My Omaha Obsession

My Omaha Obsession

Author: Miss Cassette

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2020-11

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 149622471X

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2021 Nebraska Book Award My Omaha Obsession takes the reader on an idiosyncratic tour through some of Omaha’s neighborhoods, buildings, architecture, and people, celebrating the city’s unusual history. Rather than covering the city’s best-known sites, Miss Cassette is irresistibly drawn to strange little buildings and glorious large homes that don’t exist anymore as well as to stories of Harkert’s Holsum Hamburgers and the Twenties Club. Piecing together the records of buildings and homes and everything interesting that came after, Miss Cassette shares her observations of the property and its significance to Omaha. She scrutinizes land deeds, insurance maps, tax records, and old newspaper articles to uncover a property’s singular story. Through conversations with fellow detectives and history enthusiasts, she guides readers along her path of hunches, personal interests, mishaps, and more. As a longtime resident of Omaha, Miss Cassette is informed by memories of her youth combined with an enduring curiosity about the city’s offbeat relics and remains. Part memoir and part research guide with a healthy dose of colorful wandering, My Omaha Obsession celebrates the historic built environment and searches for the people who shaped early Omaha.


The Women Who Built Omaha

The Women Who Built Omaha

Author: Eileen Wirth

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2022-05

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1496231252

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During the 1930s the Federal Writers’ Project described Omaha as a “man’s town,” and histories of the city have all but ignored women. However, women have played major roles in education, health, culture, social services, and other fields since the city’s founding in 1854. In The Women Who Built Omaha Eileen Wirth tells the stories of groundbreaking women who built Omaha, including Susette “Bright Eyes” LaFlesche, who translated at the trial of Chief Standing Bear; Mildred Brown, an African American newspaper publisher; Sarah Joslyn, who personally paid for Joslyn Art Museum; Mrs. B of Nebraska Furniture Mart; and the Sisters of Mercy, who started Omaha’s Catholic schools. Omaha women have been champion athletes and suffragists as well as madams and bootleggers. They transformed the city’s parks, co-founded Creighton University, helped run Boys Town, and so much more, in ways that continue today.


Secret Omaha: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure

Secret Omaha: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure

Author: Ryan Roenfeld

Publisher: Reedy Press LLC

Published: 2021-05-15

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 1681063069

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How did Omaha get its nickname, “The Gateway to the West” and where can you gawk at the footsteps of the first human to walk in space? Just scratch the surface of a city best known for Warren Buffett, college baseball, and a great zoo and find far more than meets the eye. And Secret Omaha: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure is just the book you’ll need to uncover all the stories of Nebraska’s lone metropolis. Omaha rises up out of the low broken bluffs along the west bank of the Missouri River and sprawls west across what was once the prairie grasslands of the Great Plains. The buffalo wallows have been replaced by a more urban mix of grit and gentrification, with tree-lined avenues, boulevards, and varied communities that hold on to their heritage for generations. There’s a giant fork in Little Italy and stories told in stone around what was the world’s largest livestock market. There’s an old blues song by Big Joe Williams about an Omaha intersection that’s now on the National Register, and Irish Nationalists erected a grand monument to the Fenian who invaded Canada twice. Anyone in Omaha can take a gander at Goose Hollow or visit a haven for herons, but now author and Omaha enthusiast Ryan Roenfeld takes you on your own behind-the-scenes tour of the Big O. With his book as your guide, you’ll discover a whole new side to the city that’s inspired him for years.


North Omaha History

North Omaha History

Author: Adam Fletcher Sasse

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2016-11-01

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 9781539973614

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In the third book of the North Omaha History Series, Adam Fletcher Sasse reveals a lot of the hidden, denied and neglected history of one of the oldest areas of Nebraska's largest city. Highlighting the predominantly African American community and other ethnic groups, he introduces some intriguing characters and important businesses that made North Omaha great. He reveals the role of transportation in the area by examining the history of several streets, including the culture and figures in the areas around them. He details the roles of North Omaha's extensive boulevard system that weaves together neighborhoods and connects the community to the rest of the city, as well as looks at the historic Belt Line Railway that used to encircle the area. In the next section, Fletcher Sasse conducts a community-wide exploration of architecture in North Omaha. He reveals the basics about the neighborhood, and then plunges deep into the apartments, homes, neighborhoods and other institutions that make the historic preservation movement so important to the community. He details several important districts and shines a light on the oldest houses in North Omaha, too. Then, he tells the missing history of a dozen mansions and estates that once occupied the area. The final section of the book is a massive timeline of birthdates for the many of the most important people in North Omaha history, including athletes, entertainers, politicians, leaders and others. The book finishes with a bibliography and comprehensive index.


