America in the Twentieth Century

Newton Falls was founded in 1806 and named after Newtown, Connecticut, a homage to the Connecticut Land Company, and the waterfalls on the East and West Branches of the Mahoning River. The small community was a transportation town with access to the Mahoning River, eventually the Pennsylvania & Ohio Canal, and a myriad of railroads that crisscrossed throughout Newton Falls. As the industrial revolution took hold of Newton Falls, factories came and provided locals with jobs. Eventually, the Ravenna Ordnance Plant, often referred to as the Ravenna Arsenal, opened in 1942 and provided many jobs for those in Newton Falls during World War II and on. Today, Newton Falls is known for its infamous zip code, 44444; the F5 tornado that hit the city in 1985; and one of the oldest covered bridges to remain in the state of Ohio. 

Longtime Midwest City resident and author Malana Bracht joins efforts with key historical leaders of Midwest City and institutions such as the Midwest City High School History Center, Rose State College Foundation, and Atkinson Heritage Center to deliver this city’s rich story to the new generation of Midwest City residents looking to understand the heart behind the model city and its founders.

In the early 1940s, a visionary developer named W.P. “Bill” Atkinson set out to find the perfect location for an incoming air depot to be built in Oklahoma by the US War Department. With a hunch and a wink, he purchased a large plot of land and later incorporated Midwest City in 1943 with the purpose of attracting and supporting Midwestern families and businesses relocating to work at the new plant. The plant later became the iconic Tinker Air Force Base. Awarded as the “Model City of the Midwest,” Midwest City became a city of hope for families looking to have a better life while supporting the nation’s military efforts. Using creative marketing strategies such as selling ponies with homes, intentional city planning for family living, and cultivating Norman Rockwellian culture, Midwest City grew and positioned itself as an innovative leader in the region. 

Having many familial ties to Midwest City and Tinker Air Force Base, Bracht tells the story of Midwest City from its founding, continuing its legacy for generations to come.

A significant site of United States industrial and economic history, Johnstown, Pennsylvania was a birthplace and powerhouse of iron, steel, coal, and transportation.

From its early start as a small community on the fringes of the frontier, the town became an important terminus for the Pennsylvania Mainline Canal and an early site for coal and ore mining. It also grew into a major steel and iron producer renowned around the world for its output, know-how, and quality. At one time, Johnstown's industry helped spur the national drive to become an economic and industrial superpower.

Echoes of the past can be found in every corner of Monroe County.

Incredibly, the county has over a hundred lost towns across its fifteen townships. Some of these towns have notorious histories, such as the murderer who founded a village and the town that robbed its own citizens. Some succumbed to tragedy, including one that was swallowed up by the water and a resort town that disappeared. Others were simply absorbed by another state. Local historian and author of Hidden History of Monroe County, Michigan, Shawna Mazur collects the stories behind these vanished communities, revealing where these towns were located, how they grew and why they disappeared, often without a trace.

More than 14,000 people of Japanese descent—two-thirds of them US citizens—were exiled from August 1942 to November 1945 to the Heart Mountain Incarceration Site on the high desert prairie of Wyoming’s Big Horn Basin.

The site was the temporary home for Japanese Americans forced from their homes in California, Oregon, and Washington. Believed to be saboteurs or spies or both, the prisoners were viewed with fear, hatred, and sometimes acceptance by their neighbors in nearby Cody and Powell. During their time at Heart Mountain, the incarcerated people lived like the residents of any American city. Under the eye of the federal War Relocation Authority, they taught school, worked at the fire and police departments, ran stores and barbershops, and spent much of their time wondering what had happened to their former lives. Today, the site is part of the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center and Mineta-Simpson Institute.

Ray Locker is the director of communications and strategy for the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation. The foundation’s staff consists of experts on Japanese American history, the intersections between Wyoming’s Indigenous community and World War II’s incarcerated people, and museum professionals dedicated to telling the story of this sad chapter of American history. They used donations from those incarcerated and their families, collections in the foundation archives, the National Archives, the Library of Congress, and museums from around the country.

The rural landscape of Henry County, Indiana, offers a bumper crop of captivating stories deeply rooted in history.

John “Snowball” Merida’s towering, crowd-thrilling home runs could have landed him in the Major Leagues were it not for his skin color. Native son Gen. Omar Bundy refused to retreat in World War I. His decision in all probability saved Paris from the Germans. A solitary chimney stack is an oddity in a green landscape, but it was in this spot more than a hundred years ago that a decision changed the course of New Castle history.

Compiling stories of brave veterans and basketball heroes, nationally known catchphrases and political could-have-beens, author and local historian Darrel Radford uncovers lost gems from Henry County’s past.

The April 1917 declaration of war on Germany hastened the need for US training camps. Camp Custer, named for Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, was established on July 18, 1917. Thousands of soldiers were inducted at Camp Custer, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers would start their military training at Camp and later Fort Custer, which became a permanent base in 1940. Images from Camp and Fort Custer gives the reader insight into camp life during both world wars, including the German prisoners of war experience. Images of America: Fort Custer in the World Wars features the influence Camp and Fort Custer had on military training. The young soldiers trained here served their country honorably and are deserving of gratitude.

