This handsome, unique package -- containing a stereoscopic viewer, 34 3D photographic cards, and a photo-packed paperback book -- offers a rare view of Paris, the world's most beautiful city, during an era when art, literature, poetry, and music blossomed and reigned. Paris during the Belle Epoque (1880-1914) was a time when peace and prosperity allowed for towering innovation in art, fashion, architecture, and gastronomy. The city at this time was the epicenter of art and music. Faure, Saint Saens, Debussy, and Ravel were composing; Rodin was working on The Thinker; Renoir, Monet, Cezanne, Pissarro, and Degas painted scenes depicting everyday life; and Pablo Picasso embarked on his Blue Period. As Art Nouveau came into fashion, new buildings followed suit. Opera Garnier, Castel Beranger, Moulin Rouge, and the Paris Metro entrances were all built during this time. Galeries Lafayette unveiled its gilded department store, which sold couture to the aspiring middle class. This burgeoning creativity and prosperity, as well as the city and the inhabitants who embraced it, are all captured here, with stunning clarity and realism. Paris in 3D's innovative and inimitable package includes a sturdy metal stereoscopic viewer, 34 rarely seen stereoscopic photographs of the city at the turn of the century, and an accompanying 128-page paperback, which provides a brief history of the stereograph craze and an overview of the city's evolution during that time.

Do motorists pick up a phantom hitchhiker on Blue Bell Hill during stormy nights? Does Satan appear if you dance round the Devil's Bush in the village of Pluckley? Do big cats roam the local woods? And what happens if you manage to count the 'Countless Stones' near Aylesford? For centuries strange urban legends have materialised in the Garden of England. Now, for the first time, folklorist and monster-hunter Neil Arnold looks at these intriguing tales, strips back the layers, and reveals if there is more to these Chinese whispers than meets the eye. Folklore embeds itself into a local community, often to the extent that some people believe all manner of mysteries and take them as fact. Whether they're stories passed around the school playground, through the internet, or round a flickering campfire, urban legends are everywhere. Kent Urban Legends is a quirky and downright spooky ride into the heart of Kent folklore.

The Shropshire market town of Shrewsbury, lying on the River Severn, was an important centre of the wool trade in medieval England and its prosperity continued up until the Industrial Revolution, with a wealth of ancient and historical buildings still standing in the town centre. Although Shrewsbury was not heavily industrialised, it was the home of the railway locomotive and lorry manufacturer Sentinel. Shrewsbury and its suburbs lost many of their buildings during the 1950s and 1960s, and life in the town has significantly changed over the decades, with the rise of new retail developments and the evolution of work and leisure. Lost Shrewsbury presents a portrait of a town and a way of life that has radically changed or disappeared today, showing not just the industries, buildings, people and street scenes that have gone, but also many of the popular places of entertainment and much more. This fascinating photographic history of lost Shrewsbury will appeal to all those who live in the town or know it well, as well as those who remember it from previous decades.

In early March of 1915 news broke in El Paso that Leonard Worcester Jr., a leading mining executive in the border region, was being held in a Chihuahua jail without trial or release on bond. Officials loyal to Francisco "Pancho" Villa had accused Worcester of defrauding a Mexican company related to a shipment of zinc, a charge without merit. While struggling to convince Mexican officials of his innocence, Worcester found himself in the middle of a maelstrom of economic interests, foreign diplomacy, and revolution that engulfed the U.S.-Mexico border region after 1910. Worcester's 1939 memoir of his "aimless" life describes an important period in U.S. and Mexican history from the perspective of an American miner, musician, and entrepreneur-running counter to the bombast of boosters promoting Manifest Destiny. Introduced, edited, and annotated by Andrew Offenburger, Worcester's first-person account details the expansion of the American West, mining and labor in Colorado, the formation of reservations in Indian Territory, the Great Depression, and the everyday nature of the Mexican Revolution in Chihuahua. Worcester's memoir, one of the few written by an American living in the Mexican borderlands during this important historical era, provides a snapshot of the capitalist development of the American West and borderlands regions in the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. Published in Cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University.

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.

