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Iron Brigade officer Henry F. Young wrote 155 letters home during the Civil War, enabling readers to witness the war, society, and politics of 1860s America as he did. This honest and occasionally humorous autobiography reveals a rare portrait of a junior officer from America's western heartland.
Kent Hollingsworth captures the flavor and atmosphere of the Sport of Kings in the dramatic account of the development of the Thoroughbred in Kentucky. Ranging from frontier days, when racing was conducted in open fields as horse-to-horse challenges between proud owners, to the present, when a potential Triple Crown champion may sell for millions of dollars, The Kentucky Thoroughbred considers ten outstanding stallions that dominated the shape of racing in their time as representing the many eras of Kentucky Thoroughbred breeding. No less colorful are his accounts of the owners, breeders, trainers, and jockeys associated with these Thoroughbreds, a group devoted to a sport filled with high adventure and great hazards. First published in 1976, this popular Kentucky classic has been expanded and brought up to date in this new edition.
This project contributes to our understanding of rural Midwesterners and farm newspapers at the turn of the century. While cultural historians have mainly focused on readers in town and cities, it examines Midwestern farmers. It also contributes to the "new rural history" by exploring the ideas of Hal Barron and others that country people selectively adapted the advice given to them by reformers. Finally, it furthers our understanding of American farm newspapers themselves and offers suggestions on how to use them as sources.
Although much has been written about the Old Northwest, The Boundaries between Us fills a void in this historical literature by examining the interaction between Euro-Americans and native peoples and their struggles to gain control of the region and its vast resources. Comprised of twelve original essays, The Boundaries between Us formulates a comprehensive perspective on the history and significance of the contest for control of the Old Northwest. The essays examine the socio cultural contexts in which natives and newcomers lived, tradod, negotiated, interacted, and fought, delineating the articulations of power and possibility, difference and identity, violence and war that shaped the stru...
The Routledge History of Rural America charts the course of rural life in the United States, raising questions about what makes a place rural and how rural places have shaped the history of the nation. Bringing together leading scholars to analyze a wide array of themes in rural history and culture, this text is a state-of-the-art resource for students, scholars, and educators at all levels. This Routledge History provides a regional context for understanding change in rural communities across America and examines a number of areas where the history of rural people has deviated from the American mainstream. Readers will come away with an enhanced understanding of the interplay between urban ...
Although the framework of regionalist studies may seem to be crumbling under the weight of increasing globalization, this collection of seventeen essays makes clear that cultivating regionalism lies at the center of the humanist endeavor. With interdisciplinary contributions from poets and fiction writers, literary historians, musicologists, and historians of architecture, agriculture, and women, this volume implements some of the most innovative and intriguing approaches to the history and value of regionalism as a category for investigation in the humanities. In the volume’s inaugural essay, Annie Proulx discusses landscapes in American fiction, comments on how she constructs characters,...
In comparison to the South, the far West, and New England, the Midwest's history has been sadly neglected. The Lost Region demonstrates the regions importance, the depth of historical work once written about it, and the lessons that can be learned from some of its prominent historians, all with the intent of once again finding the forgotten center of the nation and developing a robust historiography of the Midwest. Book jacket.
After the War of 1812 and the removal of the region's Indigenous peoples, the American Midwest became a paradoxical land for settlers. Even as many settlers found that the region provided the bountiful life of their dreams, others found disappointment, even failure--and still others suffered social and racial prejudice. In this broad and authoritative survey of midwestern agriculture from the War of 1812 to the turn of the twentieth century, R. Douglas Hurt contends that this region proved to be the country's garden spot and the nation's heart of agricultural production. During these eighty-five years the region transformed from a sparsely settled area to the home of large industrial and com...
James McPherson’s classic book For Cause & Comrades explained “why men fought in the Civil War”—and spurred countless other historians to ask and attempt to answer the same question. But few have explored why men did not fight. That’s the question Paul Taylor answers in this groundbreaking Civil War history that examines the reasons why at least 60 percent of service-eligible men in the North chose not to serve and why, to some extent, their communities allowed them to do so. Did these other men not feel the same patriotic impulses as their fellow citizens who rushed to the enlistment office? Did they not believe in the sanctity of the Union? Was freeing men held in chains under ch...
Based on an extensive collection of letters written from the home front and the battlefront, Family War Stories offers fresh insights into how the reciprocal nature of family correspondence can shape a family’s understanding of the war. Family War Stories examines the contribution of the Densmore family to the Northern Civil War effort. It extends the boundaries of research in two directions. First, by describing how members of this white family from Minnesota were mobilized to fight a family war on the home front and the battlefront, and second, by exploring how the war challenged the family’s abolitionist beliefs and racial attitudes. Family War Stories argues that the totality of the ...