State & Local

Did you know that Alaska’s history is as wild and tough as its weather? Alaska is full of beautiful landscapes and hard challenges. It’s where incredible people fought through hard times and brave explorers chased the unknown. History of Alaska brings these exciting moments to life, sharing both famous and little-known stories that helped shape the state.

Before Forks, a small town on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, became famous as the location for Stephenie Meyer's Twilight book series, it was the self-proclaimed "Logging Capital of the World" and ground zero in a regional conflict over the fate of old-growth forests. Since Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist William Dietrich first published The Final Forest in 1992, logging in Forks has given way to tourism, but even with its new fame, Forks is still a home to loggers and others who make their living from the surrounding forests.

On September 11th 2001 British TV documentary filmmaker Paul Berriff was in New York shooting a series for the Discovery Network. As soon as the first plane hit the World Trade Center he and his team rushed to the scene. Paul was soon alongside the FDNY's Assistant chief Fire Commissioner who was setting up the incident command post immediately below the South Tower. Twenty minutes later the South Tower collapsed on them.

Ronald Reagan declares the Soviet Union an Evil Empire. The Apple Macintosh personal computer makes its debut. Michael Jackson's Thriller dominates the charts. And Larry Bird and the Boston Celtics capture the NBA championship over the Los Angeles Lakers. It was 1984, and for the NBA and the nation, the year was full of milestone moments. In Dynasty Restored, Thomas J. Whalen explores this dramatic season.

In popular mythology, the Overland Trail is typically a triumphant tale, with plucky easterners crossing the Plains in caravans of covered wagons. But not everyone reached Oregon and California. Some 6,600 migrants perished along the way and were buried where they fell, often on Indigenous land. By the 1850s, cholera epidemics, ordinary diseases, and violence had remade the Trail into an American burial ground. In subsequent decades, U.S. officials and citizens leveraged Trail graves to claim Native ground.

Frederic L Paxson’s History of the American Frontier offers a sweeping account of the American West and the country’s westward expansion from 1763-1893.

Radical Volunteers tells the largely unknown story of southern student activism in Tennessee between the Brown decision in 1954 and the national backlash against the Kent State University shootings in May 1970. As one of the first statewide studies of student activism—and one of the few examinations of southern student activism—it broadens scholarly understanding of New Left and Black student radicalism from its traditionally defined hotbeds in the Northeast and on the West Coast.

A Sometimes Paradise is a moving personal journey into the rugged beauty and hardscrabble challenges of Wyoming ranch life that shaped Mark Miller as a boy and then as a young man. Against the backdrop of deadly ice storms and punishing droughts in a harsh, unforgiving environment, Mark shares stories of adventures, misadventures, and invaluable lessons he learned along the way. As he adapted to the rugged Wyoming terrain, he forged an unbreakable connection with the land and animals—and discovered the true power of family and friendship.

In the Memory House recalls what American society has forgotten—the land, its people, and its ideals. By examining what we choose to remember, this important book reveals how progress has created absences in our landscapes and in our lives.

New evidence in Dynamite Nashville uncovers the origin of an organized group of racist terrorists committing nationwide acts of violence against integration efforts in the late 1950's and early 1960s. Award winning historian Betsy Phillips not only paints a detailed picture of the social dynamic of the times, but details how a violent fringe of racists came to national prominence. In Dynamite Nashville, Phillips unmasks the KKK, reveals a racist terrorist network, names its principle leader, and shines a much needed historical spotlight on unsung civil rights hero Z. Alexander Looby.