In James Bretz's Mansions of Denver, the charm and history of Denver's architectural past is carefully and beautifully drawn. His book provides readers with insight into the city's youth. But it is also a lament - an homage to a time when architectural originality prevailed.

Bricks were introduced to Britain by the Romans and reintroduced by Flemish craftsmen in the middle ages. Until the early nineteenth century they were made in numerous small brickyards supplying local needs, but eventually increasing demand led to the invention of improved brickmaking machines and kilns. This book gives an insight into the surprising variety of bricks, as well as a brief history of brickmaking, descriptions of hand and machine moulding, drying, the use of kilns and firing. Despite competition from newer materials, brick still holds its own as a facing material and traditional methods still survive in the smaller yards.

Following the events of January 6, 2021, talk of vigilantes and mob violence have become a part of our daily discourse, reminding us that we haven't come as far as we thought from the "wild" days of the Old West. The nineteenth century was a time of opportunity in the West, but it was also fraught with lawlessness, racism, and extreme violence as territories became states, freemen and immigrants settled alongside white homesteaders, and the first unions changed the way we work. Author Michael Rutter examines the growing pains of the American West through the lens of nineteenth century vigilantes, outlaws, mob violence, and lynchings, proving that oftentimes our country's democratic progress comes at the cost of physical violence.

The familiar history of jazz music in the United States begins with its birth in New Orleans, moves upstream along the Mississippi River to Chicago, then by rail into New York before exploding across the globe. That telling of history, however, overlooks the pivotal role the nation's capital has played for jazz for a century. Some of the most important clubs in the jazz world have opened and closed their doors in Washington, DC, some of its greatest players and promoters were born there and continue to reside in the area, and some of the institutions so critical to national support of this uniquely American form of music, including Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, the Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress and the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., are rooted in the city. Closer to the ground, a network of local schools like the Duke Ellington High School for the Performing Arts, jazz programs at the University of the District of Columbia and Howard University, churches, informal associations, locally focused media, and clubs keeps the music alive to this day. Noted historians Maurice Jackson and Blair Ruble, editors of this book, present a collection of original and fascinating stories about the DC jazz scene throughout its history, including a portrait of the cultural hotbed of Seventh and U Streets, the role of jazz in desegregating the city, a portrait of the great Edward "Duke" Ellington's time in DC, notable women in DC jazz, and the seminal contributions of the University of District of Columbia and Howard University to the scene. The book also includes three jazz poems by celebrated Washington, DC, poet E. Ethelbert Miller. Collectively, these stories and poems underscore the deep connection between creativity and place. A copublishing initiative with the Historical Society of Washington, DC, the book includes over thirty museum-quality photographs and a guide to resources for learning more about DC jazz.

The Blacketts have cast long shadows over the region's history as Newcastle merchants, miners, the builders of Wallington Hall and political figures in the 1600s and 1700s. Yet historians over the years have previously found it hard to get out from those shadows and to see more than the silhouettes of myth. Greg Finch's flowing account of the first three Sir William Blacketts, based on extensive new research, now dispels those myths. He reveals a vivid story of a dramatic rise from modest origins, the opening up of the regional lead industry, the creation and operation of a huge business and the crises that followed during a turbulent century of conflict and progress.

Authoritative and comprehensive account of one of Somerset's leading towns. Castle Cary is a relatively unspoilt town deep in the Somerset countryside, its narrow streets rich in high-quality late eighteenth and nineteenth-century buildings. Its most famous industry, horsehair weaving, still flourishes. This volume explores its history from the original castle and its lords to its rebirth as an industrial town. It also covers many villages, among them Ansford, early home of Parson Woodforde; Kingweston, virtually recreated bythe Dickinson family; Keinton Mandeville, once famous for its paving stone quarries and as the birthplace of Henry Irving; tiny Wheathill, almost obliterated by a golf course; and West Lydford, the family home of the early eighteenth-century diarist John Cannon. Other places of note include Barton St David, home of Henry Adams, the reputed ancestor of two American Presidents, and Lovington, whose small primary school traces its origins back to an eighteenth-century charity school. M.C. Siraut is a historian and archivist; she is the county editor for the Victoria History of Somerset.

Shirley Baker started to photograph the streets of Manchester and Salford in the early 1960s when homes were being demolished and communities were being uprooted. 'Whole streets were disappearing and I hoped to capture some trace of everyday life of the people who lived there. I was particularly interested in the more mundane, even trivial, aspects of life that were not being recorded by anyone else.' Shirley's powerful images, sparked by her curiosity, recorded people and communities involved in fundamental change. People's homes were demolished as part of a huge 'slum' clearance programme, however Shirley was able to capture some of the street life as it had been for generations before the change. The areas have been redeveloped to form a new and totally different environment. As Shirley once said, 'I hope by bridging time through the magic of photography, a connection has been made with a past that should not be forgotten'.

