How does one write a labour history of a people who have not been involved in the labour movement in significant numbers and, historically, have opposed union membership? While North American Mennonites have traditionally been associated with rural life, in light of the adjustments demanded by post-1945 urbanization and industrialization, they in fact became very involved in the workforce at a time of important labour foment. Drawing on over a hundred interviews, Janis Thiessen explores Mennonite responses to labour movements such as Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, as well as Mennonite involvement in conscientious objection to unions. This innovative study of the Mennonites - a people at once united by an ethnic and religious identity, yet also shaped by differences in geography, immigration histories, denomination, and class position - provides insights into how and why they have resisted involvement in organized labour. Not Talking Union adds a unique perspective to the history of labour, exploring how people negotiate tensions between their commitments to faith and conscience and the demands of their employment. Not Talking Union breaks new methodological ground in its close analysis of the oral narratives of North American Mennonites. Reflecting on both oral and archival sources, Thiessen shows why Mennonite labour history matters, and reveals the role of power and inequality in that history.

The inner life of every White House is veiled in mystery. Only a select few partake in the sensitive discussions of the Oval Office or the casual banter about high policy and low politics conducted over the engine roar of Air Force One. The privilege of the president's confidence depends on the confidentiality of such exchanges while the president's term endures. Inside the Clinton White House, however, provides a front-row seat to that previously unknown history of the 42nd presidency. In the decade after Bill Clinton left the White House, scores of his political advisors, senior White House staff, and cabinet officials recorded oral history interviews with scholars working with the acclaimed Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia's Miller Center. The contents of these interviews are published for the first time in this volume, selected and edited by Russell Riley, co-chair of the Oral History Program. The portraite of the Clinton presidency provided here is based on some 400 hours of conversations with more than sixty people. These interviews track Bill Clinton's emergence as a national political figure with the New Democrat movement, take the reader inside the hectic 1992 campaign, and then detail the ups and downs of life inside the Clinton White House as experienced by those who were there. Extended sections of the book are devoted to domestic policy (including reforms of the health care and welfare systems), foreign policy (including military interventions in Haiti and the Balkans), politics in the Clinton years (including impeachment), and the key personalities of the time (including chapters on Al Gore and Hillary Rodham Clinton). These candid spoken accounts-history "with the bark off" in Lyndon Johnson's phrase-add color and nuance to our understanding of Bill Clinton and his administration, sometimes confirming and sometimes upending the conventional wisdom.

Much has been written about the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, but one story remains untold: that of the grassroots activism that maintained local communities in the face of violence. This book speaks through the voices of the activists themselves, drawn from both sides of a divided society. It records their memories of community organising and work on social issues, as well as their insights into surviving the politics of the period and contributing to peacebuilding. Providing a vivid account of how politics touched people's lives, the book celebrates the energy, imagination and determination of community activism. It also examines the challenges faced by policymakers struggling to make sense of conflicting community narratives and official government positions. There are vital lessons here for organisers, activists and policymakers working in any contested society, particularly those operating at the interface between social need and peacebuilding. Informed by an oral history approach, this book argues that conflict transformation is possible and that community activism has a major contribution to make in creating alternatives to violence.

The Naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has been in the news constantly since the U.S. began using it as a prison camp after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. With all the controversy surrounding the torture of suspects at the prison, its precedent-setting prior use as an immigrant detention center for Haitian and Cuban boat people has been largely overlooked. Overcoming Guantanamo is an oral history of the rafter crisis and the camps written by an anthropologist who worked in the camps. More than a straight oral history, the book is a study of group-level trauma and coping. Using a trauma studies perspective along with discourse-oriented models from anthropology, the book discusses examples of the extensive camp artwork as well as the oral history narratives as part of a meaning-making process that necessarily occurs as people recover from trauma. Campisi worked in the Cuban camps for a year as a temporary employee of the Justice Department's mediation service, and then returned to analyze the camps from an anthropological point of view. She conducted life history interviews of twelve of the rafters, which included the process of disenchantment with the Revolution, leaving Cuba, the rafting trip, life on the base, and their initial experiences in Cuban Miami, focusing on life on the base. Their stories are gripping. Some people provided disturbing accounts of military abuses, which is an ancillary reason that Overcoming Guantanamo is important right now: human rights violations that occurred at the prison for terror suspects also occurred in the Cuban and Haitian camps, but few people know about them. All such violations should be taken into account in current debates about the use of the base. While it is important as an oral history, the book's examination of the camp culture also makes it a new contribution to the field of anthropology. Campisi argues that because trauma has cognitive and emotional impacts that require an individual to create new meanings, when people work through individually-traumatic experiences as a group, the new meanings they generate together create new cultural forms. Hence, social trauma can be culturally generative. In these times, that is an important conclusion.

