"Newburgh, NY-a city of about 30,000 residents, located roughly sixty miles north of New York City in the Hudson River Valley-is a quintessential example of a small, under-resourced, majority-minority, post-industrial city that has struggled to transition into the service, technology, and knowledge-based economy. Like many other similarly sized cities throughout the American northeast and midwest, white flight and decades of disinvestment left it racially segregated, facing perennially high poverty and crime rates, and offering few opportunities for its predominantly minority residents. And yet, Newburgh is now home to a gentrifying historic district, including an attractive, amenity-filled commercial strip, and an influx of middle-class, creative professionals as residents. Scholarship in urban studies has yet to offer a satisfactory explanation for how small, rust-belt cities such as Newburgh are finding ways to reverse decades of decline. This book is a contribution to that end. Sixty Miles Upriver argues that Newburgh's recent revitalization was motivated not by downtown or waterfront redevelopment, government planning, or existing institutions and assets, but rather by one factor above all else: its proximity to New York City. Drawing on several years of observations of the development of Newburgh's communities and participation in community meetings and volunteer events, as well as over 140 interviews people of diverse backgrounds, Richard Ocejo offers a detailed account of a small city in transition, struggling through the contradictions of gentrification. Ocejo observes that small city gentrification typically results from middle-class urbanites fleeing larger cities like New York. But he argues that, unlike the white flight of previous generations, fear of racial minorities and urban decline are no longer the motivating factors. Instead, small city gentrifiers are driven out of larger cities as affordable, middle-income neighborhoods become scarcer, and they are attracted to cities like Newburgh precisely because of the "grit" and racial diversity that they identify with "authentic" urban life. By engaging with the effects that such transplants have had on the development of Newburgh, and examining the varying ways they navigate race, racial difference, and racialization in majority-minority cities to suit their needs and fulfill their aims, Sixty Miles Upriver helps us make sense of two key phenomena in today's spatial landscape: how gentrification unfolds outside of large cities and how it comes to be seen as good"--

This is the story of Mary Slessor, a petite redhead from the slums of Dundee who became one of the most influencing people in the land known to her compatriots as 'the white man's grave'. Despite her eccentricities, this woman truly understood and connected with the Africans among whom she lived, so much so that the British government appointed her their first woman magistrate anywhere in the world and later awarded her the highest honor then bestowed on a woman commoner. Examining both the eraand the influence of this extraordinary woman, the book reveals aspects of her public and private life that has previously been unanswered.

A racy, well-researched account of the events that led up to the assassination, on June 13, 1980, of world-renowned historian and revolutionary, Dr. Walter Rodney

Faced with an identity crisis in his work and his life, seasoned traveler and journalist Jeffrey Tayler made a bold decision. He would leave behind his mundane existence in Moscow to re-create the legendary British explorer Henry Stanley’s trip down the Congo in a dugout canoe, stocked with food, medicine, and even a gun-toting guide. But once his tiny boat pushed off the banks of this mysterious river, Tayler realized he was in a place where maps and supplies would have no bearing on his survival. As Tayler navigates this immense waterway, he encounters a land of smothering heat and intense rains, wary villagers, corrupt officials and dead-eyed soldiers demanding bribes, jungle animals, mosquitoes, and, surprisingly, breathtaking natural beauty. Filled with honesty and rich description, Facing the Congo is a sophisticated depiction of today’s Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country brought to its knees by a succession of despotic leaders. But most mportant, Tayler’s stunning narrative is a deeply satisfying personal journey of fear and awakening, with a message that will resonate with anyone who has ever felt compelled, whether in life or in fantasy, to truly explore and experience our world.

