Award-winning women scholars from nontraditional backgrounds have often negotiated an academic track that leads through figurative--and sometimes literal--minefields. Their life stories offer inspiration, but also describe heartrending struggles and daunting obstacles. Reshaping Women's History presents autobiographical essays by eighteen accomplished scholar-activists who persevered through poverty or abuse, medical malpractice or family disownment, civil war or genocide. As they illumina...

In this volume, Lena Sommestad explores the significance of rural womanhood in the formation of Sweden’s gender-egalitarian welfare state in the early 20th century. Drawing on a rich array of documents, photographs, and interviews with women and men, she analyzes the changing gender division of labor in dairying and illuminates the dynamic processes and debates that shaped industrial workplaces. The book demonstrates the importance of rural women’s gainful labor and organized activism to S...

Putting the Barn Before the House features the voices and viewpoints of women born before World War I who lived on family farms in south-central New York. As she did in her previous book, Bonds of Community, for an earlier period in history, Grey Osterud explores the flexible and varied ways that families shared labor and highlights the strategies of mutuality that women adopted to ensure they had a say in family decision making. Sharing and exchanging work also linked nei...

'The master of a journalistic style long vanished - urbane, lucid, courteous... A masterpiece of observation and storytelling' Ian McEwanMitchell is the laureate of old New York. The hidden corners of the city and the people who lived there are his subject. He captured the waterfront rooming-houses , nickel-a-drink saloons, all-night restaurants, the 'visionaries, obsessives, imposters, fanatics, lost souls, the end-is-near street preachers, old Gypsy Kings and old Gypsy Queens, an...

The marvelous story of the Flatiron: the instantly recognizable building that signaled the start of a new era in New York history.Critics hated it. The public feared it would topple over. Passersby were knocked down by the winds. But even before it was completed, the Flatiron Building had become an unforgettable part of New York City.The Flatiron Building was built by the Chicago-based Fuller Company--a group founded by George Fuller, "the father of ...

In Up from Zero, Paul Goldberger, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, tells the inside story of the quest to rebuild one of the most important symbolic sites in the world, the sixteen acres where the towers of the former World Trade Center stood. A story of power, politics, architecture, community, and culture, Up from Zero takes us inside the controversial struggle to create and build one of the most challenging urban-design projects in history.What should replace the ...

From Pittsburgh to Philly, Steelers to Eagles, chocolate to Peeps--it's all here. Uncle John has put together this absolutely awesome anthology of Pennsylvania facts, firsts, famous feats, and much more.Take a ride on the Reading Railroad! (Either pronunciation of “Reading” works here.) Yes, the Keystone State is rich in history, beauty, and the world’s most delicious cheesesteak (Whiz wit!). Follow Uncle John on a whirlwind tour of Pennsylvania from Philadelphia t...

An essay collection highlighting guiding principles, containing 30 works from the contemporary Philadelphia radio series, and 30 from the 1950s original.This I Believe is an international project engaging people in writing, sharing, and discussing the core values that guide their daily lives. And it all started in Philadelphia more than seven decades ago with a local radio series that became an international sensation.This book features thirty essa...

During the 1930s in the United States, the Works Progress Administration developed the Federal Writers’ Project to support writers and artists while making a national effort to document the country’s shared history and culture. The American Guide series consists of individual guides to each of the states. Little-known authors-many of whom would later become celebrated literary figures-were commissioned to write these important books. John Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ral...

In this classic of American biography, based upon thousands of original documents, many never previously published, the prize-winning historian Geoffrey C. Ward tells the dramatic story of Franklin Roosevelt’s unlikely rise from cloistered youth to the brink of the presidency with a richness of detail and vivid sense of time, place, and personality usually found only in fiction.In these pages, FDR comes alive as a fond but absent father and an often unfeeling husband--the story of ...

The Finger Lakes region is known for its beauty, but look carefully and you will discover some of New York's other abundant--and unusual--treasures. The cliffs of Excelsior Glen are scattered with ancient Indian pictographs, and Bluff Point conceals the ruins of an unknown civilization. The wine industry has its own strange stories; discover why one wine producer was banned from using his own name. Among the oddities of the Finger Lakes region are the world's largest pancake, a slice of Su...

A historian investigates evidence for the existence of the Underground Railroad in upstate New York.Because of its clandestine nature, much of the history of the Underground Railroad remains shrouded in secrecy—so much so that some historians have even doubted its importance. After decades of research, Tom Calarco recounts his experiences compiling evidence to give credence to the legend's oral history in upstate New York.As the Civil War loomed and politicia...