Someday," Candelaria Garcia said to the author, "you will get all the stories." It was a tall order in Magdalena, New Mexico, a once booming frontier town where Navajo, Anglo, and Hispanic peoplehave lived in shifting, sometimes separate, sometimes overlapping worlds for well over a hundred years. But these were the stories,and this was the world, that David Wallace Adams set out to map, in a work that would capture the intimate, complex history of growing up in a Southwest borderland. At the intersection of memory, myth, andhistory, his book asks what it was like to be a child in a land of ethnic and cultural boundaries. The answer, as close to "all thestories" as one might hope to get, captures the diverse, ever-changing experience of a Southwest community defined by culturalborders-and the nature and role of children in defending and crossing those borders. In this book, we listen to the voices of elders who knew Magdalena nearly a century ago, and the voices of a younger generation who negotiated the community's shifting boundaries. Their stories take us to sheep and cattle ranches, Navajo ceremonies, Hispanic fiestas, mining camps, First Communion classes, ranch house dances, Indian boarding school drill fields, high school social activities, and children's rodeos. Here we learn how class, religion, language, and race influenced the creation of distinct identities and ethnic boundaries, but also provided opportunities for crossculturalinteractions and intimacies. And we see the critical importance of education in both reinforcing differences and opening a shared space for those differences to be experienced and bridged. Adams's workoffers a close-up view of the transformation of one multicultural community, but also of the transformation of childhood itself overthe course of the twentieth century. A unique blend of oral, social, and childhood history, Three Roads to Magdalena is a rare living document of conflict and accommodation across ethnic boundaries in our ever-evolving multicultural society.

As a subculture, cloistered monastic nuns live hidden from public view by choice. Once a woman joins the cloister and makes final vows, she is almost never seen and her voice is not heard; her story is essentially nonexistent in the historical record and collective, public history. From interviews conducted over six years, Abbie Reese tells the stories of the Poor Clare Colettine Order, a cloistered contemplative order at the Corpus Christi Monastery in Rockford, Illinois. Seldom leaving their 25,000-square-foot gated enclosure, members of this community embrace an extreme version of poverty and anonymity-a separation that enables them to withdraw from the world to devote their lives to prayer. This removal, they contend, allows them to have a greater impact on humanity than if they maintained direct contact with loved ones and strangers. Dedicated to God explores individual and cultural identity through oral history interviews with several generations of nuns, focusing on the origins and life stories of the women who have chosen to become members of one of the strictest religious orders. But the narrative is also one of a collective memory and struggle against extinction and modernity, a determination to create community within the framework of ancient rules. The author's stunning photographs of their dual worlds, religious and quotidian, add texture to the narrative. This artistic and ethnographic work highlights the countercultural values and dedication of individuals who, at incredible personal cost, live for love of God and humanity, out of faith in what cannot be seen, and with the belief that they will be rewarded in the afterlife.

Despite a long and rich tradition of oral history research, few are aware of the innovative and groundbreaking work of oral historians in Canada. For this first primer on the practices within the discipline, the editors of The Canadian Oral History Reader have gathered some of the best contributions from a diverse field. Essays survey and explore fundamental and often thorny aspects in oral history methodology, interpretation, preservation and presentation, and advocacy. In plain language, they explain how to conduct research with indigenous communities, navigate difficult relationships with informants, and negotiate issues of copyright, slander, and libel. The authors ask how people's memories and stories can be used as historical evidence - and whether it is ethical to use them at all. Their detailed and compelling case studies draw readers into the thrills and predicaments of recording people's most intimate experiences, and refashioning them in transcripts and academic analyses. They also consider how to best present and preserve this invaluable archive of Canadian memories. The Canadian Oral History Reader provides a rich resource for community and university researchers, undergraduate and graduate students, and independent scholars and documentarians, and serves as a springboard and reference point for global discussions about Canadian contributions to the international practice of oral history. Contributors include Brian Calliou (independent scholar), Elise Chenier (Simon Fraser University), Julie Cruikshank (University of British Columbia), Alexander Freund (University of Winnipeg), Steven High (Concordia University), Nancy Janovicek (University of Calgary), Jill Jarvis-Tonus (independent scholar), Kristina R. Llewellyn (Renison University College, University of Waterloo), Bronwen Low (McGill University), Claudia Malacrida (University of Lethbridge), Joy Parr (Western University), Joan Sangster (Trent University), Emmanuelle Sonntag (Universite du Quebec a Montreal), Pamela Sugiman (Ryerson University), Winona Wheeler (University of Saskatchewan), and Stacey Zembrzycki (Concordia University).