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.

In this hugely enlightening book, Carol Foreman investigates the origins of many of Glasgow's street names, examining the influences and inspirations for many of the city's most famous thoroughfares, from local association and sentimentality to the influence of royalty, distinguished individuals and historical events. There is a story in the name of almost every street and district in Glasgow, with some even bearing names bestowed on them in Pagan times, long before Glasgow could even be called a city. As well as street names, the origin of districts such as Cowcaddens, Gorbals and Polmadie are given along with those of the River Clyde, the Molendinar Burn and some buildings with unusual names such as the Bucks Head building in Argyle Street. This new revised edition examines the famous street names in the city centre from the M8 to the north bank of the River Clyde, to Glasgow Green and Bridgeton in the east and to Kingston Bridge in the west, with new material examining the Gorbals and the West End of the city, and with newly acquired illustrations and photography.

2021 Nebraska Book Award My Omaha Obsession takes the reader on an idiosyncratic tour through some of Omaha's neighborhoods, buildings, architecture, and people, celebrating the city's unusual history. Rather than covering the city's best-known sites, Miss Cassette is irresistibly drawn to strange little buildings and glorious large homes that don't exist anymore as well as to stories of Harkert's Holsum Hamburgers and the Twenties Club. Piecing together the records of buildings and homes and everything interesting that came after, Miss Cassette shares her observations of the property and its significance to Omaha. She scrutinizes land deeds, insurance maps, tax records, and old newspaper articles to uncover a property's singular story. Through conversations with fellow detectives and history enthusiasts, she guides readers along her path of hunches, personal interests, mishaps, and more. As a longtime resident of Omaha, Miss Cassette is informed by memories of her youth combined with an enduring curiosity about the city's offbeat relics and remains. Part memoir and part research guide with a healthy dose of colorful wandering, My Omaha Obsession celebrates the historic built environment and searches for the people who shaped early Omaha.

Old Warwickshire, the ancient heart of England, encompassed many iconic historic sites. Coventry, Rugby, Warwick, Stratford-upon-Avon and Birmingham, among others, all had tales to tell. Equally fascinating are the stories of the people, the virtuous and the villainous, who lived in the greenwoods and rolling hills of this celebrated county. Here are the folk tales passed from teller to listener over centuries, and the legends of the region's famous sons and daughters. From Lady Godiva and Dick Turpin, to the murderous Foxcote Feud and Coventry's claim to Saint George, storyteller Cath Edwards retells these tales and more with verve, vitality and vivid original illustrations.

New Mexico comes alive in these fascinating stories about events that helped make New Mexico what it is today. From the life and times of Folsom Man (9,000 BC) to the Great Prison Riot of Santa Fe County (1980 AD), It Happened in New Mexico tells the stories of intriguing people and events from the history of one of America's most captivating states. Find out how Pancho Villa's deadly raid on Columbus in March 1916 led to a $130 million-unsuccessful-mission to hunt down America's arch enemy. Go back to July 16, 1945, when a busload of spectators pulled up to a scenic overlook to witness the explosion of the world's first atomic bomb. Find out how Smokey the Bear began life as an imaginary symbol and ended up as the nation's most beloved cub. Did the U.S. Army steal Doc Noss's gold? Join the military cavalcade to Victorio Peak in 1977 and decide for yourself.

Norfolk is steeped in story. Whether we are treading fields, fens, beaches or streets, the landscape is pregnant with secret histories. The collective imagination of countless generations has populated the county with ghosts, saints, witches, pharisees, giants and supernatural beasts. Stories have evolved around historical characters, with Horatio Nelson, Oliver Cromwell, Anne Boleyn, Tom Paine and King Edmund becoming larger than life in folk-memory. This book is a celebration of the deep connection between a place and its people.

As the twentieth century began, Black and white southerners alike dealt with low life expectancy and poor healthcare in a region synonymous with early death. But the modernization of death care by a diverse group of actors changed not only death rituals but fundamental ideas about health and wellness. Kristine McCusker charts the dramatic transformation that took place when southerners in particular and Americans in general changed their thinking about when one should die, how that death could occur, and what decent burial really means. As she shows, death care evolved from being a community act to a commercial one where purchasing a purple coffin and hearse ride to the cemetery became a political statement and the norm. That evolution also required interactions between perfect strangers, especially during the world wars as families searched for their missing soldiers. In either case, being put away decent, as southerners called burial, came to mean something fundamentally different in 1955 than it had just fifty years earlier.

