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Books > History > History of specific subjects > Local history
Sheffield Past & Present gives a fascinating insight into the
dramatic changes that have taken place in the city during the 20th
century. The book recalls houses and public buildings, shops,
factories and pubs that have vanished or been changed almost beyond
recognition. The pictures show changing types of transport and
fashion, and the developing character of streets and districts as
they took on the form that is familiar today. The astonishing
periods of growth that occurred during the late Victorian and
Edwardian eras, and since the Second World War, are particularly
well illustrated. Many aspects of the changing city are recalled -
hospitals and schools, places of work and recreation, parks and
squares, suburban streets and the main thoroughfares - and the
pictures record the ceaseless building and rebuilding that
characterises the city today. The author has combined a remarkable
selection of archive photographs with modern views of the same
scenes in order to record the transformation that has occurred. The
book will add to the knowledge, appreciation and enjoyment of all
those who take an interest in this distinctive city.
This is a guide to everything supernatural, paranormal, folkloric,
eccentric and, above all, mysterious that has occurred on the dark
waters of the enigmatic Loch Ness and the surrounding area of
Inverness. Containing Celtic gods and martyrs, telepathy, exorcism
and magic, mermaids, demons and saints (and based on texts both
ancient and modern), it is a fascinating introduction to the
heritage of the area. This is a guide that the armchair adventurer
or the on-location visitor can revel in. Comprehensive entries
covering Inverness' tombstones, simulacra, standing stones,
gargoyles, ruins, churches and archaeological curiosities are
complemented by more than 100 photographs. The book also includes
notes and cross-references to enable the reader to follow up the
sources.
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.
The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest
years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or
since.
Timothy Egan's critically acclaimed account rescues this iconic
chapter of American history from the shadows in a tour de force of
historical reportage. Following a dozen families and their
communities through the rise and fall of the region, Egan tells of
their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust
blizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones. Brilliantly
capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe, Egan does equal
justice to the human characters who become his heroes, "the stoic,
long-suffering men and women whose lives he opens up with urgency
and respect" (New York Times).
In an era that promises ever-greater natural disasters, The Worst
Hard Time is "arguably the best nonfiction book yet" (Austin
Statesman Journal) on the greatest environmental disaster ever to
be visited upon our land and a powerful cautionary tale about the
dangers of trifling with nature.
This affectionate but far from sentimental history was published in
1961 to mark the 450th anniversary of the foundation of St John's
College, Cambridge. Edward Miller (1915-2000) was a medieval
historian who spent most of his career teaching in Cambridge. An
undergraduate and research fellow at St John's, he later went on to
become Master of Fitzwilliam. His Portrait blends the history of St
John's with wider developments in education, as well as social,
political and economic history. As such it is a fine example of an
institutional history written from within, with an unbiased
assessment of the many changes the College had seen. The chapter on
the period from 1918 to the early sixties, based on Miller's own
reminiscences and those of his colleagues, is an important record
of life in the college in an age of modernisation and change.
Charles Henry Cooper charted over half a millennium of life at
Cambridge in the five volumes of the Annals of Cambridge. Cooper
practised as a solicitor in Cambridge, and was also town clerk from
1849 until his death in 1866. He was a keen historian and devoted a
great deal of time to archival research, particularly into local
history. Drawing on extensive public and private records, including
petitions, town treasurers' accounts, restoration records, death
certificates, legal articles and letters to ruling royalty, Cooper
compiled a comprehensive chronological history of Cambridge,
documenting the 'city of scholars' through its tumultuous political
and religious growing pains. It was published in the face of
considerable opposition from the university authorities, but was
eventually acclaimed as an authoritative account. Volume 5 was
published posthumously in 1908 and contains the annals for 1850
1856, together with additions, corrections and an index for the
first four volumes.
Charles Henry Cooper charted over half a millennium of life at
Cambridge in the five volumes of Annals of Cambridge. Cooper
practised as a solicitor in Cambridge, and was also town clerk from
1849 until his death in 1866. He was a keen historian and devoted a
great deal of time to archival research, particularly into local
history. Drawing on extensive public and private records, including
petitions, town treasurers' accounts, restoration records, death
certificates, legal articles and letters to ruling royalty, Cooper
compiled a comprehensive chronological history of Cambridge,
documenting the 'city of scholars' through its tumultuous political
and religious growing pains. It was published in parts, in the face
of considerable opposition from the university authorities, but was
eventually acclaimed as an authoritative account. This second
volume, published in 1843, covers the Elizabethan period, from 1546
1601, and includes the founding of the University Press.
