"A valuable window into a long-underreported dimension of African American history."--Newsday When George Pullman began recruiting Southern blacks as porters in his luxurious new sleeping cars, the former slaves suffering under Jim Crow laws found his offer of a steady job and worldly experience irresistible. They quickly signed up to serve as maid, waiter, concierge, nanny, and occasionally doctor and undertaker to cars full of white passengers, making the Pullman Company the largest employer of African Americans in the country by the 1920s. Drawing on extensive interviews with dozens of porters and their descendants, Larry Tye reconstructs the complicated world of the Pullman porter and the vital cultural, political, and economic roles they played as forerunners of the modern black middle class. Rising from the Rails provides a lively and enlightening look at this important social phenomenon. - Named a Recommended Book by The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Seattle Times

Containing reports of all new patents, with a description of their respective principles and properties: also, original communications on subjects connected with science and philosophy; particularly such as embrace the most recent inventions and dicoveries in practical mechanics.

"A Picture of the Desolated States, and the Work of Restoration. 1865-1868" is a book about the consequences of the Civil War in the United States. The author, who traveled around the post-war country and interviewed the representatives of the opposite forces, accentuates the ruination the land suffered from war actions.