Speaking Ill of the Dead: Jerks in Colorado History features 17 short biographies of notorious bad guys, perpetrators of mischief, visionary if misunderstood thinkers, and other colorful antiheroes from the history of the Centennial State.

From 1866 until 1979, Erie was one of the largest coal-producing towns in the nation. Numerous settlers contributed to building Old Town and making it one of the liveliest communities in northern Colorado. The Columbine Mine massacre in 1927 incited major changes to coal mining practices, inspiring unionization efforts nationally. The improved rights and working conditions that miners struggled to win benefit employees across America today. Emeritus Professor James B. Stull illuminates Erie's earliest pioneers, houses, schools and churches and the town's enduring evolution.

DEADLY, DRAMATIC, and WILD... Words that best describe this collection of stories recounting Colorado's long history of catastrophes. In Colorado Disasters, Boulder-based historian and educator Phyllis J. Perry chronicles the Centennial State’s gamut of natural and human-caused disasters, from floods, mudslides and avalanches, to massive wildfires, deadly explosions, train wrecks, airplane crashes, monster tornadoes, and more. Perry honors the survivors and many heroic rescuers who risked their lives to save others. “Most of these stories offer excellent lessons in how to survive a disaster, Perry says. “And they can inspire us to do the right thing when the world turns upside down and your neighbors need help.” Covering more than 150 years of catastrophes, Perry’s careful research and lively writing brings to life the true stories—at turns heart-stopping and heroic—of the victims, survivors, and rescuers who were there. Riveting details from first-person accounts Amply illustrated with more than 70 photographs

Welcome to colorful Colorado, home of the infamous Stanley Hotel, ghostly city parks, and of course some of the best mountain viewing around. Just watch out for ghostly hitchhikers. Author Kailyn Lamb looks at locations throughout the state and dives head first into the history behind the ghosts and what made them stay. Join her investigating the history of some of Colorado's most haunted locations, you might find more than gold in those hills.

Burton K. Wheeler (1882–1975) may have been the most powerful politician Montana ever produced, and he was one of the most influential—and controversial—members of the United States Senate during three of the most eventful decades in American history. A New Deal Democrat and lifelong opponent of concentrated power—whether economic, military, or executive—he consistently acted with a righteous personal and political independence that has all but disappeared from the public sphere. Political Hell-Raiser is the first book to tell the full story of Wheeler, a genuine maverick whose successes and failures were woven into the political fabric of twentieth-century America. Wheeler came of political age amid antiwar and labor unrest in Butte, Montana, during World War I. As a crusading United States attorney, he battled Montana’s powerful economic interests, championed farmers and miners, and won election to the U.S. Senate in 1922. There he made his name as one of the “Montana scandalmongers,” uncovering corruption in the Harding and Coolidge administrations. Drawing on extensive research and new archival sources, Marc C. Johnson follows Wheeler from his early backing of Franklin D. Roosevelt and ardent support of the New Deal to his forceful opposition to Roosevelt’s plan to expand the Supreme Court and, in a move widely viewed as political suicide, his emergence as the most prominent spokesman against U.S. involvement in World War II right up to three days before Pearl Harbor. Johnson provides the most thorough telling of Wheeler’s entire career, including all its accomplishments and contradictions, as well as the political storms that the senator both encouraged and endured. The book convincingly establishes the place and importance of this principled hell-raiser in American political history.

Everyone loves a heel, especially one to whom nothing was sacred and who charmed his or her way into the hearts, minds, and wallets of bumpkins and belles alike. This collection offers twenty-four tales of petty bandits, sleazy bunko artists, and conniving conmen and –women who traveled West to seek their fortunes by preying on the men and women who went before them to settle and explore. These stories of who they were, what they did, and why they are remembered for their deeds include ample and engaging historic illustrations of the shady characters at work and at play.

Through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, employers and powerful individuals deployed a variety of tactics to control ordinary people as they sought to secure power in and out of workplaces. In the face of worker resistance, employers and their allies collaborated to use a variety of extralegal repressive techniques, including whippings, kidnappings, drive-out campaigns, incarcerations, arsons, hangings, and shootings, as well as less overtly illegal tactics such as shutting down meetings, barring speakers from lecturing through blacklists, and book burning. This book draws together the groups engaged in this kind of violence, reimagining the original Ku Klux Klan, various Law and Order Leagues, Stockgrowers' organizations, and Citizens' Alliances as employers' associations driven by unambiguous economic and managerial interests. Though usually discussed separately, all of these groups used similar language to tar their lower-class challengers—former slaves, rustlers, homesteaders of modest means, populists, political radicals, and striking workers—as menacing villains and deployed comparable tactics to suppress them. And perhaps most notably, spokespersons for these respective organizations justified their actions by insisting that they were committed to upholding "law and order." Ultimately, this book suggests that the birth of law and order politics as we know it can be found in nineteenth-century campaigns of organized terror against an assortment of ordinary people across racial lines conducted by Klansmen, lawmen, vigilantes, and union busters.

The epic story of the buffalo in America, from prehistoric times to today—a moving and beautifully illustrated work of natural history The American buffalo—our nation’s official mammal—is an improbable, shaggy beast that has found itself at the center of many of our most mythic and sometimes heartbreaking tales. The largest land animals in the Western Hemisphere, they are survivors of a mass extinction that erased ancient species that were even larger. For nearly 10,000 years, they evolved alongside Native people who weaved them into every aspect of daily life; relied on them for food, clothing, and shelter; and revered them as equals. Newcomers to the continent found the buffalo fascinating at first, but in time they came to consider them a hindrance to a young nation’s expansion. And in the space of only a decade, they were slaughtered by the millions for their hides, with their carcasses left to rot on the prairies. Then, teetering on the brink of disappearing from the face of the earth, they would be rescued by a motley collection of Americans, each of them driven by different—and sometimes competing—impulses. This is the rich and complicated story of a young republic's heedless rush to conquer a continent, but also of the dawn of the conservation era—a story of America at its very best and worst.

Sticks and Stones gives a glimpse into the simple and enduring playtime activities that children enjoy around the world. The 39 games are accompanied by basic facts and interesting information about each country of origin. Information is provided for number of players needed, diagrams to set up playing area, and step-by-step instructions to play the game. Bonus puzzles and world map included.