“The last train for the north leaves here tomorrow morning, Our soldiers are scattered along the railroad as hundred miles north, and as soon as that train passes, the work of destruction will commence. The railroad will be completely destroyed and every bridge burned. Then both armies (the armies of the Tennessee and Georgia) will assemble here, and after destroying the city will commence the march. I fear their track will be one of desolation.” -- Major General Henry Slocum, Federal Commander of the 20th Corps.

"The last train for the north leaves here tomorrow morning, Our soldiers are scattered along the railroad as hundred miles north, and as soon as that train passes, the work of destruction will commence. The railroad will be completely destroyed and every bridge burned. Then both armies (the armies of the Tennessee and Georgia) will assemble here, and after destroying the city will commence the march. I fear their track will be one of desolation." -- Major General Henry Slocum, Federal Commander of the 20th Corps.

The end of the nineteenth century might have been the Gilded Age for the likes of Rockefellers and Carnegies—but for the newly arriving immigrants and poverty-stricken Americans packed into Manhattan’s teeming Lower Eastside, it was a different story all together. In this tumultuous time, factory worker Virginia Chisholm hopes for more, but her dreams go up in smoke when a tenement blaze rips her family apart. Aided by Lindsay Killian, the street-wise, rail-riding drifter she meets in a charity hospital, Ginny follows the orphan train that has taken her siblings west. The desperate quest to reunite her family takes the young women from the slums of New York City to the farms of West Virginia and the bustling frontier beyond. This harrowing journey moves Ginny and Lindsay from one mishap and adventure to another. It also leads them both from friendship to a tender and unexpected romance.

The fast-paced and gripping true account of the extraordinary construction and spectacular demise of the Key West Railroad—one of the greatest engineering feats ever undertaken, destroyed in one fell swoop by the strongest storm ever to hit U.S. shores. In 1904, the brilliant and driven entrepreneur Henry Flagler, partner to John D. Rockefeller, dreamed of a railway connecting the island of Key West to the Florida mainland, crossing a staggering 153 miles of open ocean—an engineering challenge beyond even that of the Panama Canal. Many considered the project impossible, but build it they did. The railroad stood as a magnificent achievement for more than twenty-two years, heralded as “the Eighth Wonder of the World,” until its total destruction in 1935's deadly storm of the century. In Last Train to Paradise, Standiford celebrates this crowning achievement of Gilded Age ambition, bringing to life a sweeping tale of the powerful forces of human ingenuity colliding with the even greater forces of nature’s wrath.

The Last Train to Dachau is based on the real life plight of the Miller family during World War II. With the invasion of Poland by the Germans, the story follows the family and their experiences of: the occupation, hunger, cold, and the terror in their home town. This family of five was Polish Catholic, but had a German-like surname. This situation placed them between the Germans, who wanted them to sign a loyalty declaration, which they refused, and the community which assumed that they had. The story tells of the horrors and obstacles that they faced and had to overcome to stay together and live. Emilia, Alicia and Leszek are children that spend most of their youth surviving both the physical and emotional stresses of war. Wladyslawa, the mother, is a worker in a Red Cross shelter during the day, but often had to travel at night to find black market food for her family. Wiktor, the father, was conscripted to a labor train after the surrender of Warsaw. He worked under threat of great harm to his family while forced to travel and repair damaged trains and tracks across Poland and Germany. His travels and experiences on a recovery and repair crew gave him an avenue to stay alive while still resisting his oppressors. The intensity of the story increases as the Millers face the brutality of their captors who desperately try to accomplish their final solution for all Poles in the closing days of the war. The reader will find it hard to put the book down as the Millers face their fate.

Atlanta! The very name evokes a sense of grandeur and splendor and an aura of dominance. Indeed, today's Atlanta has no rival. Present-day Atlanta prides itself in having one of the largest and busiest airports in the world, and 100 years ago, it boasted of having the busiest railroad center in the South. At its peak, its passenger stations dispatched countless numbers of trains to every major city in the country. This book recalls the building of the many stations that faithfully served Atlanta and records, with the exception of one, their final reduction to piles of rubble when they were of no further use, only to be remembered on paper and in the memories of those fortunate enough to have witnessed them.

From the memories of everyday experience, Living Atlanta vividly recreates life in the city during the three decades from World War I through World War II--a period in which a small, regional capital became a center of industry, education, finance, commerce, and travel. This profusely illustrated volume draws on nearly two hundred interviews with Atlanta residents who recall, in their own words, "the way it was"--from segregated streetcars to college fraternity parties, from moonshine peddling to visiting performances by the Metropolitan Opera, from the growth of neighborhoods to religious revivals. The book is based on a celebrated public radio series that was broadcast in 1979-80 and hailed by Studs Terkel as "an important, exciting project--a truly human portrait of a city of people." Living Atlanta presents a diverse array of voices--domestics and businessmen, teachers and factory workers, doctors and ballplayers. There are memories of the city when it wasn't quite a city: "Back in those young days it was country in Atlanta," musician Rosa Lee Carson reflects. "It sure was. Why, you could even raise a cow out there in your yard." There are eyewitness accounts of such major events as the Great Fire of 1917: "The wind blowing that way, it was awful," recalls fire fighter Hugh McDonald. "There'd be a big board on fire, and the wind would carry that board, and it'd hit another house and start right up on that one. And it just kept spreading." There are glimpses of the workday: "It's a real job firing an engine, a darn hard job," says railroad man J. R. Spratlin. "I was using a scoop and there wasn't no eight hour haul then, there was twelve hours, sometimes sixteen." And there are scenes of the city at play: "Baseball was the popular sport," remembers Arthur Leroy Idlett, who grew up in the Pittsburgh neighborhood. "Everybody had teams. And people--you could put some kids out there playing baseball, and before you knew a thing, you got a crowd out there, watching kids play." Organizing the book around such topics as transportation, health and religion, education, leisure, and politics, the authors provide a narrative commentary that places the diverse remembrances in social and historical context. Resurfacing throughout the book as a central theme are the memories of Jim Crow and the peculiarities of black-white relations. Accounts of Klan rallies, job and housing discrimination, and poll taxes are here, along with stories about the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, early black forays into local politics, and the role of the city's black colleges. Martin Luther King, Sr., historian Clarence Bacote, former police chief Herbert Jenkins, educator Benjamin Mays, and sociologist Arthur Raper are among those whose recollections are gathered here, but the majority of the voices are those of ordinary Atlantans, men and women who in these pages relive day-to-day experiences of a half-century ago.

The courage and sacrifices of the Southern women who stood in the way of Sherman’s March to the Sea from Atlanta to Savannah during the Civil War. When General Sherman led 60,000 soldiers on a sixty-mile-wide path of destruction through Georgia, the purpose was to frighten civilians into abandoning the Confederate cause. Most Georgia women were left to face the enemy alone—their men were off fighting or hiding for fear of being killed or taken as prisoners of war. But these steel magnolias were well-prepared to protect all that was rightfully theirs . . . Cathy Kaemmerlen, a renowned storyteller and historical interpreter, provides a colorful collection of tales of exceptional Georgia women who made great sacrifices in an effort to save their families and homes. From the innocent diary of a 10-year-old girl to the words of a woman who risks everything to see her husband one last time, Kaemmerlen exposes the grit and gumption of these remarkable Southern women in inspiring and entertaining fashion.