A flight of imagination back to a time when London was green meadows and rolling hills, dotted with babbling brooks. Join Tim Bradford as he explores the lost rivers of London. Over the last hundred and fifty years, most of the tributaries of the Thames have been buried under concrete and brick. Now Tim Bradford takes us on a series of walks along the routes of these forgotten rivers and shows us the oddities and delights that can be found along the way. He finds the chi in the Ching, explores the links between London's football ground and freemasons, rediscovers the unbearable shiteness of being (in South London), enjoys the punk heritage of the Westbourne, and, of course, learns how to special-brew dowse. Here, then, is all of London life, but from a very different point of view. With a cast that includes the Viking superhero Hammer Smith, a jellied-eel fixated William Morris, a coprophiliac Samuel Johnson, Deep Purple and the Glaswegian deer of Richmond Park, and hundreds of cartoons, drawings and maps, 'The Groundwater Diaries' is a vastly entertaining (and sometimes frankly odd) tour through not-so-familiar terrain.

A sublimely elegant, fractured reckoning with the legacy and inheritance of suicide in one American family. In 2009, Juliet Patterson was recovering from a serious car accident when she learned her father had died by suicide. His death was part of a disturbing pattern in her family. Her father's father had taken his own life; so had her mother's. Over the weeks and months that followed, grieving and in physical pain, Patterson kept returning to one question: Why? Why had her family lost so many men, so many fathers, and what lay beneath the silence that had taken hold? In three graceful movements, Patterson explores these questions. In the winter of her father's death, she struggles to make sense of the loss-sifting through the few belongings he left behind, looking to signs and symbols for meaning. As the spring thaw comes, she and her mother depart Minnesota for her father's burial in her parents' hometown of Pittsburg, Kansas. A once-prosperous town of promise and of violence, against people and the land, Pittsburg is now literally undermined by abandoned claims and sinkholes. There, Patterson carefully gathers evidence and radically imagines the final days of the grandfathers-one a fiery pro-labor politician, the other a melancholy businessman-she never knew. And finally, she returns to her father: to the haunting subjects of goodbyes, of loss, and of how to break the cycle. A stunning elegy that vividly enacts Emily Dickinson's dictum to "tell it slant," Sinkhole richly layers personal, familial, political, and environmental histories to provide not answers but essential, heartbreaking truth.

This book includes walks that find the hidden history and architecture of the city centre and many more exciting and interesting routes. "Walks Through History Liverpool" is a celebration of the beauty and poetry of the city, the unexpected streets and places encountered and the restless urban landscape. This book of Liverpool walks is a guidebook to the city's odd corners and a practical handbook of urban exploration. Nearly eight centuries of history have left their mark on Liverpool in street names and stories, from the breezy hill at Everton and the salty industry of the docks, to the grandeur of the city centre and the wide green spaces of Sefton Park. Exploring the city on foot shows us things invisible to the bus passenger hurrying to work; cast-iron street lamps on cobbled back streets, ornate fountains, quiet pubs, crumbling Gothic churches and mediaeval stonework. In this book there are walks finding the hidden history and architecture of the city centre, family walks through Liverpool's wealth of parks and gardens, and journeys through the older industrial city for the serious urban explorer. Detailed directions are given, along with bus and train routes to and from the walks, convenient stopping or resting places, and suggested diversions or alternatives.

"Aberdeen in the Fifties and Sixties" is a beautfiul collection of photographs displaying images of two of the most exciting decades Aberdonians ever lived through. Skeletons of buildings bombed during the blitz were flattened, events such as the advent of the North Sea oil industry and the arrival of the first Chinese restaurant are all recorded here. It is a fascinating book that will captivate both locals and tourists alike. THE Fifties and Sixties were two of the most exciting decades Aberdonians have ever lived through. Skeletons of buildings bombed during the blitz were flattened, others springing up in their place to create a new landscape. The great exodus from the city centre got under way with major new housing schemes springing up all around the outskirts. This led to the bus becoming king of the road, ending the city's tramway era. Landmarks like Black's Building and Castlehill Barracks became a mere memory and the first high-rise blocks altered the city's skyline. Aberdonians shopped at Reid and Pearsons, Watt and Grants, Isaac Benzie's, The Equitable or the Rubber Shop, all now consigned to memory. Three nights a week there was greyhound racing at the Bridge of Dee. Rock 'n' Roll arrived at the city's dance halls. And two significant events occurred in people's lives - the advent of the North Sea oil industry and the arrival of the first Chinese restaurant. And there to record all the changes were photographers of the "Evening Express". From their Broad Street headquarters they created a unique record of the changing times of Scotland's most northerly city. Brought together for the first time in this unique book, they paint a picture of change over a 20-year period that now seems as sudden as it was dramatic.

