Holidays on the frontier were a time for celebration, stopping work and chores, and honoring their purpose. The book includes stories of all the biggest celebrations, including traditions, food, songs, games, and other fun tidbits. Fifty food and drink recipes and the rules for typical parlor games of the time are included along with sidebars on common gifts of the time. First-hand accounts, newspaper articles, journals, photos, and Victorian memorabilia complete the package.
Interpreting Christmas at Museums and Historic Sites offers a wide range of perspectives on Christmas and practical guidance for planning, research, interpretation, and programming by board members, staff, and volunteers involved in the management, research, and interpretation at house museums, historic sites, history museums, and historical societies across the United States. Packed with fresh ideas and approaches by nearly two dozen scholars and leaders in this specialized topic, as well as Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, they can easily be adapted for the unique needs of organizations of various budgets and capacities. An extensive bibliography of books and articles published in the last twenty years provides additional resources for museum staff.
**2022 Will Rogers Medallion Award Gold Winner for Western Non-Fiction - Young Readers** Welcome to Western Writers of America’s first anthology for young readers. In this collection of true tales of the West, we leave textbook history in the rearview mirror and take you on a tour of twenty seldom-told dramas, the kind you might stumble across only if you leave the main road to wander the detours and byways of the American story. Here you’ll meet extraordinary characters, from a young buffalo hunter of prehistoric times to riders for the Pony Express, the first African American female stagecoach driver, and the Navajo code talkers of World War II. Did you know that in 1821, a Plains Indian girl trekked 1,400 miles to visit Washington, DC? Or that two brave children, eight and ten years old, took part in the Texas Revolution? Tales in this anthology range wide in time, topic, and mood, yet all celebrate a spirit that is uniquely Western. Founded in 1953, Western Writers of America is the nation’s oldest and most distinguished organization of professionals writing about the early frontier and the American West, its past and present. Now in our sixty-eighth year, our more than seven hundred members write fiction and nonfiction, songs, poetry, short stories, plays for stage and screen, and more. The contributors to this anthology, WWA members all, include bestselling authors and winners of numerous prestigious literary awards. With Why Cows Need Cowboys, we invite you to journey westward with us, and we hope you enjoy the ride.
"With the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in 1848, fortune-seekers from around the globe descended on California, among them a sprinkling of enterprising women. Author Sherry Monahan explains, ""Living in the wild American West provided women with equal opportunity - for both success and failure. Conventional wisdom suggests that women became prostitutes only because they were desperate. . . In fact, many of the women were smart entrepreneurs and saw a way to acquire fast and, in several cases, vast wealth. Rich in details combed from historical archives, California Madams uncovers the enigmatic and salacious lives of twenty-four women who ran houses of ill repute in the Golden State from the 1840's to the 1940's. Here are the hedonistic and sometimes heroic exploits of Margaret Appel, Diamond Jessie, Hattie Wells, Ah Toy, and Lee Francis, but also the unsung sagas of Emily Edwards, Cora Lee, Sylvia Daniels, May Ellis, Alma, Jewett, and many more."
Tombstone was one of the last great boomtowns of the Old West—a small city that grew up overnight and has a larger-than-life presence in the mythology of the frontier. In its heyday it was full of saloons, dance halls, and fancy eateries, a cosmopolitan oasis in territorial Arizona. The Tombstone Cookbook is packed with more than 120 recipes inspired by Tombstone's historic eateries and adapted for the modern home cook. Readers will also enjoy learning more about the region's history and lore through sidebars and historic photos.
Sherry Monahan is an authority on "the city that wouldn't die" and its history. In Tombstone's Treasure, she focuses on the silver mines, one reason for the city's founding, and the saloons, the other reason the city grew so quickly. When the discovery of silver at Tombstone first became known in mid-1880, there were about twenty-six saloons and breweries. By July of the following year, the number of saloons in Tombstone had doubled. The most popular saloon games of the time were faro, monte, and poker, with some offering keno, roulette, and twenty-one. Monahan shares true tales about Tombstone's mining and gambling history and describes a different time and locale where wealthy businesspeople and rugged miners rubbed elbows at the bar and gambled side by side. It is both shocking and enlightening to learn just how sophisticated Tombstone really was when the Earps, Doc Holliday, Johnny Ringo, and Curly Bill strode the boardwalks. Tombstone actually had telephones, ice cream parlors, coffee shops, a bowling alley, and a swimming pool. Wow! It is so contrary to the Hollywood version of the town . . . but it's absolutely true."--from the Foreword by Bob Boze Bell Read Sherry Monahan's interview on AMC on the Wild West and the film Wild Bill
Growing up on the Navajo Indian Reservation, David Crow and his siblings idolized their dad, a self-taught Cherokee who loved to tell his children about his World War II feats. But as time passed, David discovered the other side of Thurston Crow, the ex-con with his own code of ethics that justified cruelty, violence, lies--even murder. Intimidating David with beatings, Thurston coerced his son into doing his criminal bidding. David's mom, too mentally ill to care for her children, couldn't protect him. Through sheer determination, and with the help of a few angels along the way, David managed to get into college and achieve professional success. When he finally found the courage to refuse his father's criminal demands, he unwittingly triggered a plot of revenge that would force him into a deadly showdown with Thurston Crow. David would have only twenty-four hours to outsmart his father--the brilliant, psychotic man who bragged that the three years he spent in the notorious San Quentin State Prison had been the easiest time of his life. Raw and palpable, The Pale-Faced Lie is an inspirational story about the power of forgiveness and the strength of the human spirit.
Drawn from the author’s ongoing column in TrueWest Magazine, this cookbook combines myths, nostalgia, and legends with usable, delicious, and fun recipes for use at home or on the trail--all with a western theme. Readers will be surprised to learn the stories behind some of their favorite recipes, and they’ll find inspiration from the days of cooking along the trail or in the old iron cook stove in these dishes interpreted for a modern cook’s kitchen.
"In September 1965, Filipino and Mexican American farm workers went on strike against grape growers in and around Delano, California. More than a labor dispute, the strike became a movement for social justice that helped redefine Latino and American politics. The strike also catapulted its leader, Cesar Chavez, into prominence as one of the most celebrated American political figures of the twentieth century. More than forty years after its original publication, Delano: The Story of the California Grape Strike, based on compelling first-hand reportage and interviews, retains both its freshness and its urgency in illuminating a moment of unusually significant social ferment." -- Book cover.
Winter has come to Route 117, a remote road through the high desert of Utah trafficked only by eccentrics, fugitives, and those looking to escape the world. Local truck driver Ben Jones, still in mourning over a heartbreaking loss, finds a mute Hispanic child who has been abandoned at a seedy truck stop along his route, far from civilization and bearing a note that simply reads "Please Ben. Watch my son. His name is Juan." At the bottom: "Bad Trouble. Tell no one." Ben takes the child with him in his truck and sets out into an environment that is as dangerous as it is beautiful and silent.