'A complete rollercoaster romp of a story... Kit has a created cast of heroes and villains whose escapades leave the reader crying with laughter and gasping with horror... But the story also has an emotional depth and poignancy which resonates long after the final page has been turned.' - Ruth Hogan Now if you were a poor Gypsy mush, who'd had a run of bad luck and whose ever-loving was done with managing on thin air, and someone was to offer you a lucrative run of work, what would you do? Okay, so it's not legit, but sometimes it's got to be worth the risk. You could buy your lovely Zilla all that her heart desires, you could stand your rounds at the kitchema without counting the money in your pocket, update your van, put a deposit on a bit of ground to call your own. So you do it, you take the work and you take the risk, but then it all blows up in your face and you've pulled your loved ones into danger. Well worse than danger. And now you're going to have to take yourself away, disappear from sight. Be the undead playing at being dead. By the author of Thursday Nights at the Bluebell Inn, this Own Voices novel reveals, with compassion and humour, the precarious lives of its characters in a story where, sometimes, the mystical and the everyday worlds converge.

On April 28, 1896, baseball fans traveled in horse-drawn buggies to watch the Detroit Tigers play their first baseball game at the site on the corner of Michigan and Trumbull Avenues. Starting out as Bennett Park, a wooden facility with trees growing in the outfield, Tiger Stadium has played a central role in the lives of millions of Detroiters and their families for more than a century. Bennett Park was torn down and replaced by a concrete and steel structure named Navin Field in 1912, was expanded and renamed Briggs Stadium in 1938, and finally was given the name Tiger Stadium in 1961.

Richard Bak traces the importance of the corner of Michigan and Trumbull in the history of Detroit and its people. During the last century, millions of fans have come to Michigan and Trumbull to watch the Tigers' 7,800 home games, as well as to attend numerous Other sporting, social, and civic events, including high school, collegiate, and professional football games, prep and Negro league baseball contests, political rallies, concerts, and boxing and soccer matches.

A Place for Summer covers baseball in Detroit from its beginnings in the 1850s through the Tigers' 1997 season, and offers a history of Detroit's playing grounds before Bennett Park, including the Woodward Avenue cricket grounds, the original Detroit Athletic Club, Recreation and Boulevard parks, and the many places where the Tigers played bootleg games on Sundays at the turn of the century. Bak presents attendance records from the Tigers' Western League days onward and a complete account of every opening day since 1896. A chapter is dedicated to the football Panthers of the 1920s and their more enduring successor, the Lions, who playedat Michigan and Trumbull through 1974.

A companion to the narrative history, almost two hundred rare photographs capture the spirit of 140 years of baseball in Detroit, from photographs of Detroit's nineteenth-century diamond pioneers, to an eighteen-year-old Ty Cobb in his rookie year, to baseball's first "stadium hug" on April 20, 1988, when more than a thousand fans encircled Tiger Stadium. A Place for Summer furnishes a sense of the relationship between the community, its teams, and the various fields, parks, and stadiums that have served as common ground for generations of Detroiters, especially timely in view of the upcoming erection of a new stadium downtown.

From its origins as a major Roman settlement to its current status as one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the UK, Leicester has a proud and distinctive identity. This extraordinary history is embodied in the buildings that have shaped the city. Leicester in 50 Buildings explores the history of this rich and vibrant community through a selection of its greatest architectural treasures. From the ancient Jewry Wall to the shiny and modern National Space Centre, this unique study celebrates the city's architectural heritage in a new and accessible way. Well-known local author Stephen Butt guides the reader on a tour of the city's historic buildings and modern architectural marvels. The churches, theatres, pubs and factories of Leicester's industrial heyday are examined alongside the innovative buildings of a twenty-first-century city.

Dianne D'Cotta has always liked making records of her travel and local surroundings and a few years ago started to put together grids of 9 photos on different themes, to save space and tell a story. One day she posted one of them on social media and before long had a following, which has continued to grow. Interspersing small details like palm trees and signs with larger views of familiar places, this book includes the areas visitors know and love, such as the quirky shops along the high street, the long seafront and beautiful beaches, but also the places local people will recognise, such as Jacob's Ladder, Little Dennis and the Docks Choir. People love how she captures the historically interesting, seaside, arty, university, botanically diverse, foodie, community minded, working port town that is Falmouth.