the fascinating and diverse history of Orillia, Ontario.

Blues history is steeped in Chicago's sidewalks; it floats out of its restaurants, airport lounges and department stores. It is a fundamental part of the city's heritage that every resident should know and every visitor should be afraid to miss. Allow Rosalind Cummings-Yeates to take you inside the Checkerboard and Gerri's Palm Tavern, where folks like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon and Ma Rainey transformed Chicago into the blues mecca. Continue on to explore the contemporary blues scene and discover the best spots to hear the purest sounds of Sweet Home Chicago.

The importance of fishing in Minnesota goes back thousands of years: first as a means of critical subsistence and then, in the last 200 years, as a major economic influence. In the 1800s, anglers seeking pristine lakes with ample fish traveled to Minnesota on the railroads. The widespread use of automobiles and an improving road system rapidly increased the state's accessibility in the 1900s, and resorts sprouted everywhere. During the early tourist boom, the state was also home to countless boat builders, tackle manufacturers, and other fishing-related businesses. Images of America: Minnesota's Angling Past provides a view of the time when boats were made from wood and propelled by rowing; when great fishing spots were found through experience rather than electronics; and, for some, a suit or dress was proper attire for a day of fishing. This book includes rare images from across the state that capture memorable days of angling, such as the 1955 Leech Lake Muskie Rampage.

From its humble beginnings as a place to swim and row a boat, Ideal Beach eventually became Indiana Beach, a small amusement park where families could have good old-fashioned fun. Founded by Earl Spackman in 1926, its popularity was bolstered by the addition of a dance hall that drew the top bands of the nation during the Depression and war years of the 1940s. When Earl passed away, his son Tom continued his legacy, setting Indiana Beach on a course that would make it one of the most popular vacation resorts and amusement parks in the entire Midwest, delighting nearly one million visitors every year.

Daughters of Hecate unites for the first time research on the problem of gender and magic in three ancient Mediterranean societies: early Judaism, Christianity, and Graeco-Roman culture. The book illuminates the gendering of ancient magic by approaching the topic from three distinct disciplinary perspectives: literary stereotyping, the social application of magic discourse, and material culture.
The volume challenges presumed associations of women and magic by probing the foundations of, processes, and motivations behind gendered stereotypes, beginning with Western culture's earliest associations of women and magic in the Bible and Homer's Odyssey. Daughters of Hecate provides a nuanced exploration of the topic while avoiding reductive approaches. In fact, the essays in this volume uncover complexities and counter-discourses that challenge, rather than reaffirm, many gendered stereotypes taken for granted and reified by most modern scholarship.
By combining critical theoretical methods with research into literary and material evidence, Daughters of Hecate interrogates gendered stereotypes that are as relevant now as for understanding antiquity or the early modern witch hunts.

Though you may not know the man, you probably know his music. Arkansas-born Louis Jordan's songs like "Baby, It's Cold Outside," "Caldonia" and "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens" can still be heard today, decades since Jordan ruled the charts. In his five-decade career, Jordan influenced American popular music, film and more and inspired the likes of James Brown, B.B. King, Chuck Berry and Ray Charles. Known as the "King of the Jukeboxes," he and his combo played a hybrid of jazz, swing, blues and comedy music during the big band era that became the start of R&B.

In a stunning narrative portrait of Louis Jordan, author Stephen Koch contextualizes the great, forgotten musician among his musical peers, those he influenced and the musical present.

Nigeria and South Africa account for about a third of Africa’s economic might, and have led much of its peacemaking and peacekeeping initiatives over the last two and a half decades. Both account for at least 60 per cent of the economy of their respective sub-regions in West and Southern Africa. The success of political and economic integration in Africa thus rests heavily on the shoulders of these two regional powers who have both collaborated and competed with each other in a complex relationship that is Africa’s most indispensable.

Nigeria remains among South Africa’s largest trading partners in Africa, while both countries have cooperated in building the institutions of the African Union (AU) and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). Nigeria and South Africa have also sought to give Africa a stronger global voice, while competing as rivals on issues such as peacemaking in Cote d’Ivoire, Libya and Guinea-Bissau. While Nigeria is the most ethnically diverse country in Africa, South Africa is the most racially diverse state on the continent. Both countries have had a tremendous cultural impact on the continent in terms of Nollywood movies and South African soap operas.

The first three chapters of this book assess Nigeria/South Africa relations in the areas of politics, economics and culture. The second section has three essays that examine the issue of hegemonic leadership in relation to Nigeria and South Africa. The third section consists of four essays on the contributions to the bilateral relationship and leadership roles of four prominent South Africans and Nigerians: Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, Olusegun Obasanjo and Sani Abacha. The final section of the book analyses three technocratic Nigerian and South African ‘visionaries’: Adebayo Adedeji, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

