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Books > History > History of specific subjects > Local history
At the turn of the Twentieth Century, St. Louis, Missouri, was the fourth largest city in the country. For years, it was the westernmost metropolis, known for its manufacturing, beer, railroad hub, music, baseball, World's Fair, and its romance with the Mississippi. This collection of shocking stories ripped from the headlines of the Gateway City's seamy past includes tales of cholera epidemics, deadly newspaper-daily duels, ragtime racism, and Spiritualism scuffles. Readers will also meet the formative female figures behind the women's suffrage movement in St. Louis, and discover how local brewers fought against Prohibition with the help of America's favorite pastime-baseball.
An insider's look at the iconic drink and its role in shaping the American West Distilleries are the new microbreweries, cropping up all over the West and producing brands that emulate the predecessors that were made in copper stills by emigrants and served in saloons and dance halls. This history of the spirit and its origins and migration across the country-and its place in shaping the West-celebrates the story of the golden elixir through first-hand accounts, evocative photographs, and historic cocktail recipes.
Orkney lies only 20 miles north of mainland Scotland, yet for many centuries its culture was more Scandanavian than Scottish. Strong westerly winds account for the scarcity of trees on Orkney and also for the tradition of well-constructed stone structures. As a result, the islands boast a large number of exceptionally well-preserved remains, which help us to form a detailed picture of Orcadian life through the ages. Sites and remains to be explored include settlements from the Stone Age, stone circles and burials from the Bronze Age, Iron Age brochs, Viking castles, the magnificent cathedral of St Magnus in Kirkwall, Renaissance palaces, a Martello tower from the Napoleonic Wars and numerous remains from the Second World War. In this updated edition of her best-selling book, Caroline Wickham-Jones, who has worked extensively on Orcadian sites for many years, introduces the history of the islands and provides a detailed survey of the principal places and sites of historic interest.
Newcastle has a long and distinguished history through two millennia: a Roman fortress at the eastern end of Hadrian's Wall; an important centre of monasticism; a 'royal' bulwark against attacks and invasion from Scotland; and the principal centre for the export of coal to London. In the 19th century it was transformed into an elegant Georgian townscape with dramatic streets and handsome public buildings. It and other towns on the Tyne - Gateshead, Jarrow, Wallsend, Tynemouth, North and South Shields - developed important industries: shipbuilding, glass and heavy engineering. Tyneside suffered severe contraction in the 20th century as heavy industry declined, but it has begun to reinvent itself and create new growth shoots, not least its vibrant cultural industries including music and art. This book takes an innovative approach to telling the story of the area's history by focusing on the historic maps and plans that record the growth and development of Newcastle and Tyneside over many centuries.
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.
A richly illustrated architectural "biography" of one of DC's most important boulevards Sixteenth Street NW in Washington, DC, has been called the Avenue of the Presidents, Executive Avenue, and the Avenue of Churches. From the front door of the White House, this north-south artery runs through the middle of the District and extends just past its border with Maryland. The street is as central to the cityscape as it is to DC's history and culture. In Sixteenth Street NW: Washington, DC's Avenue of Ambitions, John DeFerrari and Douglas Peter Sefton depict the social and architectural history of the street and immediate neighborhoods, inviting readers to explore how the push and pull between ordinary Washingtonians and powerful elites has shaped the corridor-and the city. This highly illustrated book features notable buildings along Sixteenth Street and recounts colorful stories of those who lived, worked, and worshipped there. Maps offer readers an opportunity to create self-guided tours of the places and people that have defined this main thoroughfare over time. What readers will find is that both then and now, Sixteenth Street NW has been shaped by a diverse array of people and communities. The street, and the book, feature a range of sites-from Black Lives Matter Plaza to the White House, from mansions and rowhomes to apartment buildings, from Meridian Hill (Malcolm X) Park with its drum circles to Rock Creek Park with its tennis tournaments, and from hotels to houses of worship. Sixteenth Street, NW reveals a cross section of Washington, DC, that shows the vibrant makeup of our nation's capital.