Despite a long and rich tradition of oral history research, few are aware of the innovative and groundbreaking work of oral historians in Canada. For this first primer on the practices within the discipline, the editors of The Canadian Oral History Reader have gathered some of the best contributions from a diverse field. Essays survey and explore fundamental and often thorny aspects in oral history methodology, interpretation, preservation and presentation, and advocacy. In plain language, they explain how to conduct research with indigenous communities, navigate difficult relationships with informants, and negotiate issues of copyright, slander, and libel. The authors ask how people's memories and stories can be used as historical evidence - and whether it is ethical to use them at all. Their detailed and compelling case studies draw readers into the thrills and predicaments of recording people's most intimate experiences, and refashioning them in transcripts and academic analyses. They also consider how to best present and preserve this invaluable archive of Canadian memories. The Canadian Oral History Reader provides a rich resource for community and university researchers, undergraduate and graduate students, and independent scholars and documentarians, and serves as a springboard and reference point for global discussions about Canadian contributions to the international practice of oral history. Contributors include Brian Calliou (independent scholar), Elise Chenier (Simon Fraser University), Julie Cruikshank (University of British Columbia), Alexander Freund (University of Winnipeg), Steven High (Concordia University), Nancy Janovicek (University of Calgary), Jill Jarvis-Tonus (independent scholar), Kristina R. Llewellyn (Renison University College, University of Waterloo), Bronwen Low (McGill University), Claudia Malacrida (University of Lethbridge), Joy Parr (Western University), Joan Sangster (Trent University), Emmanuelle Sonntag (Universite du Quebec a Montreal), Pamela Sugiman (Ryerson University), Winona Wheeler (University of Saskatchewan), and Stacey Zembrzycki (Concordia University).

In Hands on the Freedom Plow, fifty-two women--northern and southern, young and old, urban and rural, black, white, and Latina--share their courageous personal stories of working for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement. The testimonies gathered here present a sweeping personal history of SNCC: early sit-ins, voter registration campaigns, and freedom rides; the 1963 March on Washington, the Mississippi Freedom Summer, and the movements in Alabama and Maryland; and Black Power and antiwar activism. Since the women spent time in the Deep South, many also describe risking their lives through beatings and arrests and witnessing unspeakable violence. These intense stories depict women, many very young, dealing with extreme fear and finding the remarkable strength to survive. The women in SNCC acquired new skills, experienced personal growth, sustained one another, and even had fun in the midst of serious struggle. Readers are privy to their analyses of the Movement, its tactics, strategies, and underlying philosophies. The contributors revisit central debates of the struggle including the role of nonviolence and self-defense, the role of white people in a black-led movement, and the role of women within the Movement and the society at large. Each story reveals how the struggle for social change was formed, supported, and maintained by the women who kept their "hands on the freedom plow." As the editors write in the introduction, "Though the voices are different, they all tell the same story--of women bursting out of constraints, leaving school, leaving their hometowns, meeting new people, talking into the night, laughing, going to jail, being afraid, teaching in Freedom Schools, working in the field, dancing at the Elks Hall, working the WATS line to relay horror story after horror story, telling the press, telling the story, telling the word. And making a difference in this world."