A Dirty, Wicked Town

A Dirty, Wicked Town

Author: David L. Bristow

Publisher: Caxton Press

Published: 2000-04

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0870045326

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Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for Caxton Press "It requires but little if any, stretch of the imagination to regard Omaha as a cesspool of iniquity, for it is given up to lawlessness and is overrun with a horde of fugitives from justice and dangerous men of all kinds who carry things with a high hand and a loose rein... If you want to find a rogue's rookery, go to Omaha." A Kansas City newspaper.


You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey

You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey

Author: Amber Ruffin

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Published: 2021-01-12

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 1538719347

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*A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND INDIE NEXT PICK* Writer and performer on Late Night with Seth Meyers Amber Ruffin writes with her sister Lacey Lamar with humor and heart to share absurd anecdotes about everyday experiences of racism. Now a writer and performer on Late Night with Seth Meyers and host of The Amber Ruffin Show, Amber Ruffin lives in New York, where she is no one's First Black Friend and everyone is, as she puts it, "stark raving normal." But Amber's sister Lacey? She's still living in their home state of Nebraska, and trust us, you'll never believe what happened to Lacey. From racist donut shops to strangers putting their whole hand in her hair, from being mistaken for a prostitute to being mistaken for Harriet Tubman, Lacey is a lightning rod for hilariously ridiculous yet all-too-real anecdotes. She's the perfect mix of polite, beautiful, petite, and Black that apparently makes people think "I can say whatever I want to this woman." And now, Amber and Lacey share these entertainingly horrifying stories through their laugh-out-loud sisterly banter. Painfully relatable or shockingly eye-opening (depending on how often you have personally been followed by security at department stores), this book tackles modern-day racism with the perfect balance of levity and gravity.


Lost Restaurants of Omaha

Lost Restaurants of Omaha

Author: Kim Reiner

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2017-10-30

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 1439663122

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Omaha is known for its beef, but the history of its most famous restaurants goes far beyond. The French Café was the place to go to celebrate. Piccolo Pete's, Mister C's and Bohemian Café helped shape neighborhoods in Little Italy, North Omaha and Little Bohemia. The tales of restaurateurs like the tragic Tolf Hanson; the ever-optimistic Ross Lorello; Anthony Oddo, once a resident at Boys Town; and Giuseppa Marcuzzo, a former bootlegger, also tell the story of the city. Restaurants played a prominent role as history unfolded in Omaha during prohibition, wartime rations, the fight for equal rights and westward expansion. Author Kim Reiner details the fascinating history behind Omaha's classic eateries.


Omaha Sketchbook

Omaha Sketchbook

Author: Gregory Halpern

Publisher:

Published: 2019-08-31

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781912339440

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For the last fifteen years, Gregory Halpern has been photographing in Omaha, Nebraska, steadily compiling a lyrical, if equivocal, response to the American Heartland. In loosely-collaged spreads that reproduce his construction-paper sketchbooks, Halpern takes pleasure in cognitive dissonance and unexpected harmonies, playing on a sense of simultaneous repulsion and attraction to the place. Omaha Sketchbook is ultimately a meditation on America, on the men and boys who inhabit it, and on the mechanics of aggression, inadequacy, and power.


24th and Glory

24th and Glory

Author: Dirk Chatelain

Publisher:

Published: 2019-08

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 9781732231757

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In 1968, Bob Gibson was in the middle of one of the most dominant pitching performances in World Series history, but he wasn't the only North Omahan on the sports page.That first week of October, one native son led the NFL in rushing. Another averaged 22 points per game in the NBA. One was about to begin a 17,000-point pro basketball career. Another was about to break football's most stubborn racial barrier. One - a future Heisman Trophy winner - broke Friday night records.They all came from the same parks and gyms. The same schools and coaches.They rose out of segregation - higher and higher - as racial tensions in North Omaha boiled hotter and hotter."24th & Glory: The intersection of civil rights and Omaha's greatest generation of athletes" from award-winning World-Herald staff writer Dirk Chatelain tells the story behind one incredible neighborhood that produced so many world-class athletes.