Brenda Glover Leyndyke, board member and volunteer librarian for the Fort Custer Historical Society, is the daughter of a Fort Custer veteran. Leyndyke updated the Research in Michigan book published by the National Genealogical Society. Along with her volunteer work, Leyndyke writes an award-winning blog. She works closely with the Fort Custer Historical Society board and draws on the society’s collection of over 2,000 photographs.

Through historic photographs discover how the citizens of Boulder City contributed to the war effort in World War II.

During the early years of World War II, the United States Army established a camp on the federal reservation in Boulder City, Nevada. This camp consisted of barracks, a mess hall, officer quarters, a hospital, a guardhouse, a commissary, and a theater for several hundred men. Most of the men were being trained for military police duty. The citizens of Boulder City were not aware of much of the activity that took place at Camp Williston as they were finally settling down into everyday life after the construction of the Hoover Dam. On December 7, 1941, though, the town of Boulder City had the busiest Army camp in the West. Established only a decade earlier in 1931, the camp’s “Be Generous, Equal Victory” slogan was one the community lived by, even more so throughout the war effort.

Tiane Marie is a writer, historian, and photographer. She is dedicated to preserving history by sharing the information for anyone who is wanting to learn. She is the author of Past and Present: Boulder City.

Camp Forrest and Its Legacy is a pictorial history of the individuals and organizations that made this installation Tennessee’s fifth-largest city in World War II.

As an induction, training, and enemy combatant detention facility in Tullahoma, Camp Forrest trained over 70,000 soldiers, employed more than 12,000 civilians, and detained 800 civilian internees and 65,000 German and Italian prisoners of war. At the end of the war, the base was decommissioned and dismantled. Where only foundations and chimneys now stand guard, its legacy perseveres. The over 150,000 people who passed through its gates left an impression still felt.

Dr. Elizabeth Taylor continues to research Camp Forrest’s past and present global impact. She founded the Camp Forrest Foundation, which strives to preserve military history. She welcomes individuals to contact her with stories, comments, photographs, and artifacts. The images included in this title were obtained from the National Archives and Records Administration and numerous private collections.

Food has been and continues to be an essential part of any movement for progressive change.

From home cooks and professional chefs to local eateries and bakeries, food has helped activists continue marching for change for generations. Paschal's restaurant in Atlanta provided safety and comfort food for civil rights leaders. Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam operated their own farms, dairies and bakeries in the 1960s. The Sandwich Brigade organized efforts to feed the thousands at the March on Washington. Author Fred Opie details the ways southern food nourished the fight for freedom, along with cherished recipes associated with the era.

Author Margaret Shiels Konitzky reveals the stories of local heroes and the relentless spirit of midcoast Maine.

While World War II raged overseas, the people of midcoast Maine responded with remarkable achievements on the homefront. The shipyard at Bath Iron Works launched a new destroyer every seventeen days. Bowdoin College had more military than civilian students and held three commencements per year. Boothbay Harbor, Bailey Island and Damariscotta all had military bases, and anyone who owned or sailed a boat was recruited for coastal defense. Women worked at machine shops, registered their neighbors for rationing and volunteered for the Civil Defense and Red Cross. Author Margaret Shiels Konitzky reveals the stories of local heroes and the relentless spirit of midcoast Maine.

Once in a great while an important artifact is suddenly recognized as being so valuable that it demands a wide and immediate audience. Citizen USA, from the permanent collection of the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) is such an artifact.

The unpublished book was written in 1943 when the author, Charles Ferguson, was the Director of Adult Education at the Manzanar concentration camp where Japanese Americans were incarcerated. In words and photographs, the story chronicles the camp experience through the voice and perspective of a young sansei girl from Hollywood, California. She describes the routine of camp life as well as the fear and uncertainty about the future that she and her family face. At the book’s conclusion she wonders, “Isn’t America still democratic?”

Produced in the form of a photo album, the unpublished work was never forgotten by the Ferguson family. After the author's death, his wife Lois donated the book to JANM in 2003.

Seeing hard truths and difficult circumstances from a child’s point of view is more powerful than ever before. This story will resonate with audiences unimagined in 1943.

The heroic actions of one marine group's impact on World War II is captured through testimony and nearly 200 rare and historic images.

Marine Air Group 25 was a pioneering combat air transport unit that entered overseas service during the Guadalcanal campaign in September 1942, helping to achieve the first American offensive victory of the war in the Pacific. It quickly gained fame for its rapid delivery of vital supplies and its lifesaving evacuation of casualties. During the fight for Guadalcanal, Marine Air Group 25 became the nucleus of the joint-service SOPAC (South Pacific) Combat Air Transport Command, or SCAT, partnering with troop carrier and medical units of the US Army Air Forces. SCAT would continue to play a crucial role in subsequent Allied operations throughout the Solomon Islands, including the battles for New Georgia and Bougainville. After SCAT was dissolved in February 1945, Marine Air Group 25 continued its mission in the Philippines and then Northern China until being deactivated in 1946. In 1950, the group was reactivated, seeing further service during the Korean War.

