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Perhaps no other American community embodies the conflicting forces of the past, present, and future more powerfully than the Navajo people, the largest Native-American group in the Untied States. Filled with spectacular full-color photographs, this volume is a compassionate and unflinching portrait of a people caught between ancient order and constant flux, of a nation that refuses to disappear in the shadow of a vastly larger one.

By May of 1863, the Stone Wall at the base of Marye’s Heights above Fredericksburg loomed large over the Army of the Potomac, haunting its men with memories of slaughter from their crushing defeat there the previous December. They would assault it again with a very different result the following spring when General Joe Hooker, bogged down in bloody battle with the Army of Northern Virginia around the crossroads of Chancellorsville, ordered John Sedgwick’s Sixth Corps to assault the heights and m...

"While searching for vintage guitars on the internet, Zeke Schein came across what he believed was a photograph of one of the most influential blues musicians of all time. Schein, both a fan and historian of the Delta Blues, suspected that the image depicted the enigmatic Robert Johnson. His attempts to authenticate it inspired vitriolic debates among blues aficionados about its legitimacy. Schein's fascinating experiences documenting its history are entwined with his own journey of discovery an...

Abraham Lincoln is, by tradition, one of American history's quintessential westerners. But Lincoln owed much of his national political success, not to mention his enshrinement in public memory, to his impact on the quintessentially eastern state of New York, and in turn, New York's profound impact on him. This constitutes virtually unexplored intellectual territory. That New York's publishers, business leaders, elected officials, writers, preachers, and editors were able convincingly to introduc...

Once one of the most well-known and feared tribes in the western United States, the Cheyenne have endured many difficulties since the arrival of settlers in the 1800s. This book discusses the Cheyenne s intricate history, the tradition of their fierce Dog Soldiers, their prosperous and peace-seeking leaders, the hardships they faced as their lands were gradually taken from them and their tribes relocated throughout the United States, and how the Cheyenne have upheld their traditions while adapti...

Escaping Servitude: A Documentary History of Runaway Servants in Eighteenth-Century Virginia is an edited collection of runaway servant advertisements that appeared in newspapers in eighteenth-century Virginia. In addition to documenting the fugitive in the Chesapeake, it adds to our understanding of indentured servitude and provides valuable insights into an important chapter in American history. Escaping Servitude's contribution to scholarship is threefold. First, it calls new attention to t...

Thad Snow (1881-1955) was an eccentric farmer and writer who was best known for his involvement in Missouri's 1939 Sharecropper Protest - a mass highway demonstration in which approximately eleven hundred demonstrators marched to two federal highways to illustrate the plight of the cotton laborers. Snow struggled to make sense of the changing world, and his answers to questions regarding race, social justice, environment, and international war placed him at odds with many. In Thad Snow, Bonnie S...

This classic debut volume of the acclaimed series covers a diverse array of crafts and practical skills, including log cabin building, hog dressing, basketmaking, cooking, fencemaking, crop planting, hunting, and moonshining, as well as a look at the history of local traditions like snake lore and faith healing. First published in 1972, The Foxfire Book was a surprise bestseller that brought Appalachia's philosophy of simple living to hundreds of thousands of readers. Whether you wanted to hunt...

In Fighting the Flames, Sally contextualizes, historicizes, and theorizes the spectacular performance of fire at turn-of-the-twentieth century Coney Island. The performance of fire included staged exhibits, such as Fire and Flames and Fighting the Flames, and the real fires that plagued its history. While Coney Island placed fire center stage in its fire-based disaster spectacles, fire has continuously burned its own bridge, destroying the producer who wants to make fire the star of his show. Th...