In "Shining Big Sea Water," historian Norman K. Risjord offers a grand tour of Lake Superior's remarkable history, taking readers through the centuries and into the lives of those who have traveled the lake and inhabited its shores.
Through lively, informative chapters, Risjord begins with the lake's cataclysmic geological birth, then explores the lives of native peoples along the shore before European contact and during the fur trade, showing how Superior functioned as a "blue-water highway" for Indians, early explorers, industries, and settlers. He outlines the development of such cities as Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan; Ashland, Wisconsin; and Two Harbors, Minnesota, and tells the fascinating histories of life-saving lighthouses and famous shipwrecks. In the final chapter, Risjord looks to the future, offering a clear-eyed account of the environmental and economic challenges faced by America's largest freshwater lake.
Interspersed throughout the book are handy tips for travelers, highlighting historically significant sites that illustrate key pieces of Lake Superior's natural and human history, including national lakeshores in the United States and provincial parks in Canada.
Norman K. Risjord is the author of several books, including "A Popular History of Minnesota" and "Wisconsin: The Story of the Badger State," He is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Renowned historian Annette Atkins presents a fresh understanding of how a complex and modern Minnesota came into being in "Creating Minnesota. "Each chapter of this innovative state history focuses on a telling detail, a revealing incident, or a meaningful issue that illuminates a larger event, social trends, or politics during a period in our past. A three-act play about Minnesota's statehood vividly depicts the competing interests of Natives, traders, and politicians who lived in the same territory but moved in different worlds. Oranges are the focal point of a chapter about railroads and transportation: how did a St. Paul family manage to celebrate their 1898 Christmas with fruit that grew no closer that 1,500 miles from their home? A photo essay brings to life three communities of the 1920s, seen through the lenses of local and itinerant photographers. The much-sought state fish helps to explain the new Minnesota, where pan-fried walleye and walleye quesadillas coexist on the same north woods menu. In "Creating Minnesota "Atkins invites readers to experience the texture of people's lives through the decades, offering a fascinating and unparalleled approach to the history of our state. Annette Atkins is a professor of history at St. John's University in Collegeville and the author of "Harvest of Grief: Grasshopper Plagues and Public Assistance in Minnesota, 1873-1878 "(MHS Press) and "We Grew Up Together: Brothers and Sisters in Nineteenth-Century America."

There's more to Reading than traffic, concrete and busy people. Wildlife flourishes amidst the urban hustle and with a couple of hundred open spaces, some ancient woodlands and two great rivers, Reading rewards the appreciative naturalist. Wander from town centre to suburbs exploring the parks and meadows, following the rivers and the wooded ridges, watching the seasons change. You'll be surprised at what you find. Over 25 years Adrian Lawson chronicled the wildlife he encountered in his days working in the parks, walking his dogs in the woods and riding his bike around the town. This book takes us through the calendar year with a selection of articles from his long-running newspaper column, Rural Reading, plus some new and previously unpublished pieces. Accompanied by perceptive and very personal illustrations from Geoff Sawers, equally devoted to the natural history of Reading, this exquisite collection will open your eyes to the wild side of town.

If ever there was a regional UK city with the credentials to host the 2022 Commonwealth Games, Birmingham was always it. One in ten people in the city was born in an overseas Commonwealth country, and many more have family in member nations such as India, Jamaica and Pakistan. Many of these are descendants of the generation who arrived after the Second World War to find work in the city's manufacturing boom years. But, as Simon Wilcox discovers, the links go much further back than that. In fact, the connections started with the canal building zeal of Birmingham's industrial pioneers in the eighteenth century who built a canal network that spanned out from the Gas Street Basin. It was this network that opened up a new world of trade for the city - a world which revolved around metal, chocolate and weekly shipments of Ceylon tea.

