Reverend Peter Pernin was the parish priest for Peshtigo and nearby Marinette, whose churches burned to the ground. He published his account of the fire in 1874. The late William Converse Haygood served as editor of the Wisconsin Magazine of History from 1957 to 1975. He prepared this version of Father Pernin's account on the occasion of the Peshtigo Fire's centennial in 1971. Foreword writer Stephen J. Pyne is a professor at Ariz...

Once America's capitalist dream town, Detroit is our country's greatest urban failure, having fallen the longest and the farthest. But the city's worst crisis yet (and that's saying something) has managed to do the unthinkable: turn the end of days into a laboratory for the future. Urban planners, land speculators, neopastoral agriculturalists, and utopian environmentalists—all have been drawn to Detroit's baroquely decaying, nothing-left-to-lose frontier.With an eye for both the da...

One brutal murder. Two possible suspects. And a "fascinating . . . puzzling case" that divided a Michigan community ( Lansing State Journal).In the summer of 1982, the body of twenty-year-old Maggie Hume was found under a pile of blankets in the closet of her apartment. A Catholic school girl and daughter of a local football coach, Maggie had been raped and strangled. It was the only active murder investigation in Battle Creek, Michigan, suggesting the cas...

In this paperback original, a stable of fresh stories by award-winning writer Will Weaver (Full Service and Barns of Minnesota, are complemented by a hand-picked selection of favorites from his original collection, A Gravestone Made of Wheat, to offer a fresh, vivid portrait of the changing midwestern landscape. New highlights include "Blaze of Glory," an enchanting tale of an RV road trip and a senior couple's "last time"; "The Trapper," the story of a hard split between an old trapper an...

**"Thompson's engrossing book is essential for any collection on the history, politics, or society of post–World War II America."**â• Library JournalIn Whose Detroit?, Heather Ann Thompson focuses in detail on the African American struggles for full equality and equal justice under the law that shaped the Motor City during the 1960s and 1970s. Even after Great Society liberals committed themselves to improving con...

Challenging traditional histories of abolition, this book shifts the focus away from the East to show how the women of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin helped build a vibrant antislavery movement in the Old Northwest.Stacey Robertson argues that the environment of the Old Northwest — with its own complicated history of slavery and racism — created a uniquely collaborative and flexible approach to abolitionism. Western women helped build this local focus through thei...

The Chevrolet car and truck business traces its roots back to Michigan�s lumber industry in the middle of the 19th century. Lumber mills gave way to carriage and wagon manufacturing and the claim, before motorcars burst on the scene, that Flint was the �vehicle capital of the world.� This is the story of how those wagon makers quickly converted to producing automobiles, overtaking automotive pioneer and archrival Ford in sales, and building the Chevrolet brand into the global powerhouse en...

In Women of the Northern Plains, Barbara Handy-Marchello tells the stories of the unsung heroes of North Dakota's settlement era: the farm women. As the men struggled to raise and sell wheat, the women focused on barnyard labor—raising chickens and cows and selling eggs and butter—to feed and clothe their families and maintain their households through booms and busts. Handy-Marchello focuses on the roles of women in this pioneer generation—their changing status from equal partnership to su...

Home to inventors of the first automobile, airplane and professional baseball team, Ohio is also the birthplace of the first horse show jumping grand prix in the Western Hemisphere. Longtime fans can relive the exciting victories of some of the finest horses and riders in history, while newcomers can experience the Cleveland Grand Prix's glory years as the premier summer social tradition for thousands of spectators. From harness racing to fox hunting, saddle up with equestrian authority Be...

From the time it was founded in 1825, Akron was a town on the move. Once known as the �Rubber Capitol of the World,� it brought droves of new workers to downtown and the suburban areas. With expansion came a need for entertainment, and wrestling was there for the multitudes. From the contrast of high school amateurs on mats to snarling villains and heroes in the professional ring, the sport thrived. There were the early days of traveling carnivals, with circuit-riding wrestlers who would t...

In 1837 the Ioways, an Indigenous people who had called most of present-day Iowa and Missouri home, were suddenly bound by the Treaty of 1836 with the U.S. federal government to restrict themselves to a two-hundred-square-mile parcel of land west of the Missouri River. Forcibly removed to the newly created Great Nemaha Agency, the Ioway men, women, and children, numbering nearly a thousand, were promised that through hard work and discipline they could enter mainstream American society. Al...

Following victories at Carthage and Wilson's Creek in the summer of 1861, the Confederate-allied Missouri State Guard achieved its greatest success when it advanced on Lexington in September. Former Missouri governor General Sterling Price and his men laid siege for three days against a Union garrison under the command of Colonel James Mulligan. An ingenious mobile breastwork of hemp bales soaked in water, designed to absorb hot shot, enabled the Confederates to close in on September 20 an...