You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
A visitor to Bardstown today can view as many as 300 buildings listed on the National Register and marvel at their age and condition, but the original state of many of these landmarks has long since been altered or forgotten. Fire destroyed many buildings during the late 1800s, and commercial progress in the 1900s prompted the demolition of more than 100 of the area's homes and businesses. In this remarkable new volume, the search of public and private collections for photos of local landmarks and events has resulted in the lost puzzle pieces needed to complete the history of Bardstown's physical heritage. In 190 rare photographs, Bardstown reveals the people and places who have contributed ...
Some Bardstown, Kentucky residents argued for an alcohol ban as early as the mid-1800s despite the fact that whiskey and bourbon were local staples. When Prohibition finally arrived, independent and inventive residents secretly kept the city wet. A deacon once stored whiskey in a baptismal pool. Seventy-year-old Aunt Be-At Hurst allegedly made her homebrew out of her bathtub. Some locals even burned distillery warehouses to cover up thefts. Crime ran so rampant that revenue collector Robert H. Lucas threatened to have the governor summon the state militia. Join historians Dixie Hibbs and Doris Settles as they detail the history of Bardstown booze.
Kentucky bourbon is world-renowned, and the distilling of this corn-based liquor has deep roots in almost every corner of the state. Hundreds of distilleries dotted the landscape, beginning with the early settlements until 1920, when the vast majority were closed because of Prohibition. Many of the distilleries never reopened and became "lost," with only old photographs left to tell this story of dedicated craftsmanship. In some cases, distilleries reopened during a "bourbon boom" when Prohibition finally ended in 1933, only to falter a few decades later. Some of those distilleries were sold and portions of the properties, like warehouses, reused by the new owner. Despite everything, bourbon distilling remains a major industry in the state--and a world-famous icon for Kentucky. Kentucky's Lost Bourbon Distilleries is dedicated to the many people who worked at distilleries that may be "lost" but are not forgotten.
Kentucky is richly blessed with rivers. This book tells the stories of three of the most beautiful and historic: the Rolling Fork, the Nolin, and the Rough. Each is an unpredictable force of nature flowing through a land that varies from wide, sunny meadows to dark, rock-bound hollows. Chapters describe the people who lived in the river valleys, including pioneers, frontier preachers, a future president, cave explorers, Confederate and Union soldiers, desperate killers, hardscrabble farmers, and inspired visionaries. Sometimes they were wasteful and violent and vain; at other times they were inventive and graceful and kind. Their descendants realized that survival had come to mean something new: living in harmony with the land and the rivers.
Motoring unmasks the forces that shape the American driving experience--commercial, aesthetic, cultural, mechanical--as it takes a timely look back at our historically unconditional love of motor travel. Focusing on recreational travel between 1900 and 1960, John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle cover dozens of topics related to drivers, cars, and highways and explain how they all converge to uphold that illusory notion of release and rejuvenation we call the "open road." Jakle and Sculle have collaborated on five previous books on the history, culture, and landscape of the American road. Here, with an emphasis on the driver's perspective, they discuss garages and gas stations, roadside tourist ...
Stephen Foster's "My Old Kentucky Home" has been designated as the official state song and performed at the Kentucky Derby for decades. In light of the ongoing social justice movement to end racial inequality, many have questioned whether the song should be played at public events, given its inaccurate depiction of slavery in the state. In Slavery and Freedom in the Bluegrass State, editor Gerald L. Smith presents a collection of powerful essays that uncover the long-forgotten stories of pain, protest, and perseverance of African Americans in Kentucky. Using the song and the museum site of My Old Kentucky Home as a central motif, the chapters move beyond historical myths to bring into sharpe...
The Kentucky Encyclopedia's 2,000-plus entries are the work of more than five hundred writers. Their subjects reflect all areas of the commonwealth and span the time from prehistoric settlement to today's headlines, recording Kentuckians' achievements in art, architecture, business, education, politics, religion, science, and sports. Biographical sketches portray all of Kentucky's governors and U.S. senators, as well as note congressmen and state and local politicians. Kentucky's impact on the national scene is registered in the lives of such figures as Carry Nation, Henry Clay, Louis Brandeis, and Alben Barkley. The commonwealth's high range from writers Harriette Arnow and Jesse Stuart, re...
A sweeping cultural history, The Kentucky River reflects the rich tapestry of life along the banks. Flowing with tales of river ghosts and hidden treasures lying in the backwaters, the book records the myths and events the river has spawned. Bill Ellis also celebrates the Kentucky's influence on such figures as writer Wendell Berry and painter Paul Sawyier. Beginning with an intriguing overview of the river's formation and characteristics, Ellis shows how the stream has helped shape Kentucky's environment, economy, and political culture. In centuries past, flotillas of flatboats carried whiskey, pork, and valuable raw materials downriver to markets in Louisiana. Later, the river became a sou...
Three decades after the Civil War-amidst a resurgent patriotic fervor, a new Christian Awakening and an enveloping modernization promising heretofore unimagined heights of prosperity and well-being-a new generation of Americans in rural Nelson and Washington Counties, Kentucky, were experiencing what Lincoln in their fathers' war had promised: a new birth of freedom. Before them they saw the ancient vision of Zion, America as the new Promised Land, the Christian Republic, the Shining City on a Hill, shedding its light of prosperity and freedom on all. Their destiny and calling, they had no doubt, was to secure liberty and its blessings for themselves and posterity. This was the Vision and the hope that united them as a people and as a crusading army at home and abroad, inspiring a multitude of social and political reforms and drawing them into the Great War of 1914-1918. It is this story that Visions of Zion tells-of dreams that united and divided, that lifted up and brought low-a story of a drive for everlasting peace that led to war and that finally ends with the collapse of Zion and fading of all those wondrous dreams of a better world.