The structure of the book is chronological, with digressions. From Roman and then Norman London, we move on to Chaucer's London - the city of the Peasants Revolt, Dick Whittington and the great Livery Companies. In Tudor and Stuart London many believed the city was being wrecked by over-population, over-building and the greed of speculators. Eighteenth-century London witnessed the South Sea Bubble, gin, highwaymen and the Gordon riots; but also banking, hospitals, and the elegant design of everyday things. In the nineteenth century, expanding vigorously, the city resisted any overall make-over. With Queen Victoria came the Railway Age, which made and unmade the city. Chartism, anti-semitism, overcrowding and cholera. But engineering triumphs too. If the First World War was a nightmare happening elsewhere, the amazing six years of 1939-45 were the city's finest hour. Post-1945, property developers took over, with disastrous results. The author celebrates the cosmopolitan city that mobility and immigration have created, while deploring the moronization' of the city, exemplified by the Millennium

"Stumbough's anecdotes about her kin read like a chat with a cherished friend.... She makes a bit of family research sound like a good idea". (Booklist)

This colorful chronicle of pioneering experience emerges from Virginia Stumbough's priceless collection of family letters, diaries, scrapbooks, albums, and oral history. Mrs. Stumbough, who was born shortly after Oklahoma Territory achieved statehood, treats us to a wealth of family and personal recollections of the region. Now a great-grandmother, she lives in Boise, Idaho.

This text looks at the borough's history through maps which date from the Tudor period right up to the 20th century.

The South Downs has throughout history been a focus of English popular culture. With chalkland, their river valleys and scarp-foot the Downs have been shaped for over millennia by successive generations of farmers, ranging from Europe's oldest inhabitants right up until the 21st century. '... possibly the most important book to have been written on the South Downs in the last half-century ... The South Downs have found their perfect biographer.' Downs Country

From meatball po'boys to Creole red gravy, the influence of Sicilian foodways permeates New Orleans, one of America's greatest food cities. Nana's Creole Italian Table tells the story of those immigrants and their communities through the lens of food, exploring the ways traditional Sicilian dishes such as pasta and olive salad became a part of-and were in turn changed by-the existing food culture in New Orleans. Sicilian immigrants-Elizabeth M. Williams's family among them-came to New Orleans in droves in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, fleeing the instability of their own country and hoping to make a new home in America. This cookbook shares Williams's traditional family recipes, with variations that reveal the evolution and blending of Sicilian and Creole cuisines. Baked into every recipe is the history of Sicilian American culture as it has changed over the centuries, allowing each new generation to incorporate its own foodways and ever-evolving tastes.

In the soaring, three-story space that is the Tower of Life at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., sixteen hundred photographs collected by the historian Yaffa Eliach give face to a murdered people. In There Once Was a World, Eliach brilliantly and movingly records the history of that people.

Nineteen years of scholarship, a poet's ear, and a storyteller's voice have yielded what is perhaps the richest, fullest, most detailed portrait of Eastern European Jewish life that we will ever have, a book that encompasses both the sweep of history and an intimate view of the day-to-day lives of generations of small-town Jews, in all their uniqueness and universality. Eliach's own roots in Eishyshok, as a descendant of one of the five founding families and herself one of only twenty-nine survivors, give her work an unrivaled depth and passion.

Two million visitors a year enter the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where 1,600 photographs from the shtetl of Eishyshok constitute what many consider to be the most moving exhibit in the museum - the Tower of Life. In this soaring, three-story space we see the people of Eishyshok at their weddings and bar mitzvahs, their social clubs and literary gatherings, their winter sports and summer camps. Now Professor Yaffa Eliach, whose haunting collection of photographs gave faces to a murdered people, has written the history of that people.

Eliach's nine-century saga of Eastern European Jewish life is richer and fuller than any ever written. Her research took her from family attics on six continents to state archives no scholar had seen since the start of the Cold War. Confronted with the near total disappearance of the world of the shtetl, Eliach was indefatigable in her search for the truth-of a people, a place, a culture.