Thousands of young Jews were orphaned by the Nazi genocide in the German-occupied Soviet Union and struggled for survival on their own. This book weaves together oral histories, video testimonies, and memoirs produced in the former Soviet Union to show how the first generation of Soviet Jews, born after the foundation of the USSR, experienced the Nazi genocide and how they remember it in a context of social change following the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. The 1930s, a period when the notion interethnic solidarity and social equality were promoted and a partly lived reality, were formative for a cohort of young Jews. Soviet policies of the time established a powerful framework for the ways in which survivors of the genocide understood, survived, and represent their experience of violence and displacement. The book demonstrates that the young Soviet Jews' struggle for survival, and its memory, was shaped by interethnic relationships within the occupied society, German annihilation policy, and Soviet efforts to construct a patriotic unity of the Soviet population. Age and gender were crucial factors for experiencing, surviving, and remembering the Nazi genocide in Soviet territories, an element that Anika Walke emphasizes by investigating the individual and collective efforts to save peoples' lives, in hiding places and partisan formations, and how these efforts were subsequently erased in the construction of the Soviet war portrayal. Pioneers and Partisans demonstrates how the Holocaust unfolded in the German-occupied Soviet territories and how Soviet citizens responded to it. The book does this work through oral histories of atrocities and survival during the German occupation in Minsk and a number of small towns in Eastern Belorussia such as Shchedrin, Slavnoe, Zhlobin, and Shklov. Following particular individuals' stories, framed within the broader historical and cultural context, this book tells of repeated transformations of identity, from Soviet citizen in the prewar years, to a target of genocidal violence during the war, to barely accepted national minority in the postwar Soviet Union.

There has been extensive research into the impact of the Holocaust on the children of survivors who immigrated to the US and Israel. But very little work in this space has looked at children whose parents fled Nazi persecution before the Holocaust. Even less attention has been paid to those who ended up in Britain from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. What was the impact on this second generation? How have the lives of these ordinary people been shaped by their parents' dislocation? Using a series of interviews with members of the second generation, Breaking the Silence is a qualitative, interdisciplinary exploration how their lives were shaped by their parents escape from persecution. It offers an insight into how the exile and fear of persecution of the parents and the deaths/murder of unknown relatives has left this generation both bereft of memories and haunted by the past.

There has been extensive research into the impact of the Holocaust on the children of survivors who immigrated to the US and Israel. But very little work in this space has looked at children whose parents fled Nazi persecution before the Holocaust. Even less attention has been paid to those who ended up in Britain from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. What was the impact on this second generation? How have the lives of these ordinary people been shaped by their parents' dislocation? Using a series of interviews with members of the second generation, Breaking the Silence is a qualitative, interdisciplinary exploration how their lives were shaped by their parents escape from persecution. It offers an insight into how the exile and fear of persecution of the parents and the deaths/murder of unknown relatives has left this generation both bereft of memories and haunted by the past.

Prepared to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the establishment of Nova Scotia's Supreme Court, this important new volume provides a comprehensive history of the institution, Canada's oldest common law court. The thirteen essays include an account of the first meeting in 1754 of the court in Michaelmas Term, surveys of jurisprudence (the court's early federalism cases; its use of American law; attitudes to the administrative state), and chapters on the courts of Westminster Hall, on which the Supreme Court was modelled, and the various courthouses it has occupied. Anchoring the volume are two longer chapters, one on the pre-confederation period and one on the modern period.

Editors Philip Girard, Jim Phillips, and Barry Cahill have put together the first complete history of any Canadian provincial superior court. All of the essays are original, and many offer new interpretations of familiar themes in Canadian legal history. They take the reader through the establishment of the one-judge court to the present day ? a unique contribution to our understanding of superior courts.

Aboriginal and Visible Minority Librarians: Oral Histories from Canada, is a collection of chapters written by librarians of color in Canada writing about their experiences working in libraries. This book is not only for librarians in Canada and for those who aspire to become librarians, it is also for deans and directors of libraries and library schools, managers and supervisors in libraries, faculty in library schools and beyond, human resources personnel and other decision making people in the library field. It will also appeal to researchers interested in race relations, multiculturalism, intercultural communications and management, cross-cultural communications and management, cross-cultural studies, diversity, Aboriginal peoples, Indigenous populations, and ethnic or visible minorities. Several of the Aboriginal librarians who contributed to this book have worked within tribal communities and tribal libraries. In spite of working within community environments, they have experienced challenges, especially related to lack of funding. The majority of the chapters written by visible minority librarians come from those born outside of Canada.They speak of their love for their new country, its generosity and support towards newcomers and immigrants, and their reasons for taking up the library profession. While few of the librarians speak of open racism, they narrate their experiences as those filled with challenges, self-doubt and courage. They speak of having to deal with tokenism, lack of mentorship, and working in professional isolation. Some of them narrate their challenges in working with colleagues who do not relate to them. Lack of support is common as many organizations do not have proper strategies to deal with discrimination. But they end their chapters with a positive note of encouragement for future librarians. The authors encourage all librarians to be engaged, find trusted mentors, seek help when needed, focus on professional development and find a niche in the organization.