The Metamorphosis of Leadership in a Democratic Mexico is a broad analysis of Mexico's changing leadership over the past eight decades, stretching from its pre-democratic era (1935-1988), to its democratic transition (1988-2000) to its democratic period (2000-the present). In it, Roderic Camp, one of the most distinguished scholars of Mexican politics, seeks to answer two questions: 1) how has Mexican political leadership evolved since the 1930s and in what ways, beyond ideology, has the shift from a semi-authoritarian, one-party system to a democratic, electoral system altered the country's leadership? and 2) which aspects of Mexican leadership have been most affected by this shift in political models and when and why did the changes in leadership occur? Rather than viewing Mexico's current government as a true democracy, Camp sees it as undergoing a process of consolidation, under which the competitive electoral process has resulted in a system of governing institutions supported by the majority of citizens and significant strides toward plurality. Accordingly, he looks at the relationship between the decentralization of political power and the changing characteristics, experiences and paths to power of national leaders.
The book, which represents four decades of Camp's work, is based upon a detailed study of 3000 politicians from the 1930s through the present, incorporating regional media accounts and Camp's own interviews with Mexican presidents, cabinet members, assistant secretaries, senators, governors, and party presidents.

Pull up a chair to the kitchen table and enjoy a delicious adventure through Bluegrass food history. Kentucky's cuisine can be traced back to Cherokee, Irish, Scottish, English and German roots, among others. A typical Kentucky meal might have the standard meat and three, but there are many dishes that can't be found anywhere else. Poke sallet, despite its toxic roots and berries, is such a favorite in parts of eastern Kentucky that an annual festival celebrates it. Find recipes for dishes from burgoo to hog to moonshine and frogs. Join author Fiona Young-Brown as she details all the delectable delights sure to make the mouth water.

From the US Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial and the 9/11 Memorial Museum, classical forms and ideas have been central to an American nationalist aesthetic. Beginning with an understanding of this centrality of the classical tradition to the construction of American national identity and the projection of American power, Empire of Ruin describes a mode of black classicism that has been integral to the larger critique of American politics, aesthetics, and historiography that African American cultural production has more generally advanced. While the classical tradition has provided a repository of ideas and images that have allowed white American elites to conceive of the nation as an ideal Republic and the vanguard of the idea of civilization, African American writers, artists, and activists have characterized this dominant mode of classical appropriation as emblematic of a national commitment to an economy of enslavement and a geopolitical project of empire. If the dominant forms of American classicism and monumental culture have asserted the ascendancy of what Thomas Jefferson called an "empire for liberty," for African American writers and artists it has suggested that the nation is nothing exceptional, but rather another iteration of what the radical abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet identified as an "empire of slavery," inexorably devolving into an "empire of ruin."

1940: It's the year Nazis rain bombs on London and goose-step into Paris, when President Roosevelt wins an unprecedented third term and Kansas Citians finally run the corrupt Pendergast political machine out of power. The new reform-minded city government is bent on cleaning up the sinful "Paris of the Plains" and streamlining its future with wide, new miles of trafficways. Notorious nightclubs have closed. The City Market opens. Glenn Miller swings, Bojangles taps and "Gone with the Wind" premieres. Old buildings make way for parking lots. A dying meteor lights up the night sky above a racially segregated city, home to Charlie Parker, Thomas Hart Benton, Walter Cronkite, Satchel Paige and Thomas J. Pendergast, ex-con. It's all on display here in photographs snapped by WPA workers and stories curated by John Simonson.

While all but gone today, Jamestown's furniture industry was once the second-largest producer of furniture in the United States. Manufacturing boomed from 1816, when William Breed and Royal Keyes opened their shops, to the 1920s, when Jamestown was still one of the top wood furniture producers in the country. In the nineteenth century, the thriving railroad industry allowed Jamestown's quality creations to be distributed nationwide. After the Civil War, an influx of Swedish immigrants brought their craftsmanship and skills to Jamestown, forming Morgan Manufacturing, Empire Furniture Company and many others. Then, their pieces were valued for quality and durability; today, they're coveted by collectors as beautiful antiques. Local expert Clarence Carlson uncovers the fascinating story of Jamestown furniture.

Lament seems to have been universal in the ancient world. As such, it is an excellent touchstone for the comparative study of attitudes towards death and the afterlife, human relations to the divine, views of the cosmos, and the constitution of the fabric of society in different times and places. This collection of essays offers the first ever comparative approach to ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern traditions of lament. Beginning with the Sumerian and Hittite traditions, the volume moves on to examine Bronze Age iconographic representations of lamentation, Homeric lament, depictions of lament in Greek tragedy and parodic comedy, and finally lament in ancient Rome. The list of contributors includes such noted scholars as Richard Martin, Ian Rutherford, and Alison Keith. Lament comes at a time when the conclusions of the first wave of the study of lament-especially Greek lament-have received widespread acceptance, including the notions that lament is a female genre; that men risked feminization if they lamented; that there were efforts to control female lamentation; and that a lamenting woman was a powerful figure and a threat to the orderly functioning of the male public sphere. Lament revisits these issues by reexamining what kinds of functions the term lament can include, and by expanding the study of lament to other genres of literature, cultures, and periods in the ancient world. The studies included here reflect the variety of critical issues raised over the past 25 years, and as such, provide an overview of the history of critical thinking on the subject.

Discover the unique history of the Abenaki in New Hampshire.