Harpers Ferry
Harpers Ferry experienced the Civil War like no other place and was a case study of repeated invasions, military operations, martial law, and endless danger. Journey into the Civil War with stories from those who lived, worked, fought, and died in a border town. This narrative is complemented by full color and black-and-white illustrations, photographs, and maps. Paperback, 200 pages. Dennis E. Frye is the Chief Historian at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. Writer, lecturer, guide, and preservationist, Dennis is a prominent Civil War historian. Dennis has numerous appearances on PBS, The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, and A&E as a guest historian, and he helped produce award-winning television features on the Battle of Antietam and abolitionist John Brown. Dennis served as an Associate Producer for the Civil War movie Gods and Generals, during which he recruited and coordinated nearly 3,000 re-enactors for the film. Dennis also is one of the nation's leading Civil War battlefield preservationists. He is co-founder and first president of the Save Historic Antietam Foundation, and he is co-founder and a former president of today's Civil War Preservation Trust, where he helped save battlefields in twelve states. Dennis is a tour guide in demand, leading tours for organizations such as the Smithsonian, National Geographic, numerous colleges and universities, and Civil War Round Tables.
Harpers Ferry experienced the Civil War like no other place and was a case study of repeated invasions, military operations, martial law, and endless danger. Journey into the Civil War with stories from those who lived, worked, fought, and died in a border town. This narrative is complemented by full color and black-and-white illustrations, photographs, and maps. Paperback, 200 pages.Author Dennis E. Frye is the Chief Historian at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. He is a writer, lecturer, guide, preservationist, and prominent Civil War historian. A well-know author, Dennis has written 77 articles and six books.
In the thirty years after the Civil War, the United States blew by Great Britain to become the greatest economic power in world history. That is a well-known period in history, when titans like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan walked the earth.
But as Charles R. Morris shows us, the platform for that spectacular growth spurt was built in the first half of the century. By the 1820s, America was already the world's most productive manufacturer, and the most intensely commercialized society in history. The War of 1812 jumpstarted the great New England cotton mills, the iron centers in Connecticut and Pennsylvania, and the forges around the Great Lakes. In the decade after the War, the Midwest was opened by entrepreneurs. In this beautifully illustrated book, Morris paints a vivid panorama of a new nation buzzing with the work of creation. He also points out the parallels and differences in the nineteenth century American/British standoff and that between China and America today.
With contemporary photography and words, this handsome and groundbreaking book explores the cultural and natural history of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and the surrounding landscape within Harpers Ferry National Historic Park. More than just a collection of photographs, the book chronicles the history of the area. Best known for John Brown's 1859 raid, the Ferry occupied a strategic location between the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers where Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia meet, making it an important 19th-century crossroads for river, canal, and railroad transportation. The book explores that bustling bygone era, including the Civil War years, which brought an end to the town's industrial age. Moreover, the book portrays the present-day town and the area's scenic attractions, including the rivers and the Appalachian Trail, which passes through the park.
A century and a half before the modern information technology revolution, machinists in the eastern United States created the nation's first high technology industries. In iron foundries and steam-engine works, locomotive works, machine and tool shops, textile-machinery firms, and firearms manufacturers, these resourceful workers pioneered the practice of dispersing technological expertise through communities of practice.
In the first book to study this phenomenon since the 1916 classic, English and American Tool Builders, David R. Meyer examines the development of skilled-labor exchange systems, showing how individual metalworking sectors grew and moved outward. He argues that the networked behavior of machinists within and across industries helps explain the rapid transformation of metalworking industries during the antebellum period, building a foundation for the sophisticated, mass production/consumer industries that figured so prominently in the later U.S. economy.