A small neighborhood in northern Frankfort, Kentucky, Crawfish Bottom was located on fifty acres of swampy land along the Kentucky River. "Craw's" reputation for vice, violence, moral corruption, and unsanitary conditions made it a target for urban renewal projects that replaced the neighborhood with the city's Capital Plaza in the mid-1960s. Douglas A. Boyd's Crawfish Bottom: Recovering a Lost Kentucky Community traces the evolution of the controversial community that ultimately saw four-hundred families displaced. Using oral histories and firsthand memories, Boyd not only provides a record of a vanished neighborhood and its culture but also demonstrates how this type of study enhances the historical record. A former Frankfort police officer describes Craw's residents as a "rough class of people, who didn't mind killing or being killed." In Crawfish Bottom, the former residents of Craw acknowledge the popular misconceptions about their community but offer a richer and more balanced view of the past.

In 2015, Ireland will hold a referendum on the subject of extending marriage rights to same-sex people in the State. This referendum is the culmination of one of the most rapid and transformative changes in Irish society over the last century. In this book, Una Mullally charts the development of the debate from its origins to the present day. Based on interviews with all the key figures involved, from politics and activism to journalism and the media, the book paints a vivid picture of where we have come from and how we have arrived at this defining moment for Ireland.

How can stories and legends, written and oral, help people suffering from severe traumas or harsh conditions, now or in the past? Can storytelling help us sort out our innermost feelings and troubles? This deeply human subject is relevant not only to practitioners of psychotherapy, but to all of us, as we sometimes go through difficult times in life. In this book a cross-disciplinary group of researchers examine the ways in which narrative might aid in coping with difficult situations in life, and with the emotions that these situations engender. Starting with an introduction to basic narrative theories and the therapeutic effects of storytelling, the book then moves on to a series of lucid case studies. The authors present a diversity of material such as blogs, poetry, magazines, memoirs, and oral accounts from Antiquity to the present. Authors from several different disciplines make for a diversity of perspectives. The authors specialise in folkloristics, psychology, writing studies, poetry therapy, and classical studies. Psychologists, social workers, researchers, therapists -- all can benefit from this book, including everyone interested in the possibility of inner exploration through stories.

How objective are our history books? This addition to the Writing History series examines the critical role that memory plays in the writing of history. This book includes: - Essays from an international team of historians, bringing together analysis of forms of public history such as museums, exhibitions, memorials and speeches - Coverage of the ancient world to the present, on topics such as oral history and generational and collective memory - Two key case studies on Holocaust memorialisation and the memory of Communism

As a subculture, cloistered monastic nuns live hidden from public view by choice. Once a woman joins the cloister and makes final vows, she is almost never seen and her voice is not heard; her story is essentially nonexistent in the historical record and collective, public history.
From interviews conducted over six years, Abbie Reese tells the stories of the Poor Clare Colettine Order, a cloistered contemplative order at the Corpus Christi Monastery in Rockford, Illinois. Seldom leaving their 25,000-square-foot gated enclosure, members of this community embrace an extreme version of poverty and anonymity - a separation that enables them to withdraw from the world to devote their lives to prayer. This removal, they contend, allows them to have a greater impact on humanity than if they maintained direct contact with loved ones and strangers.
Dedicated to God explores individual and cultural identity through oral history interviews with several generations of nuns, focusing on the origins and life stories of the women who have chosen to become members of one of the strictest religious orders. But the narrative is also one of a collective memory and struggle against extinction and modernity, a determination to create community within the framework of ancient rules.
The author's stunning photographs of their dual worlds, religious and quotidian, add texture to the narrative.
This artistic and ethnographic work highlights the countercultural values and dedication of individuals who, at incredible personal cost, live for love of God and humanity, out of faith in what cannot be seen, and with the belief that they will be rewarded in the afterlife.

