In this masterful biography, Robert L. Dorman traces the career of William H. 'Alfalfa Bill' Murray from his hardscrabble childhood in post-Civil War Texas to his remarkable ascendancy as a nationally known political figure in the mid-twentieth century. The first comprehensive portrait of Murray to be published in fifty years, Alfalfa Bill is both ......
No sooner had the EPA established the Superfund program in 1980 to clean up the nation's toxic waste dumps and other abandoned hazardous waste sites, than a little Montana town found itself topping the new program's National Priority List. Milltown, a place too small to warrant a listing in the U.S. Census, sat alongside a modest hydroelectric dam ......
The Military Career of Captain William Philo Clark
Best known for his role in the arrest and killing of Crazy Horse and for the book he wrote, The Indian Sign Language, Captain William Philo Clark (1845-1884) was one of the Old Army's renaissance men, by turns administrator, fighter, diplomat, explorer, and ethnologist. As such, Clark found himself at center stage during some of the most momentous ......
The Epic Western and National Mythmaking in 1920s Hollywood
In the mid- 1920s, the heyday of silent film, the epic Western swept Hollywood and the nation. Movie moguls sought to add gravitas to their output with the productions - films they argued offered American audiences authentic history and lessons in citizenship at a time when Hollywood faced criticism for its movies' morals and star scandals. ......
Native American oral storytelling traditions have been widely documented and appreciated, but they are often associated with the past, pre-contact times, and ancient legends. Less attention has been given to the way this tradition continues to exist in the present, with new stories being created to respond to the modern world. Making Each Other ......
Though ethanol, a liquid fuel made from agricultural byproducts, has generated controversy in recent years - good or bad for the environment? a big-ag boon or boondoggle? - its use goes back more than a century. Tracing the little-known history of this promising and contentious fuel, Ethanol: A Hemispheric History for the Future of Biofuels ......
Long neglected by historians, the American Midwest has come to be known as the " Lost Region." But in the last decade a cadre of dedicated scholars has worked to remedy this oversight, launching new associations, conferences, and journals that have given rise to the New Midwestern History. Between Loving and Leaving reveals the depth and breadth ......
Historical Accounts of the Grattan Massacre, 1854-1855
On August 9, 1854, U.S. Army lieutenant John L. Grattan led a detachment of twenty-nine soldiers and one civilian interpreter to a large Lakota encampment near Fort Laramie to arrest an Indian man accused of killing a Mormon emigrant's cow. The terrible series of events that followed, which became known as the Grattan Massacre, unleashed the ......
"Shootin' - Lynchin' - Hangin'," announces the advertisement for Tombstone's Helldorado Days festival. Dodge City's Boot Hill Cemetery sports an 'authentic hangman's tree.' Not to be outdone, Deadwood's Days of '76 celebration promises 'miners, cowboys, Indians, cavalry, bars, dance halls and gambling dens.' The Wild West may be long gone, but ......