Some of what she found was as familiar as the chicken soup on a Jewish table, or an image from a painting by Chagall; other findings were more unexpected. Her research on family life, for example, shows that the "world of our fathers" was actually a world in which all the affairs of daily life were run by mothers. Her profound understanding of medieval history illuminates her description of early Lithuania, the last pagan country in Europe and the only one where Jews lived on equal terms with the rest of the population. Access to family letters and memorabilia and interviews with shtetl survivors gave her startling insight into one of history's most troubling questions: Why were the Jews so blind to the Nazi threat? In Eishyshok, she learned, as in hundreds of communities in Eastern Europe, the German occupiers of World War I had been so civilized that no one could believe their sons would be any different. Yet the June day in 1941 when Nazi troops roared into Eishyshok marked the beginning of the end for the shtetl's 3,500 Jews.

In this book, as in her Tower, Eliach has sought to emphasize life over death. Nineteen years of scholarship, a poet's ear, and a storyteller's voice have yielded a book that contains both the sweep of history and an intimate portrait of the day-to-day lives of generations of small-town Jews, in all their uniqueness and universality. But it is Eliach's own roots in Eishyshok, as descendant of one of the five founding families and one of only twenty-nine survivors, which give her work its depth and passion.

At the height of the Depression, the government put thousands of writers to work for the Works Progress Administration. Out of their efforts came the American Guide series, the first comprehensive guidebooks to the people, resources, and traditions of each state in the nation. "" "The WPA Guide to Wisconsin" offers a lively tour of yesterday's Badger State. More than a nostalgic snapshot of 1930s Wisconsin, this book contains essays on the state's history and architecture, folklore and geology, arts and industry. The city tours and auto trips take you to places still familiar today--perfect for those who want to slow down, turn off the main road, and journey back in time.

In Lily Dale, New York, the dead don't die. Instead, they flit among the elms and stroll along the streets. According to spiritualists who have ruled this community for five generations, the spirits never go away--and they stay anything but quiet. Every summer twenty thousand guests come to consult the town's mediums in hopes of communicating with dead relatives or catching a glimpse of the future. Weaving past with present, the living with the dead, award-winning journalist and bestselling author Christine Wicker investigates the longings for love and connection that draw visitors to "the Dale," introducing us to a colorful cast of characters along the way--including such famous visitors as Susan B. Anthony, Harry Houdini, and Mae West. Laugh-out-loud funny at times, this honest portrayal shows us that ultimately it doesn't matter what we believe; it is belief itself that can transform us all.

This title is originally published in 2003 and reprinted due to popular demand. It features over four hundred images showing not only the housing and architecture of the 1970's but also the fashions, events and moments in time that made the seventies so unique. It is a nostalgic account, sure to spark recognition with locals of the time. The 1970s is now far enough away to deserve a retrospective look. The children of that era have grown to adulthood and have a special feeling for that very distinctive decade. For the city of Aberdeen the 1970s was indeed a time of change. North Sea oil came ashore and the city adapted to the benefits and challenges of being the oil capital of Europe. As well as recording those unique times for the North-east, this book's 400 images show the fashions, the growth of housing suburbs around Aberdeen, the protests and unrest. It gives us the big moments and the little quirky events that were a part of what made the 1970s so special. We do not claim this collection to be the definitive or comprehensive account, rather a series of snapshots that it is hoped will connect with the people of the North-east and spark recognition, pleasure and nostalgia.

The county of Cornwall in the far south-west of England is surrounded by sea on three sides. Resisting Roman and Anglo-Saxon invaders, it retained its Celtic independence and remained separate from the rest of England into the Middle Ages. Cornwall has a rich military history that stretches back through centuries, and evidence of this military heritage can be seen throughout the county with numerous buildings and other structures still standing today. Cornwall's Military Heritage explores the history of the county - not only the battles that took place on its soil and the measures that were taken to defend it, but also the heritage of the military units that were nurtured there and sent to fight in conflicts abroad. Cornwall was home to two uprisings in 1497, followed by the Prayer Book Rebellion in 1549 and the Spanish raiding of 1595. In the English Civil War, Cornwall was a Royalist stronghold in the predominantly Parliamentarian South West, and Pendennis Castle was besieged alongside the strategic Isles of Scilly, contested by both sides. Author Andrew Powell-Thomas explores the conflicts surrounding an array of historic monuments, including castles, forts, airfields and military bases, noting how the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry and its antecedents fought through two world wars to maintain the survival of this most remarkable county.