In 1998, roughly 2 million visitors came to see what there was to see in Nashville. By 2018, that number had ballooned to 15.2 million.In that span of two decades, the boundaries of Nashville did not change. But something did. Or rather, many somethings changed, and kept changing, until many who lived here began to feel they no longer recognized their own city. And some began to feel it wasn't their own city at all anymore, pushed to its fringes by rising housing costs. Between 1998 and 2018, the population of Nashville grew by 150,000. On some level, Nashville has always packaged itself for consumption, but something clicked and suddenly everyone wanted a taste. But why Nashville? Why now? What changed to make all this change possible? This book is an attempt to understand those changes, or, if not to understand them, exactly, then to grapple with the question: What happened?
Haworth parsonage and village will forever be linked inextricably with one nineteenth-century literary family. For it was here, in 1821, that Patrick Bront, an Irish Anglican clergyman, came from Thornton to be curate. He brought his three young daughters and son to Haworth, and it was here that the sisters grew up to become quite the most remarkable literary phenomenon of the century. As children, they knew the streets and the houses, the moors and the people. And, as Michael Baumber shows, many of the characters in the Bront novels were based upon real Haworth folk - some of whom recognised themselves in the women's novels and were not at all happy with how they had been portrayed - while the moors above the village figure prominently and famously as the haunt of the brooding Heathcliff in Emily's greatest work "Wuthering Heights". Patrick Bront the curate was himself a notable character in the history of the village, and his role in the social, public and religious life of the village is explored at several points. Surprisingly, the Bront novels mention little about the textile industry which by that time had become such a dominant force in the district's economy. Indeed, the industrial development of the region was such an important and all-consuming fact of life in early Victorian Haworth that it forms a major subject of this new book. The Bront's did, however, describe life in the district's rural homes, schools and communities at a time of particularly harsh living conditions and appalling death rates in the new industrial community of Haworth. The village's public health record was poor well into the twentieth century, and Patrick Bront endured the deaths from tuberculosis (or other illnesses aggravated by it) of all four of his children between 1848 and 1855. Yet, as Michael Baumber's highly readable new book shows, the history of Haworth actually stretches back millennia: his book tells the whole story of the Haworth district from the early Mesolithic right up to the popular tourist magnet that the village now becomes during the summer months. The book also features the hamlets of Near and Far Oxenhope and Stanbury, providing a clear and illuminating account of how Haworth developed in the particular way that it did. Fully illustrated, with many rare old photographs, this book offers many new insights into the village and also its occasionally ambivalent relationship with its most famous literary residents.
When the U.S. Army ordered troops into Arizona Territory in the 19th century to protect and defend the new settlements established there, some of those military men brought their wives and families. Many of these women worked as laundresses for the military and maids to officers' families to supplement their husband's meager salaries. They had little time for leisure, but their letters, diaries, and journals from their years on the army posts reveal the hardships and challenges faced by families on the frontier. These women were bold, brave, and compassionate. They were an integral part of military posts that peppered the West and played an important role in civilizing the Arizona frontier. Combining the words of these women with original research tracing their movements from camp to camp over the years they spent in the West, From Reveille to Taps explores the tragedies and triumphs they experienced.
From Kim Heacox, the acclaimed author of The Only Kayak and John Muir and the Ice That Started a Fire, comes Rhythm of the Wild, an Alaska memoir focused on Denali National Park. Music runs through every page of this book, as do stories, rivers and wolves. At its heart, Rhythm of the Wild is a love story. It begins in 1981 and ends in 2014, yet reaches beyond the arc of time. Author and mountaineer Jonathan Waterman has called Heacox "our northern Edward Abbey." In this book we find out why. We hitchhike with Kim through Idaho, camp on the Colorado Plateau, and fly off the sand cliffs of Hangman Creek with a little terrier named Super Max, the Wonder Dog. We meet Zed, the Aborigine; Nine Fingers, the blues guitarist; and Adolph Murie, the legendary wildlife biologist, who dared to say that wolves should be protected, not persecuted. Kim also reprises in this book his friend Richard Steele, a beloved character from The Only Kayak. Some books are larger than their actual subject-this is one. Part memoir, part exploration of Denali's inspiring natural and human history, and part conservation polemic, Rhythm of the Wild ranges from funny to provocative. It's a celebration of-and a plea to restore and defend-the vibrant earth and our rightful place in it.
