With the advent of interleague play and the realignment resulting from both the Milwaukee Brewers' jump from the American League to the National League and the creation of Central divisions, many baseball fans cried foul, claiming that their beloved game was being governed by infidels who cared nothing for tradition. These exasperated purists complained that realignment would mean the loss of existing rivalries, that interleague play would cheapen the thrill of the World Series, and that each move would contribute to the loss of statistical continuity. But change, even radical change, is nothing new to baseball. Arguing that self-alteration is perhaps the national pastime's truest tradition, Russell O. Wright shows that it is customary for management to change not only the rules, but the ball, the franchises, and the stadiums. The author considers the key rule changes, franchise moves, ball modifications, and variations in the player pool, and traces the effects each of these had on the game's statistics. The book includes tables, chronologies, and lists of logically presented statistics.

This chronology explores the development of housing in the United States from the arrival of the first settlers through the present day. It traces America's growth from its rural beginnings to its present suburban sprawl and discusses how the nation has dealt with the three major issues of housing development: water supply, sanitation and, to a continually decreasing degree, defense. Additional topics include the effects of technological advances in the field of transportation; the influence of political issues such as the Civil War (especially emancipation); the entry of the government into housing finance; and the continued influx of immigrants.

The United States is truly a nation of immigrants. While it was very sparsely populated by mostly Native Americans in 1600, today it is a nation of about 300 million people, nearly all of whom are immigrants or descendents of immigrants. Before the landmark Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (which abolished national-origin quotas), a little over 40 million immigrants had come to the United States, most of them from Europe. Since 1965, another 40 million immigrants have come to the United States, most of them from Mexico and Asia.This book details the issues and events of the immigration debate chronologically from 1600 to the present, beginning with the mass influx of Jamestown settlers, Pilgrim separatists, and slaves during the colonial period and concluding with a discussion of the ongoing legislative debates over illegal immigration and border security. The other topics include the development of the first immigration-regulating laws in the Alien and Sedition Acts of the late 1790s; the mass influx of cheap immigrant labor during the industrial revolution; the intended severity of the 1917, 1921, and 1924 immigration laws; and the effects of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Patriot Act of 2001, and the Homeland Security Act of 2002 on reshaping the public's current opinion toward national security and immigration, particularly illegal immigration.