One of America's most beloved folk singers, Arlo Guthrie was at the pinnacle of his fame in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his best-selling album Alice's Restaurant and his iconic appearance at Woodstock. Yet Guthrie's career as a musician, humorist, and storyteller extends far beyond his years in the celebrity spotlight. Rising Son: The Life ......
Slavery, Westward Expansion, and the Roots of the Civil War
By the time Abraham Lincoln asserted in 1858 that the nation could not "endure permanently half slave and half free," the rift that would split the country in civil war was well defined. The origins and evolution of the coming conflict between North and South can in fact be traced back to the early years of the American Republic, as Stephen G. ......
South Texas and northern Mexico formed a seedbed of revolt in the late nineteenth century. In the 1890s, two decades after he had launched his own successful revolution from South Texas, Mexican president Porfirio DIaz faced a cross-border insurgency intent on toppling his government. The Garza War, so named for the revolutionary firebrand and ......
Wildfire, Flooding, and the Fight for Climate Resilience in the American West
Epic wildfire. Devastating drought. Cataclysmic flooding. Extreme weather in the wake of climate change threatens to turn the American West into a region hostile to human habitation-a "Great American Desert," as early US explorers once mislabeled it. As Bruce E. Cain suggests in this timely book, the unique complex of politics, technology, and ......
Growing up in Shawnee, Oklahoma, among a host of grandmothers and aunties, Loretta Barrett Oden learned the lessons and lore of Potawatomi cooking, along with those of her father's family, whose ancestors arrived on the Mayflower. This rich cultural blend came to bear in the iconic restaurant she opened in Santa Fe, the Corn Dance CafE, where many ......
Land, Violence, and the 1856 San Francisco Vigilance Committee
The California gold rush of 1849 created fortunes for San Francisco merchants, whose wealth depended on control of the city's docks. But ownership of waterfront property was hotly contested. In an 1856 dispute over land titles, a county official shot an outspoken newspaperman, prompting a group of merchants to organize the San Francisco Committee ......
The history of indigenous peoples in North America is long and complex. Many scholarly accounts now rely on statistical data to reconstruct this past, but amid all the facts and figures, it is easy to lose sight of the human side of the story. How did Native people express their thoughts and feelings, and what sources of strength did they rely on ......
The history of indigenous peoples in North America is long and complex. Many scholarly accounts now rely on statistical data to reconstruct this past, but amid all the facts and figures, it is easy to lose sight of the human side of the story. How did Native people express their thoughts and feelings, and what sources of strength did they rely on ......
A controversial character largely known (as depicted in the movie Glory) as a Union colonel who led Black soldiers in the Civil War, James Montgomery (1814-71) waged a far more personal and radical war against slavery than popular history suggests. It is the true story of this militant abolitionist that Todd Mildfelt and David D. Schafer tell in ......
