In this poignant and personal history of one of America’s oldest theaters, Leslie Stainton captures the story not just of an extraordinary building but of a nation’s tumultuous struggle to invent itself. Built in 1852 and in use ever since, the Fulton Theatre in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, is uniquely ghosted. Its foundations were once the walls of a colonial jail that in 1763 witnessed the massacre of the last surviving Conestoga Indians. Those same walls later served to incarcerate fugitive slaves. Staging Ground explores these tragic events and their enduring resonance in a building that later became a town hall, theater, and movie house—the site of minstrel shows, productions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, oratory by the likes of Thaddeus Stevens and Mark Twain, performances by Buffalo Bill and his troupe of “Wild Indians,” Hollywood Westerns, and twenty-first-century musicals. Interweaving past and present, private anecdote and public record, Stainton unfolds the story of this emblematic space, where for more than 250 years Americans scripted and rescripted their history. Staging Ground sheds light on issues that continue to form us as a people: the evolution of American culture and faith, the immigrant experience, the growth of cities, the emergence of women in art and society, the spread of advertising, the flowering of transportation and technology, and the abiding paradox of a nation founded on the principle of equality for “all men,” yet engaged in the slave trade and in the systematic oppression of the American Indian.

When Surveyor-General Thomas Hutchins drove a stake into the ground to mark a “point of beginning” for the 1785 establishment of Seven Ranges of townships on the west bank of the Ohio River, he had to have sensed that he was initiating something larger than a survey. After all, he was working for the newly formed United States, and the purpose of his work was to impose a grid of ideal squares on hill country to make it ready for sale—something that had never been done before. But Hutchins couldn’t by any stretch of the imagination have known that the public survey system he was testing would soon extend all the way to the Pacific or that the land on which he worked would soon become the staging ground for other, similarly revolutionary innovations like strip mining, Pentecostalism, the gaming industry, and tools for emancipating multi-national corporations. In this book, Will Hoyt details the arrival and eventual impact of these eastern Ohio products, and by framing the story of their development within the story of his own decision to move from California to eastern Ohio, he secures a glimpse of our country’s DNA. Readers will close this book with a firm grasp of three things: the grandeur of the American project, the extent to which that project is now at risk, and what we all must do to ensure its survival.

The fourth edition of Structural Firefighting: Strategy and Tactics meets and exceeds the course objectives and outcomes for the National Fire Academy’s Fire and Emergency Services Higher Education (FESHE) non-core course, Strategy and Tactics (C0279).Structural Firefighting: Strategy and Tactics prepares the fire officer to take command at structure fires, effectively using available resources. The goal of this text is to explain proven tactics and strategies used at structure fires. It is designed to be used by all fire officers, from company officer to chief of department.The Fourth Edition provides the necessary tools to achieve maximum productivity under adverse fireground conditions. It references NFPA fire investigations, applicable NFPA statistics and standards, the NIOSH Firefighter Fatality Investigation and Prevention Program, and the Technical Report Series from the U.S. Fire Administration. It has been expanded to include information from recent studies by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Underwriters Laboratories (UL), and others. The Fourth Edition contains new content on integration of initial rapid intervention crews, updated content on vent-enter-isolate-search tactics, and more, while continuing to emphasize the role of preincident planning and command decisions that maximize life safety, extinguishment, and property conservation. A multitude of case studies, incident summaries, and extensive end-of-chapter activities promote application of chapter content and critical thinking skills. This text allows a company officer or incident commander to learn fireground procedures at an accelerated pace, thus reducing the cost in lives and property associated with learning by experience only.The Fourth Edition also includes:New and significantly expanded, in-depth Suggested Activities that challenge the reader to apply the strategies and tactics presented in each chapterIncident Summaries that summarize real fireground events and lessons learnedFallacy/Fact boxes that defuse myths and clarify the factsUpdated statistics on significant fires in various occupancy typesSafety and strategy tips throughout each chapter