Delves deep into the underbelly of the NYC subway system to reveal the tunnels and stations that might have been.
Robert A. Van Wyck, mayor of the greater city of New York, broke ground for the first subway line by City Hall on March 24, 1900. It took four years, six months, and twenty-three days to build the line from City Hall to West 145th Street in Harlem. Things rarely went that quickly ever again. TheRoutes Not Taken explores the often dramatic stories behind the unbuilt or unfinished subway lines, shedding light on a significant part of New York City's history that has been almost completely ignored until now.
Home to one of the world's largest subway systems, New York City made constant efforts to expand its underground labyrinth, efforts that were often met with unexpected obstacles: financial shortfalls, clashing agendas of mayors and borough presidents, battles with local community groups, and much more. After discovering a copy of the 1929 subway expansion map, author Joseph Raskin began his own investigation into the city's underbelly. Using research from libraries, historical societies, and transit agencies throughout the New York metropolitan area, Raskin provides a fascinating history of the Big Apple's unfinished business that until now has been only tantalizing stories retold by public-transit experts.
The Routes Not Taken sheds light on the tunnels and stations that were completed for lines that were never fulfilled: the efforts to expand the Hudson tubes into a fullfledged subway; the Flushing line, and why it never made it past Flushing; a platform underneath Brooklyn's Nevins Street station that has remained unused for more than a century; and the 2nd Avenue line long the symbol of dashed dreams deferred countless times since the original plans were presented in 1929. Raskin also reveals the figures and personalities involved, including why Fiorello LaGuardia could not grasp the importance of subway lines and why Robert Moses found them to be old and boring. By focusing on the unbuilt lines, Raskin illustrates how the existing subway system is actually a Herculean feat of countless political compromises.
Filled with illustrations of the extravagant expansion plans, The Routes Not Taken provides an enduring contribution to the transportation history of New York City.

These lively and entertaining folk tales from one of Britain's most fascinating counties are vividly retold by local storyteller The Journey Man. Their origins lost in the oral tradition, these thirty stories from Staffordshire reflect the wisdom (and eccentricities) of the county and its people. Staffordshire has a rich and diverse collection of tales, from the stories of some of Britain's most famous mythical heroes, to tales of demons, dragons, boggarts and brownies. These stories, illustrated with twenty-five line drawings, bring alive the landscape of the county's moorlands, forests and fertile plains.

Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross and listen to the tales of this ancient county. Hear how a King and his knights were turned to stone at the mysterious Rollright Stones; how Dragon Hill got its name; take the Devil's Highway to the End of the World - if you dare; or spend a night on the weird Ot Moor; listen in on the Boar's Head Carol; walk the oldest trackway in Europe in the footsteps of a Neolithic pilgrim; pause to try the Blowing Stone; leave a coin for the enigmatic blacksmith to shoe your horse at Wayland's Smithy; eavesdrop upon the Inklings in the Eagle and Child; and meet that early fabulist, Geoffrey of Monmouth in the city of dreaming spires. This collection will take you on an oral tour across the county - on the way you'll meet gypsies, highwaymen, cavaliers, a prime minister and a devilish mason.

Northumbria was one of the great kingdoms of Britain in the Dark Ages, enduring longer than the Roman Empire. Yet it has been all but forgotten. This book puts Northumbria back in its rightful place, at the heart of British history. From the impregnable fastness of Bamburgh Castle, the kings of Northumbria ruled a vast area, and held sway as High Kings of Britain. From the tidal island of Lindisfarne, extraordinary saints and learned scholars brought Christianity and civilization to the rest of the country. Now, thanks to the ongoing work of a dedicated team of archaeologists this story is slowly being brought to light. The excavations at Bamburgh Castle have revealed a society of unsuspected sophistication and elegance, capable of creating swords and jewellery unparalleled before or since, and works of art and devotion that still fill the beholder with wonder.

