Bundle Belt Revivals and Save!
Buy 1, get 10% Off | Buy 2, get 20% off | Buy 3, get 30% off | Buy 4, get 40% off | Buy 5, get 50% off
The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World
9781953368461
Regular price $24.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%More than a century ago, Marshall “Major” Taylor overcame racial prejudice to become one of the most dominant cyclists in history. The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World, which Taylor self-published in 1928, gives a riveting first-person account of his rise to the highest echelons of professional cycling.
Born in Indianapolis, he eventually became the first African American cycling world champion, going on to set seven world records in the sport. Here he recounts his exploits as an athlete, including his early taste of success in a grueling six-day race, his unparalleled dominance as a sprinter, and some of his most bitter defeats. But the man who achieved international fame as the “Black Cyclone” also details the extreme prejudice he faced both on and off the track. This is a story about one of the greatest athletes in American history, but also a moving testament to Taylor’s resilience and determination in the face of overt racism and seemingly impossible odds.
“Taylor paints vivid a picture of bike racing in the United States at the turn of the [twentieth] century, and highlights his mental process in dealing with racism . . . all while becoming, indeed, the fastest bike racer in the world.” —Outside
Includes an introduction by Zito Madu
Stories of Ohio
9781948742214
Regular price $14.95 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%With a new introduction by Anne Trubek
A novelist, critic, and playwright, William Dean Howells was friends with such luminaries as Mark Twain, Henry James, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Though he’s best known for his East Coast novels like The Rise of Silas Lampham and A Hazard of New Fortunes, Howells never forgot his roots in Ohio. And in Stories of Ohio, he offers a series of short vignettes that chronicle the state’s history, including:
- the Native burial grounds of the Serpent Mound
- the first European settlers on the frontier
- Ohio’s role in the War of 1812
- the Civil War generals and presidents the state birthed in the late nineteenth century.
Though this history primarily focuses on life in Ohio before the nineteenth century, it will help today’s reader see the state in a brand-new light.
“If these Stories distill into two hundred pages what Ohio was, they also suggest what Ohio could have been if compassion and a desire for intercultural exchange had superseded conquest as a motivating force on the frontier.” —James Bruggeman at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
The History of the Standard Oil Company
9781948742153
Regular price $19.95 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%The classic of muckraking journalism that exposed the inner workings of a Gilded Age business empire—with a new introduction by Elizabeth Catte.
Cleveland oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller formed the Standard Oil Company of Ohio in 1870. Over the next four decades, he turned the business into a behemoth, systematically driving his competitors out of business or buying them outright. His vast fortune made him one of the nation’s most powerful men.
But his private empire was nearly undone by the tireless journalism of a single, determined woman, Ida Tarbell. Originally published in 1904, The History of the Standard Oil Company exposed Rockefeller’s monopolistic tactics, eventually resulting in the company’s dismantling in 1911. More than simply a monumental piece of reporting; it is a deft, engrossing portrait of business in America—both its virtues and excesses.
The Shame of the Cities
9781948742511
Regular price $14.95 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%Lincoln Steffens's Tweed Days in St. Louis, published in McClure's magazine in October 1902, is considered the first work of muckraking journalism, exposing corruption between businessmen, politicians, police officers and other municipal actor, as well as how apathetic citizens allow machine politics to proceed unfettered.
The article also highlights residents who do fight back, including civil rights lawyer Joseph W. Folk and the workers involved in the St. Louis Streetcar Strike of 1900. Tweed Days was so successful that Steffens traveled on to Minneapolis to report The Shame of Minneapolis, which appeared in the same 1903 issue of McClure's as another muckraking classic, Ida Tarbell's The History of the Standard Oil Company.
Steffens would go on to expose machine politics in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City. In 1904, McClure's published the series as a book, The Shame of the Cities, which remains stubbornly timely and prescient more than a century later.