Samora Machel (1933–1986) led his people through a war against their Portuguese colonizers and in 1975, became the first president of the People’s Republic of Mozambique. His military successes against a colonial regime backed by South Africa, Rhodesia, the United States, and its NATO allies enhanced his reputation as a revolutionary hero. In 1986, during the country’s civil war, Machel died in a plane crash under circumstances that remain uncertain.
Our images of the big names and places of the Old West often come from the tales of gunfights and violence that were sensationalized by dime novels and yellow journalism in the 19th century and the myths that came from those stories live on today. But in reality many of these fabled characters of the Wild West were gamblers first and gunfighters second- more invested in poker than in the momentary fury of the shootout. Aces and Eights tells story of the role of poker in the lives of these legends, and offers a portrait of the places where they lived and frequently died. This book offers both the "facts" of these lives and the true tales of the game and the gamblers-and the entertaining "tall tales" that have survived to this day.
In Yorkshire: There and Back, Andrew Martin celebrates Britain's most charismatic county, looking back at the Yorkshire of his 1970s childhood and as it is today. Journeying to every historic corner, Martin writes affectionally about its past, present and peculiarities. York is an evolving city of chocolate, trains, pubs and tourists. Scarborough should be viewed as the posh place it once was, with surprising secrets pertaining to Adolf Hitler and the sea. Leeds is seen as the 'hard' town with its party goers and late-night provocateurs, but its indoor market never fails to offer a sense of quintessential Yorkshireness on a rainy Saturday afternoon, with milky tea served in beakers and the Leeds United result coming through by osmosis. And the Moors and Dales continue to boast beauty and danger alike. Effortlessly entertaining and wonderfully detailed, Yorkshire: There and Back is a memoir, guide, and all-round appreciation of 'God's own county'. Praise for Andrew Martin 'There is no one else who is writing like Andrew Martin today...unique and important' Guardian 'Iconoclastic, entertaining and often devastatingly witty' Barry Forshaw, Independent 'He can stop you in your tracks with a well-turned phrase' Sunday Times 'A genuinely funny writer...also a daring one' The Times
Amazing and Extraordinary Facts: Wales takes you on an absorbing journey around Wales to unearth the adventures, inventions, legends, firsts and birthplaces that have shaped the unique history of Wales. From the ancient mines of the Great Orme to the Severn crossing, the tsunami of the 1600s to the Turlough Lake, from bog snorkelling to Tom Jones' phone box, this intriguing compendium of facts and stories will give you a captivating insight into the Land of Song and the ideas and events that have shaped the individual identity of this remarkable country. Brief, accessible and entertaining pieces on a wide variety of subjects makes it the perfect book to dip in to. The amazing and extraordinary facts series presents interesting, surprising and little-known facts and stories about a wide range of topics which are guaranteed to inform, absorb and entertain in equal measure.
As an archaeologist, Steven Mithen has worked on the Hebridean island of Islay over a period of many years. In this book he introduces the sites and monuments and tells the story of the island's people from the earliest stone age hunter-gatherers to those who lived in townships and in the grandeur of Islay House. He visits the tombs of Neolithic farmers, forts of Iron Age chiefs and castles of medieval warlords, discovers where Bronze Age gold was found, treacherous plots were made against the Scottish crown, and explores the island of today, which was forged more recently by those who mined for lead, grew flax, fished for herring and distilled whisky - the industry for which the island is best known today. Although an island history, this is far from an insular story: Islay has always been at a cultural crossroads, receiving a constant influx of new people and new ideas, making it a microcosm for the story of Scotland, Britain and beyond.
This book explores the history of Cornwall's picturing on screen, from the earliest days of the moving image to the recent BBC adaptation of Winston Graham's Poldark books. Drawing on art history to illuminate the construction of Cornwall in films and television programmes, the book looks at amateur film, newsreels and contemporary film practice as well as drama. It argues that Cornwall's screen identity has been dominated by the romantic coastal edge, leaving the regional interior absent from representation. In turn, the emphasis on the coast in Cornwall's screen history has had a significant and ongoing economic impact on the area.New research with an innovative approach, looking at amateur film and newsreels alongside mainstream film and television. Will appeal to both the academic and the more general reader.