Crowds of visitors flock to Whitby to explore the ancient abbey, walk the narrow streets, pass Captain Cook's home and see the replica of his ship Endeavour, but the history of Whitby is much richer, as revealed in this tour of its significant, interesting and unusual buildings. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries the Cholmley family took over much of the abbey's lands, building a grand home and developing the port and local industries. Whitby became one of the busiest ports in the land and magnificent Georgian buildings testify to the wealth brought into the town, not least through whale hunting. Other grand buildings of this time were constructed on wealth from the elsewhere, including slave plantations in the Caribbean. The town has also preserved the more modest homes of sailors and fishermen, including charitable housing, and the continuing connection with the sea is also represented by lighthouses, the foghorn station and lifeboat stations. More recently Whitby has become a holiday destination, with Victorian and more recent hotels, cinemas and a lido built for the use of visitors and local inhabitants. Whitby in 50 Buildings explores the history of this fascinating Yorkshire coastal resort through a selection of its most interesting buildings and structures, showing the changes that have taken place over the years. The book will appeal to all those who live in Whitby or who know it well.

Catbirds and pocket gophers, bur oaks and bull snakes, bluestem grass and leopard frogs have populated the gently rolling prairies around Sue Leaf's midwestern farming community for centuries. A hundred years ago her town, located forty-five miles from the nearest city, shipped thousands of tons of potato starch across the country, stiffening the collars of working men. Today it has become one of America's fast-growing suburbs. As naturalist and biologist Sue Leaf watched her rural surroundings become a magnet for developers, she became curious about the history of the land. Before the freeway and the housing developments, before the farmers cultivated the fertile soil, what plants and animals called this place home? To her delight, Leaf discovered the oak savanna, a park-like ecosystem that supports abundant wildlife and soothes the human psyche with its quiet, open spaces. As she looked more closely, she found remnants of the savanna in her own yard, in the trees lining her quiet street, and in nearby preserved patches of prairie. In lyrical essays, Leaf traces the natural history of her community, offering rich details about the people who built this area, about its once prosperous farms, and about the oak trees and wildflowers and prairie animals native to this part of the country. By examining remnants of the past still visible in a place deeply affected by sprawl, Leaf reveals how to slow down, look carefully, and untangle the jumble of unnoticed clues that can enrich our daily lives. "Leaf advises us all to discover our own communities' natural treasures before, through ignorance, we lose them." --Boston Sunday Globe "Leaf writes about the pace of sprawl, the loss of farmland and a way of life that seems like a dream or a place buried somewhere in our collective memory." --Los Angeles Times

Razed by Vikings! Deadly Danish assaults and demolitions. Neolithic murders! The tragic tale of Britain's earliest recorded homicide! A deadly game of thrones! The last remains of two royal victims in the Abbey. Murdered by the Ripper! Was one of Jack the Ripper's victims from Peterborough? Find out inside! 'I Can't Stop While There Are Lives to be Saved': The incredible story of British spy nurse Edith Cavell. There is the darker side to Peterborough's history. All manner of incredible events have occurred in the city: Roman occupations; Saxon murders and miracles; riots and revolts; battles, diseases, disasters and plagues. Including more than 60 illustrations, and with the history of institutions such as the prisoner-of-war camps of the Napoleonic era and the slums and workhouses of the Victorian age, you'll never see the city in the same way again.

This handy guide locates the final resting places and tells the stories of more than 375 notable Minnesotans. Author Stew Thornley travelled throughout Minnesota in pursuit of the historical fact, the little-known tale, the striking monument, and the truth behind the colourful exaggeration. Visiting cemeteries from every era and every region of the state, Thornley recounts the histories of the famous, infamous, and just plain interesting Minnesotans who lie at rest in the state. The book contains a useful appendix with a county-by-county listing of the cemeteries and individuals mentioned within. Perfect for road trippers and armchair travellers alike, 'Six Feet Under' is an enlightening guide to the state's history.