St. Louis was a city under siege during Prohibition. Seven different criminal gangs violently vied for control of the town�s illegal enterprises. Although their names (the Green Ones, the Pillow Gang, the Russo Gang, Egan�s Rats, the Hogan Gang, the Cuckoo Gang and the Shelton Gang) are familiar to many, their exploits have remained largely undocumented until now. Learn how an awkward gunshot wound gave the Pillow Gang its name and why Willie Russo�s bizarre midnight interview with a repor...

From the Author of Off Color: The Violent History of Detroit’s Notorious Purple Gang It was the winter of 1919, and it was the height of a gang war the Motor City hadn’t seen before. Detroit’s Mafia family had split into two factions, both vying to not only avenge ancient wrongs but also gain control of the city’s lucrative illegal alcohol trade at the dawn of Prohibition. In Vìnnitta, author Daniel Waugh offers an in-depth account of the formation of the Detroit Mafia and how they grew fr...

St. Louis was a city under siege during Prohibition. Seven different criminal gangs violently vied for control of the town's illegal enterprises. Although their names (the Green Ones, the Pillow Gang, the Russo Gang, Egan's Rats, the Hogan Gang, the Cuckoo Gang and the Shelton Gang) are familiar to many, their exploits have remained largely undocumented until now. Learn how an awkward gunshot wound gave the Pillow Gang its name and why Willie Russo's bizarre midnight interview with a repor...

The Voyageur is the authoritative account of a unique and colorful group of men whose exploits, songs, and customs comprise an enduring legacy. French Canadians who guided and paddled the canoes of explorers and fur traders, the voyageurs were experts at traversing the treacherous rapids and dangerous open waters of the canoe routes from Quebec and Montreal to the regions bordering the Great Lakes and on to the Mackenzie and Columbia Rivers. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centu...

Ken Morriss journey began one cold Pittsburgh morning in 1935. In the middle of the Great Depression, he was going to see the country as a door-to-door salesman. Detroit was to be his first and last stop. Life was hard and few people during this time of crisis knew how their future would evolve. After months of unemployment, Ken found a job at the Briggs Manufacturing Company, the toughest auto company in Detroit. Ken could not have known then he would eventually play a pioneering role in ...

Mr. Howells has in the present volume given his writings the form of a series of historical stories, in which his native State is described and pictured from as remote a period as the geologic ice age. The slow-moving glaciers in the distant past covered most of the present State of Ohio. They rounded off the corners of her hills, smoothed the contour of her valleys, left glacial scratches on her rocks, and transported boulders from remote points where they had an origin and left them on t...

Eloise, which started out as a poorhouse, later became known as Wayne County General Hospital. Today, all that remains are five buildings and a smokestack. From only 35 residents on 280 acres in 1839, the complex grew dramatically after the Civil War until the total land involved was 902 acres and the total number of patients was about 10,000. Only one of them, the Kay Beard Building, is currently used.In Eloise: Poorhouse, Farm, Asylum, and Hospital, 1839-1984, this institution and medica...

Carved out of the wilderness seemingly overnight, Harrison had its beginnings with the coming of the railroad and its controversial new location as the seat of Clare County. Businessmen, a few families, and armies of lumberjacks soon gave Harrison a reputation as the toughest town in Michigan. More than 10 years of the lawless lumber era gave way to the beginnings of a peaceful village in 1891. The streams and lakes previously used for water, ice, and log hauling became attractive to touri...

To many rural Iowans, the stock market crash on New York’s Wall Street in October 1929 seemed an event far removed from their lives, even though the effects of the crash became all too real throughout the state. From 1929 to 1933, the enthusiastic faith that most Iowans had in Iowan President Herbert Hoover was transformed into bitter disappointment with the federal government. As a result, Iowans directly questioned their leadership at the state, county, and community levels with a renewe...

The area's extreme remoteness, great size, and sparse population have shaped the North Dakota character from the beginning of settlement a century ago.Theirs was not an easy land to master; and of those who tried, it demanded strength, endurance, and few illusions, but it had rewards. Today, as world shortages of food and fuel raise new possibilities--and new problems--North Dakotans face the future with the cautious optimism they learned long ago in sod houses and...

When a person looks around the city of Vassar, it is hard to imagine that this was once a vast cork pine forest in the Saginaw Valley. Townsend North, along with his brothers-in-law James and Newton Edmunds, came to settle the land in 1849. Vassar quickly went from a small lumber camp to a fast-growing village and would be known for setting many records for Tuscola County, including being the first county seat. Vassar also had the first newspaper, the first house of worship, the first scho...

Prior to 1956, the area now known as Elk Grove Village was a massive cornfield. On July 17, 1956, Elk Grove Village was incorporated as a village, with a population of 116. Since that time, the growth of the village can only be described as phenomenal. Over 50 years, the village has dramatically changed since those early days of cornfields. The name Elk Grove Village was adopted from the great number of elk that roamed through the fenced-in portion of Busse Woods, along Arlington Heights R...