Charles Henry Cooper charted over half a millennium of life at
Cambridge in the five volumes of Annals of Cambridge. Cooper
practised as a solicitor in Cambridge, and was also town clerk from
1849 until his death in 1866. He was a keen historian and devoted a
great deal of time to archival research, particularly into local
history. Drawing on extensive public and private records, including
petitions, town treasurers' accounts, restoration records, death
certificates, legal articles and letters to ruling royalty, Cooper
compiled a comprehensive chronological history of Cambridge,
documenting the 'city of scholars' through its tumultuous political
and religious growing pains. It was published in parts, in the face
of considerable opposition from the university authorities, but was
eventually acclaimed as an authoritative account. This first
volume, published in 1842, spans the centuries from the town's
beginnings to the surveys of the colleges in 1546.
In the mid-nineteenth century, a royal commission was appointed to
investigate 'the state, discipline, studies, and revenues' of
Cambridge University, and eventually recommended radical reforms.
As part of its brief, it gathered records that had been preserved
for centuries as the university evolved. Published in three volumes
in 1852 under the title Documents Relating to the University and
Colleges of Cambridge, the compilation, much of it in its original
Latin, charts the university's emergence as one of the world's
leading academic institutions and the challenges it faced along the
way. This material remains a valuable resource for historians of
British education and society. Volume 1 covers the period to the
mid-sixteenth century and contains, among other historical gems, an
abstract of records spanning nine monarchies, and an earlier
compilation ordered by Henry VIII in the 37th year of his reign.
First published in 1913, John Venn's collection of writings
describes college life in the early days of the University of
Cambridge. Venn, a leading British logician and moral scientist,
was president of Gonville and Caius College, and had been a student
at Cambridge in the 1850s. This volume of 'reminiscences of a
reading man' contains articles he contributed to the college
magazine, The Caian and speeches and addresses given at College
Chapel and Hall. These are interspersed with letters written by
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Cambridge scholars, and
embedded in a commentary that provides additional insights into
student life and university politics. He also includes, as an
appendix, 'College Life and Ways Sixty Years Ago', recounting his
own student experiences. Ranging from the Elizabethan to the
Victorian era, Early Collegiate Life offers an honest and
delightful glimpse into the daily lives of Cambridge scholars of
the past.
At its height the Creek Nation comprised a collection of
multiethnic towns and villages with a domain stretching across
large parts of Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. By the 1830s,
however, the Creeks had lost almost all this territory through
treaties and by the unchecked intrusion of white settlers who
illegally expropriated Native soil. With the Jackson administration
unwilling to aid the Creeks, while at the same time demanding their
emigration to Indian territory, the Creek people suffered from
dispossession, starvation, and indebtedness. Between the 1825
Treaty of Indian Springs and the arrival of detachment six in the
West in late 1837, nearly twenty-three thousand Creek Indians were
moved-voluntarily or involuntarily-to Indian territory. Rivers of
Sand fills a substantial gap in scholarship by capturing the full
breadth and depth of the Creeks' collective tragedy during the
marches westward, on the Creek home front, and during the first
years of resettlement. Unlike the Cherokee Trail of Tears, which
was conducted largely at the end of a bayonet, most Creeks were
relocated through a combination of coercion and negotiation.
Hopelessly outnumbered military personnel were forced to make
concessions in order to gain the compliance of the headmen and
their people. Christopher D. Haveman's meticulous study uses
previously unexamined documents to weave narratives of resistance
and survival, making Rivers of Sand an essential addition to the
ethnohistory of American Indian removal.
This is an exquisite counterpoint of memoir and carefully
researched fiction, an amazing narrative that ties modern Minnesota
to the single most painful event in its history. This compelling
work shows the strength, love, and humour of a family of survivors
-- and the healing power of family stories.
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.