A controversial character largely known (as depicted in the movie Glory) as a Union colonel who led Black soldiers in the Civil War, James Montgomery (1814–71) waged a far more personal and radical war against slavery than popular history suggests. It is the true story of this militant abolitionist that Todd Mildfelt and David D. Schafer tell in Abolitionist of the Most Dangerous Kind, summoning a life fiercely lived in struggle against the expansion of slavery into the West and during the Civil War. This book follows a harrowing path through the turbulent world of the 1850s and 1860s as Montgomery, with the fervor of an Old Testament prophet, inflicts destructive retribution on Southern slaveholders wherever he finds them, crossing paths with notable abolitionists John Brown and Harriet Tubman along the way. During the tumultuous years of “Bleeding Kansas,” he became a guerilla chieftain of the antislavery vigilantes known as Jayhawkers. When the war broke out in 1861, Montgomery led a regiment of white troops who helped hundreds of enslaved people in Missouri reach freedom in Kansas. Drawing on regimental records in the National Archives, the authors provide new insights into the experiences of African American men who served in Montgomery’s next regiment, the Thirty-Fourth United States Colored Troops (formerly Second South Carolina Infantry). Montgomery helped enslaved men and women escape via one of the least-explored underground railways in the nation, from Arkansas and Missouri through Kansas and Nebraska. With support of abolitionists in Massachusetts, he spearheaded resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act in Kansas. And, when war came, he led Black soldiers in striking at the very heart of the Confederacy. His full story thus illuminates the actions of both militant abolitionists and the enslaved people fighting to destroy the peculiar institution.

The Amazon is a place of breathtaking beauty, but also one of tremendous danger in which death can take many forms. Few, however, suspected that it would manifest itself in the form of a genetically engineered anaconda of extraordinary size with a ravenous appetite for the things that live on and beneath the river-especially human beings. Among the few scientists who know of the creature’s existence is world renowned cryptozoologist Paul Manhart who, along with his young but intrepid assistant, Sarah Underhill, are on a quest not only to prove the snake’s existence to Brazilian authorities, but persuade them to do something about it before it wreaks havoc among the larger population centers on the Amazon River. The only problem is that Paul Manhart didn’t expect to fall in love with his assistant, nor did he realize the tremendous price their eventual encounter with the beast will cost them, both personally and in blood. An exciting, action-packed fictional novel based on fact! Includes maps and illustrations, a great book to take on your next adventure!

Seeds of Empire recreates the events surrounding General John Sullivan's scorched-earth campaign against the Six Nations of the American Indians of New York and the Eastern territories in 1779, following the surrender of General John Burgoyne's British army at the Battle of Saratoga. Mintz's meticulous historical research and renowned storytelling ability give life to this arresting narrative as it probes the mechanisms of the American Revolution and the structure and function of the Iroquois Six Nations.

A "Blues geography" of New Orleans that compels readers to return to the history of the Black freedom struggle there to reckon with its unfinished business. Reading contemporary policies of abandonment against the grain, Clyde Woods explores how Hurricane Katrina brought long-standing structures of domination into view.

These tales trace the Texas story, from Cabeza de Vaca who trekked barefoot across the country recording the first accounts of Indian life, to impresarios like Stephen F. Austin and Don Martín DeLeón who brought settlers into Mexican Texas. There are visionaries like Padre José Nicolás Ballí, the Singer family, and Sam Robertson, who tried and failed to develop Padre Island into the wonderland that it is today. There are legendary characters like Sally Skull who had five husbands and may have killed some of them, and Josiah Wilbarger who was scalped and lived another ten years to tell about it. Also included are the stories of Shanghai Pierce, cattleman extraordinaire, who had no qualms about rounding up other folks’ calves, and Tol Barret who drilled Texas’ first oil well over thirty years before Spindletop changed the world. The Sanctified Sisters got rich running a commune for women, and millionaire oilman Edgar B. Davis gave away his money as fast as he made it. Sam Houston, Jean Lafitte, Antonio López de Santa Anna, Lucy Kidd-Key, Minnie Fisher Cunningham, all these characters and many more—early-day adventurers, Civil War heroes, and latter-day artists and musicians—created the patchwork called Texas.