The Essex coastline has endured invasion by plundering and bloodthirsty Romans, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, and this mysterious landscape is still haunted by their presence. Their spirits, and countless others, have oft been reported - not least by smugglers determined to keep intruders away from their secret hideouts. Even more dramatic stories of the supernatural lurk inland: accusations of witchcraft have been screamed around many picturesque market towns, dragons have terrorised the community, and a violent White Lady has struck at Hadleigh Castle. Indeed, it is the women of Essex who have stirred the imagination most - from brave Boudicca and beautiful Edith Swan-neck to the adulteress Kitty Canham. Amid the county's infamous pirates, highwaymen and desperados, Essex can even boast a lady smuggler.

2022 Best Book Award, Oral History Association Hundreds of stories of activists at the front lines of the intersecting African American and Mexican American liberation struggle Not one but two civil rights movements flourished in mid-twentieth-century Texas, and they did so in intimate conversation with one another. Far from the gaze of the national media, African American and Mexican American activists combated the twin caste systems of Jim Crow and Juan Crow. These insurgents worked chiefly within their own racial groups, yet they also looked to each other for guidance and, at times, came together in solidarity. The movements sought more than integration and access: they demanded power and justice. Civil Rights in Black and Brown draws on more than 500 oral history interviews newly collected across Texas, from the Panhandle to the Piney Woods and everywhere in between. The testimonies speak in detail to the structure of racism in small towns and huge metropolises-both the everyday grind of segregation and the haunting acts of racial violence that upheld Texas's state-sanctioned systems of white supremacy. Through their memories of resistance and revolution, the activists reveal previously undocumented struggles for equity, as well as the links Black and Chicanx organizers forged in their efforts to achieve self-determination.

A richly detailed history of Ashdown Forest -- home of Winnie-the-Pooh. The seeming tranquility of many rural landscapes can hide a combative history. This biography of one such landscape, Ashdown Forest in the Weald of Sussex, exemplifies the evolving conflicts that have taken place over many centuries. Wealth and poverty, power and exclusion, have all characterised this landscape through the ages. When a thirteenth-century boundary was erected to form a hunting park it was imposed upon a landscape which for centuries had provided sustenance for peasant families, for swine herds, for itinerant groups, all of whom had developed grazing and collecting rights and customary ties with the area. Conflict between manorial lords and commoners, "turbulent foresters", was born, and the evolution of this conflict over succeeding centuries is the recurring motif of this book. We move through the exploitation of iron ore and timber during the Tudor period, learn of the real threats of enclosure, of military occupation, to be followed by a landscape aesthetic bringing wealthy incomers, attracted by scenery easily reachable from London by train. All sides felt that the Forest was theirs by right. Victorian law-suits, twentieth-century protective legislation and a growing environmental consciousness have all left their mark. And the struggle for Ashdown continues amid ongoing development pressures. This book demonstrates that multi-layered conflict has been a characteristic feature of what still miraculously remains the largest area of internationally recognised heath in the South-East of England.

Bringing Chicago circa 1893 to vivid life, Erik Larson's spellbinding bestseller intertwines the true tale of two men--the brilliant architect behind the legendary 1893 World's Fair, striving to secure America's place in the world; and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction.

The years immediately after the Second World War were known as the decade of disappearing Irish - the peak period of emigration since the Great Famine. Many of these migrants went to Britain and played a key role in the rebuilding the country after the ravages of war. Their legacy, both in bricks and mortar and also in their cultural and social influences, can still be seen today. Following a brief overview of Ireland and Britain during the post-war years, this book explores the economic and social factors of migration, the work, such as navvies and nurses, that the migrants found in Britain, and the various support systems, such as the Church, pubs, Irish clubs and charities, that were formed as a result, and which created a vibrant legacy that survives to this day.