Montana's cowboys, miners, foresters, farmers and nurses entered World War I in April 1917 under the battle cry that would resonate on the battlefields in France—Powder River, Let 'Er Buck!

Montana men served in a greater percentage per capita than any other state. Hundreds responded to the call, including local women and minorities, from the nation's first congresswoman, Jeannette Rankin, to young women serving as combat nurses on the front lines. Additionally, the state provided vital supplies of copper and wheat. Learn what role celebrities like cowboy artist Charlie Russell played in the war and how Montanans mobilized, trained and deployed.

Acclaimed historian Ken Robison uncovers new and neglected stories of the Treasure State's contributions to the Great War.

Today, Athens County is known for its peaceful and idyllic character, but in days gone by, the area was far less sedate.

Small towns like Redtown, Hebbardsville or Eclipse got their names from early settlers and coal barons who brought ambition and industry with them. The area’s deep history of coal mining is well known, but salt manufacturing, railroads and canals also thrived—for a time. Albany, Amesville and Athens all played a part in leading freedom seekers north on the Underground Railroad, and John Morgan Hunt set barns and bridges ablaze during his Civil War raid.

Athens County native and Local History Department Librarian Lorinda LeClain unearths these little-known stories and many more.

One of the oldest communities in the East Bay

Alamo is brimming with tales of hope, loss and triumph. Discover the story of the Romero brothers, who lost their rancho to a shrewd and litigious attorney, and the early pioneers who banded together to buy it back at an extraordinary sum. Learn about the deep agricultural roots put down by newcomers drawn to the temperate climate and beautiful valley. Revisit this rural community’s transformation from grazing land for Mission San Jose to a beloved home for generations of ranchers, writers, and activists.

Join historian Beverly Lane and researcher Sharon Burke as they share fascinating tales of Alamo’s past.

Massachusetts was at the center of the national struggle for women's rights, and the early activities there, described in this well-researched book, enabled the next generation of women to triumph over tradition.

Massachusetts was at the center of the national struggle for women's rights. Long before the Civil War, Lucy Stone and other Massachusetts abolitionists opposed women's exclusion from political life. They launched the organized movement at the first National Woman's Rights Convention, held in Worcester. After the war, state activists founded the Boston-based American Woman Suffrage Association and Woman's Journal to lead campaigns across the country. Their activities laid the foundation for the next generation of suffragists to triumph over tradition. Author Barbara Berenson gives these revolutionary reformers the attention they deserve in this compelling and engaging story.

A vivid narrative of the heroic struggle of Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party as they worked to earn the vote, framed by the demonstration known as The Great Suffrage Parade.

The Great Suffrage Parade was the first civil rights march to use the nation's capital as a backdrop. Despite sixty years of relentless campaigning by suffrage organizations, by 1913 only six states allowed women to vote. Then Alice Paul came to Washington, D.C. She planned a grand spectacle on Pennsylvania Avenue on the day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration - marking the beginning of a more aggressive strategy on the part of the women's suffrage movement. Groups of women protested and picketed outside the White House, and some were thrown into jail. Newspapers across the nation covered their activities. These tactics finally led to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Author Rebecca Boggs Roberts narrates the heroic struggle of Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party as they worked to earn the vote.

This compelling look at Charleston's twentieth-century history chronicles the changes and challenges faced by Charleston as its population exploded in response to expansion of the Charleston Navy Yard. As World War II called for the United States to flex her industrial might, the shipyard rose to meet the challenge and 55,000 new residents flooded into the city.

Charleston was unprepared for such dramatic expansion: the need for labor at the yard meant the sudden appearance of good jobs, but also resulted in severe housing shortages, food rationing and dilemmas over race and gender. Ongoing workforce shortages forced the navy to look to sources of labor previously regarded as unsuitable--African Americans and women--causing dramatic changes to the status quo.

Author and historian Fritz Hamer makes use of written documents and oral histories to argue that the war's effects pulled a reluctant "Holy City" into the twentieth century, setting the stage for further modernization and growth. Warm personal accounts from a range of individuals who witnessed the city's dramatic change provide a human element in Hamer's solid research.

Well written and imaginatively conceived, Charleston Reborn will interest the general reader as well as a wide range of historians--from students of World War II and chroniclers of gender and racial history, to urban historians and scholars of the modern American South.

With a forward by Elizabeth Thalhimer Smartt, learn about William Thalhimer's elaborate plan to save Jewish Germans from Hitler and the Third Reich.

During Hitler's rise to power in the 1930's, Richmond department store founder, William Thalhimer and his family traveled to Germany to visit relatives and business contacts. Thalhimer was deeply disturbed and increasingly alarmed as the anti-Semitism that he and his family witnessed escalated into the violence Brown Shirts and Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. Thalhimer became determined to aid Jews fleeing from Germany, and he eventually met a representative of Gross Breesen, a German-Jewish agricultural training institute. The mission of Gross Breesen, and eventually Thalhimer, was to train young Jews in agriculture in hopes that the expertise gained would ensure the students' successful emigration from Germany. Thalhimer purchased a farm, Hyde Farmlands, in Burkeville, Virginia to give the students a home in Virginia.