Lifting the lid on London, Spectacular Vernacular reveals the
stories behind its 100 strangest and most enigmatic buildings. Some
are open to the public, if you know who to ask. Others remain
strictly off-limits, thus heightening the sense of mystery
surrounding them. But many are so familiar that few of us ever stop
to consider just how curious they are. In the heart of Kensington,
for example, a 300ft tower attracts few glances that even most
locals don't know it's there. South of the river the city's widest
building at nearly 1,000ft has been favourably compared to the
Winter Palace at St Petersburg. And in Chelsea a medieval hall,
once home to a king and moved brick by brick from the City to
escape demolition, is now being remodelled as London's largest
private house. Elsewhere one finds an arts centre built of old
shipping containers, a Victorian explorer lying dead in a tent,
literally acres of secret underground government offices, even a
private tunnel used for running cable-cars under the Thames. Think
you know London? Well, it's time to reconsider.
Sunderland enjoys a good hark back. Mackems (Sunderland natives)
take great pleasure in sharing their knowledge - pointing out what
used to be where and why. Author Marie Gardiner uncovers some of
the hidden history behind this remarkable city by the sea, shedding
light on some of its fascinating and enigmatic stories, people and
places. Stand a few inches taller with pride as we encounter past
heroes like lifesaver Joseph 'Stormy Petrel' Hodgson, and Jack
Crawford, who reached dizzying heights in the midst of battle.
Learn how Sunderland's football club came into existence, how we
almost lost our beloved Sunderland Empire Theatre and why there's a
concrete boat stuck to the bed of the River Wear. As we negotiate
the twists and turns of Sunderland's history, we take an occasional
dark path, where we uncover mass graves, a serial murderer, and
discover how a terrible tragedy had national consequences. Secret
Sunderland reveals all this and more, and will appeal to locals and
visitors alike.
How the famous and not-so-famous like-minded citizens all gave
their time, expertise, and money to build a park legacy of
incomparable benefit The Palisades park and historic site system in
New York and New Jersey is a significant anchor-point for the
spread of national and state parks across the nation. The challenge
to protect these treasures began with a brutal blast of dynamite in
the late nineteenth century and continues to this day. Palisades:
The People's Park presents the story of getting from zero protected
acres to the rich tapestry that is today's Palisades park system,
located in the nation's most densely populated metropolitan region.
This is an account of huge determination, moments of crisis,
caustic resistance to the very idea of conservation, glorious
philanthropy, a steep learning curve, and responsibilities for
guardianship passed with care from one generation to the next.
Despite the involvement of men of great wealth and fame from its
earliest beginnings, the Palisades Interstate Park Commission faced
an early and ongoing struggle to arrange financial support from
both the New York and New Jersey state governments for a park that
would cross state lines. The conflicts between developers and
conservationists, industrialists and wilderness enthusiasts, with
their opposing views regarding the uses of natural resources
required the commissioners of the PIPC to become skilled
negotiators, assiduous fundraisers, and savvy participants in the
political process. The efforts to create Palisades Interstate Park
was prodigious, requiring more than 1,000 real estate transactions
to establish Sterling Forest, to save Storm King Mountain, to
preserve Lake Minnewaska, to protect Stony Point Battlefield and
Washington's headquarters, to open Bear Mountain and Harriman state
parks, and to add the other sixteen parks to the Palisades
Interstate Park System. Beginning with the efforts of Elizabeth
Vermilye of the New Jersey Federation of Women's Clubs, who
enlisted President Theodore Roosevelt's support to stop the
blasting and quarrying of Palisades rock, author Robert Binnewies
traces the story of the famous, including J. P. Morgan, the
Rockefellers, and the Harrimans, as well as the not-so-famous men
and women whose donations of time and money led to the preservation
of New York and New Jersey's most scenic and historic lands. The
park experiment, begun in 1900, still stands as a dynamic model
among the nation's major environmental achievements.
The area round Pendle Hill (Burnley, Nelson, Colne and over to
Skipton) has long been associated with witches and ghostly goings
on. This is a collection of myths and tales about the infamous
witches. It appeals to those with an interest in the history of the
region.
The Cornwall Village Book is a celebration of the unique
communities at the heart of a diverse and fascinating county.
Compiled by the Cornwall Federation of Women's Institutes, it
gathers together descriptions of 150 villages, recalling the
history, people and events that make each one unique, and how their
collective identity has shaped Cornwall as a county known for its
rich cultural heritage. From the wild moorland landscapes to the
picturesque harbour villages, this is truly a region of contrasting
lives and communities. Despite the changes brought about by the
modern age, these villages continue to thrive, providing a source
of pride and delight to villagers and visitors alike. The Cornwall
Village Book will appeal to those who have lived in the county all
their lives and those visiting for the first time.
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