In 1981 the suspended walkways-or "skywalks"-in Kansas City's Hyatt Regency hotel fell and killed 114 people. It was the deadliest building collapse in the United States until the fall of New York's Twin Towers on 9/11. In Skywalks R. Eli Paul follows the actions of attorney Robert Gordon, an insider to the bitter litigation that followed. Representing the plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit against those who designed, built, inspected, owned, and managed the hotel, Gordon was tenacious in uncovering damaging facts. He wanted his findings presented before a jury, where his legal team would assign blame from underlings to corporate higher-ups, while securing a massive judgment in his clients' favor. But when the case was settled out from under Gordon, he turned to another medium to get the truth out: a quixotic book project that consumed the rest of his life. For a decade the irascible attorney-turned-writer churned through a succession of high-powered literary agents, talented ghost writers, and New York trade publishers. Gordon's resistance to collaboration and compromise resulted in a controversial but unpublishable manuscript, "House of Cards," finished long after the public's interest had waned. His conclusions, still explosive but never receiving their proper attention, laid the blame for the disaster largely at the feet of the hotel's owner and Kansas City's most visible and powerful corporation, Hallmark Cards Inc. Gordon gave up his lucrative law practice and lived the rest of his life as a virtual recluse in his mansion in Mission Hills, Kansas. David had fought Goliath, and to his despair, Goliath had won. Gordon died in 2008 without ever seeing his book published or the full truth told. Skywalks is a long-overdue corrective, built on a foundation of untapped historical materials Gordon compiled, as well as his own unpublished writings.

People are inexplicably drawn to abandoned places. Believe it or not, New England is home to numerous ghost towns long abandoned, but filled with mystery, unexpected beauty, and a sense that these locations are simply biding their time, waiting for people to return. Taryn Plumb explores a dozen such locations in the region, revealing the surprising histories of the towns and the reasons they were abandoned. In Maine, sites include Flagstaff, whose citizens were forced out to make way for a dam and which now sits at the bottom of Flagstaff Lake; Riceville, wiped out by cholera; and Perkins Township, which was abandoned so suddenly the remaining houses are still filled with furnishings. Locations in New Hampshire's White Mountains, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut are also covered in this unique and fascinating tour.

The Ironbridge Gorge, a cradle of the Industrial Revolution, in the late 18th century was a magnet for writers, artists and industrial spies. The latest wonders of engineering and metallurgical technology were to be seen in a spectacular natural setting, where the fast-flowing Severn passed between towering cliffs of limestone, and hillsides honeycombed with mine workings amid the smoke of furnaces and the clanking of engines. Barrie Trinder, the acknowledged authority on the subject, has selected the most interesting descriptions and pictures to provide an invaluable anthology, through contemporary evidence, of the place and the people in that pioneering period, when this corner of Shropshire was changing the world and was indeed, as Charles Hulbert described it in 1837, 'the most extraordinary district in the world'. This book has become essential reading for anyone with an interest in the history of this fascinating area, or in the Industrial Revolution in general. It brings new understanding of the gorge itself and the industrial monuments preserved there and new insights for the specialist historian, whether concerned with social conditions, popular religion or industrial technology. This edition will continue to serve the same main groups of readers - local historians, educational groups and specialist historians - and, most of all, those general readers who know the area and recognise that something strange and seminal happened there that transformed not only Ironbridge and Coalbrookdale but the whole of our civilisation. The activity that once made the gorge so extraordinary has spread and grown to become a commonplace in modern industrial societies, leaving the place where it began a monument and a museum.

Chicago in Stone and Clay explores the interplay between the city's most architecturally significant sites, the materials they're made of, and the sediments and bedrock they are anchored in. This unique geologist's survey of Windy City neighborhoods demonstrates the fascinating and often surprising links between science, art, engineering, and urban history. Drawing on two decades of experience leading popular geology tours in Chicago, Raymond Wiggers crafted this book for readers ranging from the region's large community of amateur naturalists, "citizen scientists," and architecture buffs to geologists, architects, educators, and other professionals seeking a new perspective on the themes of architecture and urbanism. Unlike most geology and architecture books, Chicago in Stone and Clay is written in the informal, accessible style of a natural history tour guide, humanizing the science for the nonspecialist reader. Providing an exciting new angle on both architecture and natural history, Wiggers uses an integrative approach that incorporates multiple themes and perspectives to demonstrate how the urban environment presents us with a rich geologic and architectural legacy.

From the landing of Federal troops at the Tennessee-Ohio confluence to the new river of the TVA, whose dams stand athwart the valley in Egyptian impassivity,O this volume completes the story of the transformation of a river and of the culture it nourished. Southern Classics Series.