Bramhall is a thriving, bustling and leafy suburb of Stockport, close to Manchester. It has been voted the least 'lonely place' in Britain; according to research from the University of Sheffield, Bramhall came bottom of the loneliness index nationwide. It has a rich history stretching back to the Anglo-Saxon period. This book takes us back to Bramhall's early days to meet Saxons Brun and Hacun, whose lands were given by Willliam the Conqueror to Hamon de Massey, who eventually became 1st Baron of Dunham Massey. The Edwardian shops and businesses in the village centre have been replaced by trendy boutiques and cool bars, but old Bramhall is still characterised by the grand Bramall Hall, with its beautiful park, as well as the town's many farms and old pubs. The book also takes in neighbouring Cheadle and Cheadle Hulme, Gatley, Hazel Grove and Manchester International Airport in Ringway, where old and new pictures are juxtaposed to show how things have changed in these communities.
This anthology of first person-accounts by women who toured Yellowstone Park more than a century ago includes tales of high adventure, raucous humor, and glorious sights of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Including a wide range of stories by women who visited from all over the world and at all ages, these accounts reveal their wonder at the interior of the park, the weeks they traveled on horseback through the roadless wilderness, and the later luxuries of well-maintained roads, comfortable carriages, and fancy hotels.
To paraphrase L.P. Hartley, "The past is a different country." Stan L Abbott sets out to explore the visible clues to our mysterious past from the Neolithic and Bronze Ages: stone circles. Cumbria boasts more of these monuments than any other English county. Here, our tallest mountains are ringed by almost fifty circles and henges, most of them sited in the foothills or on outlying plateaux. Were these the earliest such monuments in Britain, placing Cumbria at the heart of Neolithic society? And what traces of that society remain today in the roads we travel, the food we eat, the words we speak, our work and play? By observing and comparing many sites in Cumbria and beyond, and researching many sources, a greater understanding emerges. Were some circles built for ritualistic purposes, or perhaps astronomical? Were they burial sites? Or were they just places for people to meet? Illustrated with linocut illustrations by artist Denise Burden, Ring of Stone Circles follows the search for the hidden stories these monuments guard - and might reveal if we get to know them.
Packed with surprising and fascinating information, London's Lost Rivers uncovers a very different side to London - showing how waterways shaped our principal city and exploring the legacy they leave today. With individual maps to show the course of each river and over 100 colour photographs, it's essential browsing for any Londoner and the perfect gift for anyone who loves exploring the past... 'An amazing book' -- BBC Radio London 'Talling's highly visual, fact-packed, waffle-free account is the freshest take we've yet seen. A must-buy for anyone who enjoys the "hidden" side of London -- Londonist 'A fascinating and stylish guide to exploring the capital's forgotten brooks, waterways, canals and ditches ... it's a terrific book' - Walk 'Pocket-sized, beautifully designed, illustrated and informative - in short a joy to read, handle and use' -- ***** Reader review 'Delightful, informative and beautifully produced' -- ***** Reader review 'A small gem. A really great book. I can't put it down' -- ***** Reader review 'Fascinating from start to finish' -- ***** Reader review ************************************************************************************************ From the sources of the Fleet in Hampstead's ponds to the mouth of the Effra in Vauxhall, via the meander of the Westbourne through 'Knight's Bridge' and the Tyburn's curve along Marylebone Lane, London's Lost Rivers unearths the hidden waterways that flow beneath the streets of the capital. Paul Talling investigates how these rivers shaped the city - forming borough boundaries and transport networks, fashionable spas and stagnant slums - and how they all eventually gave way to railways, roads and sewers. Armed with his camera, he traces their routes and reveals their often overlooked remains: riverside pubs on the Old Kent Road, healing wells in King's Cross, 'stink pipes' in Hammersmith and gurgling gutters on streets across the city. Packed with maps and over 100 colour photographs, London's Lost Rivers uncovers the watery history of the city's most famous sights, bringing to life the very different London that lies beneath our feet.
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD-- since 1922 classified officially as the A1 has been the main route between London and Edinburgh since earliest times, but roads change, and so much of the original has since been bypassed leaving an intriguing trail of discovery for author Chris 'Wolfie' Cooper. As we travel the 400 miles, we follow every twist and turn of the old road, past the remains of bygone carriageways, forgotten byways, dead ends, and wayside rest houses of distant memory, and even trace parts which have completely disappeared. |
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