A powerful account of China's Great Famine as told through the voices of those who survived it In 1958, China's revered leader Mao Zedong instituted a program designed to transform his giant nation into a Communist utopia. Called the Great Leap Forward, Mao's grand scheme-like so many other utopian dreams of the 20th century-proved a monumental disaster, resulting in the mass destruction of China's agriculture, industry, and trade while leaving large portions of the countryside forever scarred by man-made environmental disasters. The resulting three-year famine claimed the lives of more than 45 million people in China. In this remarkable oral history of modern China's greatest tragedy, survivors of the cataclysm share their memories of the devastation and loss. The range of voices is wide: city dwellers and peasants, scholars and factory workers, parents who lost children and children who were orphaned in the catastrophe all speak out. Powerful and deeply moving, this unique remembrance of an unnecessary and unhindered catastrophe illuminates a dark recent history that remains officially unacknowledged to this day by the Chinese government and opens a window on a society still feeling the impact of the terrible Great Famine.

For the whole of World War II, the U.S. Navy station Guam was only US Territory where Japan administered the occupied local people; it was controlled by the Japanese Navy for two and a half years. Organic integration was the purpose and goal of the Japanese Navy administration of the local Chamorro people, but the navy's attempts failed before U.S. reinvasion in July 1944. By emphasizing the extent of Japan's Mandate in Micronesia, this book examines the Japanese Navy's social, economic, and cultural approaches to organic integration. Using abundant primary data, the author gives a clear and verifiable picture of the whole occupation period and the Japanese ruling ideology for not only Guam but the entire region-and finds new ways to consider just why Japan went to the war. Personal testimonies and documents enable the historian to follow the developing Japanese mentality of war as it unfolded.

Over the last several decades, video testimony with aging Holocaust survivors has brought these witnesses into the limelight. Yet the success of these projects has made it seem that little survivor testimony took place in earlier years. In truth, thousands of survivors began to recount their experience at the earliest opportunity. This book provides the first full-length case study of early postwar Holocaust testimony, focusing on David Boder's 1946 displaced persons interview project. In July 1946, Boder, a psychologist, traveled to Europe to interview victims of the Holocaust who were in the Displaced Persons (DP) camps and what he called "shelter houses." During his nine weeks in Europe, Boder carried out approximately 130 interviews in nine languages and recorded them on a wire recorder. Likely the earliest audio recorded testimony of Holocaust survivors, the interviews are valuable today for the spoken word (that of the DP narrators and of Boder himself) and also for the song sessions and religious services that Boder recorded. Eighty sessions were eventually transcribed into English, most of which were included in a self-published manuscript. Alan Rosen sets Boder's project in the context of the postwar response to displaced persons, sketches the dramatic background of his previous life and work, chronicles in detail the evolving process of interviewing both Jewish and non-Jewish DPs, and examines from several angles the implications for the history of Holocaust testimony. Such early postwar testimony, Rosen avers, deserves to be taken on its own terms rather than to be enfolded into earlier or later schemas of testimony. Moreover, Boder's efforts and the support he was given for them demonstrate that American postwar response to the Holocaust was not universally indifferent but rather often engaged, concerned, and resourceful.

This essay collection explores the "photographic turn" in oral history. Contributors ask how oral historians can best use photographs in their interviewing practice and how they can best understand photographs in their interpretation of oral histories. The authors present a dozen case studies from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In exploring the intersection of oral history and photography, they complicate and move beyond the use of photographs as social documents and memory triggers and demonstrate how photographs frame oral narratives and how stories unsettle the seeming fixity of photographs' meanings.

In this second volume of interviews conducted by Nebraska judge Eli S. Ricker, he focuses on white eyewitnesses and participants in the occupying and settling of the American West in the nineteenth century. In the first decade of the twentieth century, as the Old West became increasingly distant and romanticized in popular consciousness, Eli S. Ricker (1842-1926) began interviewing those who had experienced it firsthand, hoping to write a multivolume series about its last days, centering on the conflicts between Natives and outsiders. For years Ricker traveled across the northern Plains, gathering information on and off reservations, in winter and in summer. Judge Ricker never wrote his book, but his interviews are priceless sources of information about that time and place, and they offer more balanced perspectives on events than were accepted at the time. Richard E. Jensen brings together all of Ricker's interviews with those men and women who came to the American West from elsewhere-settlers, homesteaders, and veterans. These interviews shed light on such key events as the massacre at Wounded Knee, the Little Bighorn battle, Beecher Island, Lightning Creek, the Mormon cow incident, and the Washita massacre. Also of interest are glimpses of everyday life at different agencies, including Pine Ridge, Yellow Medicine, and Fort Sill School; brief though revealing memoirs; and snapshots of cattle drives, conflicts with Natives, and the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad.