Smokestacks In The Hills

Long considered an urban phenomenon, industrialization also transformed the American countryside. Lou Martin weaves the narrative of how the relocation of steel and pottery factories to Hancock County, West Virginia, created a rural and small-town working class--and what that meant for communities and for labor. As Martin shows, access to land in and around steel and pottery towns allowed residents to preserve rural habits and culture. Workers in these places valued place and local community. Because of their belief in localism, an individualistic ethic of "making do," and company loyalty, they often worked to place limits on union influence. At the same time, this localism allowed workers to adapt to the dictates of industrial capitalism and a continually changing world on their own terms--and retain rural ways to a degree unknown among their urbanized peers. Throughout, Martin ties these themes to illuminating discussions of capital mobility, the ways in which changing work experiences defined gender roles, and the persistent myth that modernizing forces bulldozed docile local cultures. Revealing and incisive, Smokestacks in the Hills reappraises an overlooked stratum of American labor history and contributes to the ongoing dialogue on shifts in national politics in the postwar era.

A nostalgic meander through life's passions and losses concerning both lovers and beloved pets. Sometimes sad sometimes funny, these poems are a tonic to the system, a reminder of what life is about.

White working-class conservatives have played a decisive role in American history, particularly in their opposition to social justice movements, radical critiques of capitalism, and government help for the poor and sick. While this pattern is largely seen as a post-1960s development, Poor Man's Fortune tells a different story, excavating the long history of white working-class conservatism in the century from the Civil War to World War II. With a close study of metal miners in the Tri-State district of Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma, Jarod Roll reveals why successive generations of white, native-born men willingly and repeatedly opposed labor unions and government-led health and safety reforms, even during the New Deal. With painstaking research, Roll shows how the miners' choices reflected a deep-seated, durable belief that hard-working American white men could prosper under capitalism, and exposes the grim costs of this view for these men and their communities, for organized labor, and for political movements seeking a more just and secure society. Roll's story shows how American inequalities are in part the result of a white working-class conservative tradition driven by grassroots assertions of racial, gendered, and national privilege.

May 31, 1889. A recreational dam, high in the western Pennsylvania mountains, breaks. It sends an avalanche of water plummeting fourteen miles toward the unsuspecting residents of Johnstown, destroying everything in its wake. More than two thousand lives are snuffed out in minutes and tens of thousands left homeless. It is the major American tragedy of the 19th century. Run for the Hills tells this story with historical accuracy. Anna and her family struggle with fear, separation, death, hatred, and forgiveness. The family horse becomes Anna's best friend as her mother grows distant. The family leans heavily on their Christian faith. Especially distressing is the hatred they feel toward the "rich folks on the mountain", whom many blame for the disaster. They feel the rich folks had no regard for the safety of their families. It is an exciting human-interest adventure. All ages enjoy it, especially young readers, twelve to fourteen. Those who love horses are drawn to it. Some prospective uses: entertainment, historical education, school curriculums, libraries; museums; tourist centers, elevation of Christian ethics; a discussion starter on topics such as responsibility to others, how our actions affect others, forgiveness, and the issue of dam safety. Elva Knavel, a native of the Johnstown area, says she wanted to write this story for years. She now makes her home in Florida with her pastor husband and family, but returns every summer to the Laurel Highlands of Pennsylvania and the "salt of the earth" people she loves.

Now in its second edition, Grunts: The American Combat Soldier in Vietnam provides a fresh approach to understanding the American combat soldier’s experience in Vietnam by focusing on the day-to-day experiences of front-line troops. The book delves into the Vietnam combat soldier’s experience, from the decision to join the army, life in training and combat, and readjusting to civilian life with memories of war. By utilizing letters, oral histories, and memoirs of actual veterans, Kyle Longley and Jacqueline Whitt offer a powerful insight into the minds and lives of the 870,000 "grunts" who endured the controversial war. Important topics such as class, race, and gender are examined, enabling students to better analyze the social dynamics during this divisive period of American history. In addition to an updated introduction and epilogue, the new edition includes expanded sections on military chaplains, medics, and the moral injury of war. A new timeline provides details of major events leading up to, during, and after the war. A truly comprehensive picture of the Vietnam experience for soldiers, this volume is a valuable and unique addition to military history courses and classes on the Vietnam War and 1960s America.

The Language of Experience examines the relationship between literacy and change--both personal and social. Gorzelsky studies three cases, two historical and one contemporary, that speak to key issues on the national education agenda. "Struggle" is a community literacy program for urban teens and parents. It encourages them to reflect on, articulate, and revise their life goals and design and implement strategies for reaching them. To provide historical context for this and other contemporary efforts in using literacy to promote social change, Gorzelsky analyzes two radical religious and political movements of the English Civil Wars and the 1930s unionizing movement in the Pittsburgh region. Charting the similarities and differences in the function of literate practices in each case shows how different situations and contexts can foster very different outcomes. Gorzelsky's analytic frame is drawn from Gestalt theory, which emphasizes the holistic nature of perception, communication, and learning. Through it she views how discourse and language structures interact with experience and how this interaction changes awareness and perception. The book is methodologically innovative in its integration of a macro-social view of cultural, social, and discursive structures with a micro-social view of the potential for change embodied in them. Through her analysis and in her use of the voices of the people she studies, Gorzelsky offers a tool for analyzing individual instances of literate practices and their potential for fostering change.

This book contains a collection of Edward Thomas's essays including How I Began, Chalk Pits, Tipperary, Swansea Village, and The Friend of the Blackbird. It was originally published posthumously in 1929 and is here being republished with a new introductory biography on the author. Edward Thomas was an accomplished writer and his work included essays, travelogues, topographical descriptions, reviews, critical studies and biographies. He was killed in action in the First World War in 1917.

Settled by Spanish explorers more than three centuries ago, San Antonio has a rich haunted history. Ghosthunting San Antonio by local author Micharl Varhola covers 30 haunted locations in or around the cities of San Antonio and Austin and throughout the region known as Texas Hill Country. Each site combines history, haunted lore and phenomena, and practical visitation information. The book is organized into four geographical sections, "City of San Antonio," "Greater San Antonio," "Austin," and "Texas Hill Country." This hands-on guide also includes an introduction to the subject of ghosthunting in the Lone Star State and all the information readers need to visit the places described within it. It also has an appendix that briefly describes nearly 100 other haunted places. Sites covered include bridges, churches, colleges and universities, cemeteries and graveyards, government buildings, historic sites, hotels, museums, parks, restaurants and bars, and much more. They include the Crockett Hotel, built on the spot where David Crockett and the final defenders of the Alamo are believed to have been slain; the Ghost Tracks, where spectral children are known to move people's stopped cars and the Devil's Backbone, the haunted highway that wends through the hills north of San Antonio.